Most efficient way to use weight machines?

icecold said:
What did I just read...
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..aaaand breath :p

On topic, providing your gym has some good free weights I would definitely start on them, regardless of what you're able to lift.

I've only been "doing" weightlifting for 2 and bit months now and definitely would have started on free weights as opposed to machines had I not been intimidated by all the bicep monkeys that loiter my gym.

I Got pointed in the right direction from Ice and started the Strong Lifts programme 3 weeks ago and now only do free weights. For me, free weights do so much more since they're a more natural compound exercise, providing you get the form right, which I'm still struggling with :cool:

Read up, dive in and watch yourself get stronger, it doesn't matter at what weight you're starting at - best of luck :D
 
kwerk said:
My goal isn't to get strong though it's just to look good so TBH I don't care about free weights. I don't do any sports and don't really have an ego so don't care about strength.
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ExRayTed said:
What utter rubbish.
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Educate me then?

I think the meme with free weights is that most lifters who don't take drugs will never see any real aesthetic results that they expect from magazines etc. so all they have left is their strength gains to comfort their ego. But I mean what's the point? What are you going to use it for if you don't do sports?

It's 2012 there are some excellently designed machines around that work fine if your goal is to just build muscle and look good. You get a nice even tension throughout the movement and you can concentrate more on the muscle instead of loading/unloading, balancing and concentrating on form.

As long as you have a progressive overload of some sort, keep the muscle under enough tension and hit it from a few different angles it doesn't really make much of a difference.
 
kwerk said:
But I mean what's the point? What are you going to use it for if you don't do sports?
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The fact that you're asking this means you don't quite "get" weight lifting entirely. For a lot of people it is not merely a means to an end.
 
As for the stabilizer thing, say the delts stabilizing on a regular bench press compared to a smith press. Well I'm going to work my delts separately anyway so what difference does it make? I know I feel more sore (in a good way) in my chest after doing smith presses than bench presses. Unless you're drug-huge I doubt anyone is going to notice "gaps" in your physique from stabilizers being worked or not.
 
Zefan said:
The fact that you're asking this means you don't quite "get" weight lifting entirely. For a lot of people it is not merely a means to an end.
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That get's back to the op then. Does he want to get stronger (for what?), or to have bigger muscles to look good at the beach?

And judging from the massive "post your pics" thread it's the latter for most people.
 
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There is zero justification to your assertion that machines are better than free weights for body building.

Stuart McGill would probably give his moustache a stroke and then punch you in the face if he saw what you wrote and that you used his stuff alongside it.
 
Educate you? Why? Educate yourself. There are plenty of genuinely helpful articles out there for beginners such as yourself. A couple of months and you're waxing lyrical about the benefits of partial range of movement? Please.. You want me to educate you? You've clearly already made your mind up.

In order to 'look good' as you put it, you need to build muscle and drop fat. That's it. No over-complication, no wacky routines. In order to build muscle you need to lift heavy weights. Again, no rocket science. If you are lifting the required amount of weight to stimulate this muscle growth then you should not be walking out of the gym feeling 'refreshed'

I'm constantly seeing neophytes like you starting out with massively overcomplicated routines wondering why they're getting no results. Build strength first using the tried and tested compound movements. Your routines are dominated with a ridiculous amount of upper body exercises.

You say you don't have an ego yet want to look good. Tosh

You infer that muscles get equally bigger from glycogen and water retention? Tosh. Water retention is an undesirable quality. And glycogen retention is a trick competing bodybuilders sometimes use to temporarily increase muscle size before competition.

Using free weights is a waste of effort? Tosh.

In fact I can't be bothered to go on.

Suffice to say this forum is filled with some very knowledgeable people. Luckily anyone looking for advice will likely listen to them rather than you.
 
kwerk said:
That get's back to the op then. Does he want to get stronger (for what?), or to have bigger muscles to look good at the beach?

And judging from the massive "post your pics" thread it's the latter for most people.
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The two are the same thing

You think if you use a few Nautilus machines for a bit of light lifting your body will tack a few muscles on because it realises you want to 'look good' rather than to get strong?

Your lack of knowledge and cavalier attitude trivialises the immense effort some people put into their bodies.
 
ExRayTed said:
The two are the same thing

You think if you use a few Nautilus machines for a bit of light lifting your body will tack a few muscles on because it realises you want to 'look good' rather than to get strong?

Your lack of knowledge and cavalier attitude trivialises the immense effort some people put into their bodies.
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Take a bow son :)

Lets see what he has to say now..
 
I don't do partial range, I just don't do a full stretch and a full lock out.

