If your training regimen mostly consists
of machine exercises, don't be frustrated if you aren't seeing any results.
The beauty of this technique is that it can be applied to numerous different barbell and dumbbell movements, and
various machine exercises.
The training regimen starts with free weights and then goes
into machine exercises as well as bodyweight exercises.
The
weight machine exercises were helping pack on some muscle — in addition to the manual labor done at my after school job, and because of my teenage hormones.
Free - weight exercises such as the bench press produce better muscular and skeletal adaptations than
machine exercises such as the chest press.
I only really lift free weights with very
few machine exercises, and had previously thought that this would be enough to activate these smaller supporting muscles sufficiently to avoid this problem.
This sounds promising, but as someone who doesn't believe
in machine exercises, this might be hard to put into practice.
• Great for circuits → You can definitely get the blood pumping with a circuit
of machine exercises.
Beginners and people recovering from an injury or long rest period, may be better off
with machine exercises before moving to free weights.
You've probably tried to push your upper pecs to grow with the help of incline barbell / dumbbell presses, incline cable flies and
similar machine exercises, but since you're reading this article, we can assume that you're doing some wrong.
You can perform cable kickbacks at home if you have leg kickback machine and you want to do
cable machine exercises for glutes.
You'll see people on the lat pull - down machine, doing cable rows and all kinds of
other machine exercise just to avoid setting foot under the pull - up bar.
However, flywheel leg curls do transfer to sprint running (Askling et al. 2003), even when they are performed by premier league soccer players using an open
chain machine exercise!
Doing circuit training
with machine exercises is beneficial for lifters of any level, either beginner, intermediate or advanced.
(I didn't step foot in a gym for six weeks after my accident and then spent one month limited to
machine exercises only, before gradually building up strength in the major lifts again.)
Whereas, changing the load between sets on
a machine exercise like lat pulldowns is quite easy since you are only adjusting the pin to a lower or higher slot.
At the beginning you'll primarily turn to
machine exercises, with some free - weight lifting in the very start.
This machine exercise allows you to position your feet in different ways and therefore isolate the different muscles.
This doesn't count as
a machine exercise nor a free weight exercise.
Over the course of his rich bodybuilding career, Frank Zane found out that
machine exercises that don't put too much strain on the shoulders are ideal for keeping your pecs in great condition in the long term.
Which are better: free weight exercises or
machine exercises?
Although
some machine exercises appear similar, not all of them target the same muscles.
Intro: For starters, we'll agree with most Smith - haters that free weight barbell moves are generally superior to
machine exercises.
Taking the final set of the dumbbell and
machine exercises to failure is a good rule of thumb, and doing some extra forced reps on small isolation work is fine.
As a general rule of thumb barbell exercises are going to be more effective than
machine exercises.
* Free Weights are significantly more effective & efficient than machine weights - but eventually, if you become so bored that it's hard to get your butt in the Gym, then you may want to occasionally (for 1 - 3 weeks) switch to
machine exercises.
In addition, by now you should be able to do the whole stack (for Reps) on many of
the machine exercises.
Don't bother doing
a machine exercise that hits your thighs.
It gets a lot of a flack from the «hardcore» crowd because
its a machine exercise.
A majority of individuals spend too much of their time on isolation and
machine exercises.
Traditional bodybuilders have always considered chin - ups to be a cut above cable pulldowns, but this is just another example of the comparison between a free weight and
machine exercise.
Whether you prefer body weight, free weight, or
machine exercises, strength training will help turn extra, unwanted fat into lean, toned muscle.
While I certainly agree that utilizing mostly free weights is a better way to workout than using guided machines, there are
some machine exercises that I would never dream of leaving out.
Here is the 4 set block sequence for isolation and
machine exercises:
Here is the 8 set block sequence for compound and
machine exercises: