I want to LOOK athletic, not do sports. I have no plans of going on a stage in a thong or showing myself off to other dudes, except I suppose for this argument.
But anyway plenty of athletes use the hell out of machines. I see the local college football players at my gym using machines all the time. Smith machines, leg press, basically every hammer strength machine, even the pec fly machine. These are the guys who will potentially be drafted to the NFL after college.
Most sprint cyclists, skiers, speed skaters, olympic sled, etc all do hundreds and hundreds of leg press reps for example.
Football guys even have their own weird machines just for football:
Amazing, you've further confirmed you have no idea what you're talking about.
I can relate to not wanting to get on stage, but if you train for aesthetics then you're training like a bodybuilder.
(I understand that we're now WAY off topic, but I can't resist
)
As I said, athletes SHOUDN'T use machines, nor should their coaches be advocating them. They also shouldn't do things like half squats (feel free to open a debate on this too
), but that doesn't stop misinformed coaches from advocating them as well.
It normally happens out of some strange injury concern that actually results in weaker and more injury prone athletes (for example "let's not load the spine and hope that it copes with impact"), and also simply not understanding how you perform strength training for athletes. It doesn't matter how much they get paid, they're still ignorant.
A lot of those college football players are probably training under their own initiative, resulting in them drifting into bodybuilding.
The leg press is one of the (very) few machines that you could find a place for in a routine, but it wouldn't be the primary movement. Certainly doing "hundreds of reps" would be limited to a very small window within their training schedule.
Simply put, there is no such thing as sports specific strength training, there is only strength training.
Oh god LOL I forgot about this one.
They even have a clean and deadlift MACHINE!
Next time I see the strength coach I'll be sure to let him know what a waste of money that useless thing is. I mean what does he know he only gets paid about $150k a year.
Explosive Power for Clean and Dead Lifts
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athletes can explosively perform 12 to 15 clean lifts in 20 seconds without undue stress on the lower back. The hands are positioned behind the knees thus the hips are brought into proper alignment with the shoulders. This position safely channels the weight load into the power center of the athlete. Because of this unique function the athlete experiences both the positive and negative resistance of the clean.
Multiple Uses:
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-Shoulder Press
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LOL indeed! Someone should have save that guy a couple of grand and introduced him to a
trap bar.
Waste of time and money. Athletes injury themselves deadlifting would probably still injure themselves on that... and there is no way it could be used for cleans
The reason why coaches choose conventional deadlift over the trap bar deadlift (which has it's uses, but the mechanics are more squat like) is because the the stresses are useful. Provided it's coached competently (!), the deadlift is safe.