And that routine is not over-complicated in the slightest. I did variations of that routine with great success for years when I lifted before, and I still have plenty of muscle left over 7 years later with no lifting. I've posted my pics before. My goal IS to build muscle and drop fat and I can do it with machines without killing myself every time.

I have no problem walking out refreshed probably because of the CV work I do. That is when I feel destroyed, after doing sprints. I've never seen any good evidence that going to failure on weights is mandatory for progress.

And the glycogen thing, why do you think cyclist have massive thighs? It's not just from weights, it's because they are stuffed full of nutrients.

Anyway back to the point for the OP - free weights is no magic bullet for looking good.
 
ExRayTed said:
The two are the same thing

You think if you use a few Nautilus machines for a bit of light lifting your body will tack a few muscles on because it realises you want to 'look good' rather than to get strong?

Your lack of knowledge and cavalier attitude trivialises the immense effort some people put into their bodies.
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As long as you're progressively adding weight to stay in a productive rep range then yeah your muscle will grow to accommodate which is exactly what I said above. It will grow on a machine or a barbell. The strength is a side affect. It's just that the strength on the machine is more useless in the real world than free weight strength, but if you don't do sports then who cares?? Isn't the whole point of "bodybuilding" training for size/looks not strength?
 
Some strange arguments for using machines here, it almost seems like the decision to use machines was made first and the reasoning afterwards. Perhaps that's why most of those reasons seem a little shoddy?

Free weights > machines, compound > isolation, it's entry level stuff really and the info is not hard to find, at all. Whatever floats your boat though I guess.
 
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icecold said:
There is zero justification to your assertion that machines are better than free weights for body building.

Stuart McGill would probably give his moustache a stroke and then punch you in the face if he saw what you wrote and that you used his stuff alongside it.
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McGill says himself that back strength has no bearing on injury prevention. The only thing that matters is static strength from doing planks and the like.
 
kwerk said:
I've started mucking about with weights the last couple of months after about 7 years of doing no weights except bodyweight stuff.... My goal isn't to get strong though it's just to look good so TBH I don't care about free weights.... Realistically if you're not on drugs you're not going to get spectacular results anyway so free weights is pretty much a waste of effort IMO, unless it's sport performance specific. The most you could hope for is perhaps one of the lesser doped up olympic sprinters or gymnast physiques. If you plan on doing drugs later then free weights would be more important for building a solid base.

I never go to failure
I never use a full ROM (keep tension all through rep)
I feel refreshed instead of exhausted when I walk out
I add weight only when I feel it's got too easy
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so much wrong, no wonder you don't get spectacular results, im surprised you get results at all if your just mucking about. sounds to me your one of the guys at the gym who is busy playing with his phone and gets absolutely nowhere fast.

wedgie said:
Some strange arguments for using machines here, it almost seems like the decision to use machines was made first and the reasoning afterwards. Perhaps that's why most of those reasons seem a little shoddy?

Free weights > machines, compound > isolation, it's entry level stuff really and the info is not hard to find, at all. Whatever floats your boat though I guess.
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Machines have their place, see my post above, free weights are not better for everyone, nor are they a lot better than machines overall, both have their advantages and disadvantages, also compound is not greater than isolation either.

compound = core strength and muscle strength
isolation = muscle size

its a lot more complicated than that i'm just keeping it simple

for example im pretty sure every Mr Olympia didn't just use free weights, in fact i think Jay Cutler uses more machines than he does free weights for example.

kwerk said:
As for the stabilizer thing, say the delts stabilizing on a regular bench press compared to a smith press. Well I'm going to work my delts separately anyway so what difference does it make? I know I feel more sore (in a good way) in my chest after doing smith presses than bench presses. Unless you're drug-huge I doubt anyone is going to notice "gaps" in your physique from stabilizers being worked or not.
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you have no idea what stabilizer muscles are, there will come a point where using only machines your going to risk huge injury to yourself, because your stabilizers are so weak in comparison.

delt's are not what i would call a stabilizer muscle
 
Psycho Sonny said:
Machines have their place, see my post above, free weights are not better for everyone, nor are they a lot better than machines overall, both have their advantages and disadvantages, also compound is not greater than isolation either.

compound = core strength and muscle strength
isolation = muscle size

its a lot more complicated than that i'm just keeping it simple
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As was I :p.

Without disagreeing with your comments, I stand by what I said. Of course machines and isolation exercises have their own uses/advantages, but that's lesson 4 or 5 there, lesson 1 will almost always detail how greater importance is placed on compound over isolation, and same for free weights over machines.

It's the basic fundamentals of weight training, then you adjust accordingly to suit your own needs. From the looks of things kwerk has gone straight to the point of adjusting his routine without having the core principles down in the first place.
 
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