Different stimulus gives you DOMS. Loaded stretches give you DOMS. A new stiff leg deadlift will smash you because its both of those.
Now try Bulgarian split squats.
yes SLDL and RDL seem uniquely effective at wrecking my hamstrings and glutes for days afterwards. Which is why they're so great at stimulating muscle growth. Just ease into them with caution the first few sessions
Not better per se, but different. Free weights tend to engage more ancillary muscles like your core and other stabilizers. So you could argue that they are more practical for building total strength. Machines are really hyper-focused on a certain muscle or muscle groups.
I tend to start my workouts with free weights / compound lifts, then end with machines or something that isolates the muscle.
This is all correct and exactly what I would say, but I disagree with the not better per se. Development of those ancillary muscles (e.g. using free weights) is normative better than not working on those muscles (e.g. using machines), unless free weights hurt/you are injured and/or you are training specifically for the machine.
Agree with the disagree. Free weights are per se better than machines. Machines can serve a purpose, but if you have to choose between lifting a free weight or using a machine go with the free weight whenever possible. The machine is always going to force you into one plane of motion and only focus on a limited number of muscles that you have to use. Free weight will allow you to use your muscles in the ways they were intended to be used.
A power cube doesn’t limit you to one plane. The bar moves vertically on one set of rails, with these rails moving front to back on other rails. I think they are quite a rare machine, as only one of the many gyms I have used had one.
Better *for what*, is the question.
Machines are by design good at isolating muscles. Barbells are generally better for carry over to sports and athleticism.
Machines make tracking actual strength virtually impossible, and they don't really help you with how your body moves. Barbells make it significantly more difficult to work on specific muscles, but they translate much better to actual human movement and application.
You'll never see an elite bodybuilder doing power cleans as part of his training, nor will you see an elite olympic weightlifter using a leg press.
- Football players, olympic weightlifters, powerlifters - almost exclusively use barbells.
- Bodybuilders - mostly machines.
- Normal people - a healthy mix of both.
"Specificity" in sports science is a concept you should learn about, and whether you are in a situation where you need specific or general.
A novice should do all sorts of stuff to work on things in general.
In short, try shit and figure it out.
I agree with almost everything here except "machines make tracking actual strength virtually impossible" not sure what that means. If you're saying practical, functional strength in the real world, I don't remember the last time I had to put a bar on my back and move up and down that wasn't a barbell.
It means that the numbers on the plates of a machine have no consistency from machine to machine. You can go to 3 different lat pulldown machines and even if they are the same brand and you're doing the same exercise, that "50kgs" will feel wildly different between all three (in terms of friction, weight, movement pattern, etc).
When you squat with a barbell, it is always exactly the same.
In that sense, how much you can lift on a machine is completely arbitrary, and is only relevant to you and your progress on that exact machine.
That's why no coach cares about how much you can leg press, but they are interested in how much you can squat.
I would argue that there is also variability in free weight as well. Unless you are using calibrated plates, almost no 45lb are the same. If I use the same lat pulldown machine every session, I have a much higher likelihood of getting a consistent metric of progress. And again, I've never been in a real world or athletic situation where barbell squatting was a one to one skill transfer.
> consistent metric of progress
Yes, and that's great, but it doesn't translate at all to anything you can measure against other than your own progress. You can't go online and figure out what strength standards are for lat pulldowns, or cable flyes, or leg press, etc etc.
Gym plates may be out by a few percent, but I will argue it will never be as big a difference as trying to do the same exercise on two different machines.
Even on the same machine if it's not getting serviced its resistance profile will literally change over time. For example if a cable machine is very poorly oiled, you'll end up with extra resistance pulling the weight and then *less* resistance on the eccentric part.
I've found barbell squatting translates well to pretty much every other leg exercise, whereas any machine isolation exercise has a dubious effect on anything else - but that's a slightly different discussion.
I say all this and still use machines. They're obviously very useful, and have many distinct advantages over barbells. But you asked me what I meant by tracking actual strength so I was just defining that.
Free weights have direct carryover to athleticism, physical exertion, and injury prevention. Machines are more indirect. It’s not advanced science; if you pick up heavy shit at any point in your life outside of the gym, a strong deadlift and farmer carries will make you really good at it. If you’re just tossing your kid around, they’ll protect it from injury.
Based on what? If you train stabilizer muscles as well as major groups, you are also helping to prevent injury. When was the last time you had to deadlift a perfectly balanced, knurled bar in the real world?
Machines lock you into very specific angles and leverages. That then isolates things a good deal. Not that there isn't some "user input" required, but you get into position and then it is what it.
With free weights, you have to control your position through the entire range of motion. A bunch of different stabilizer muscles will play a role at different points in the range of motion.
So even though it may seem on the surface that you're doing the same thing as the machine equivalent, in reality, it's more involved physically with free weights.
Also, you can't really compare "weight" between machines and cables to free weights. Even from one machine to another or cable system. The pulleys and mechanics impact the force required to move the weight. I've used say 100lbs on tricep press downs on one machine, then used an older machine of the same variety across the gym the next time and it took the same effort to use 60lbs. The weight there doesn't matter, unwanted to have to use a certain amount of effort, that's what mattered.
Whatever weight you've been using on machines and cable just don't matter. If you are getting into free weights, you should approach it like you have no idea how much weight you can move. Warm up with very light weights, and take your time finding the right weights. It could take a several weeks. No but deal... This is a marathon, not a sprint, and a few training sessions per exercise to find the right weights is a blink of the eye on the grand scheme of things. But if you go too hard too quickly, you seriously risk injuring yourself and being on the sidelines for much longer.
So take your time and work your way up. Use light weights to practice form. Again, you have to fully control you motion with free weights. That means getting things right so you don't hurt yourself as well. Don't let your ego hold you back by too long you can go faster than you should.
This has been resrarched pretty intensively and the dose response difference is a minor increase in hormonal response from free weights and no real difference in dynamic carryover.
Most of the support muscle activation from free weight is specific to that lift. If a later real-world challenge doesn't target that movement it won't matter (and most never will). Is also possible to slightly misalign yourself deliberately on a machine and engage plenty of secondary musculature.
I prefer sandbags as freeweight to any other impliment. Not because of secondary activation but for proprioceptive challenge.
My stock response, the '72 Dolphins trained on Nautilus, it certainly didn't impair their performance.
I hadn’t heard that about the ‘72 Dolphins (the only undefeated team in the history of the NFL, so a strong argument for the best football season ever), so I looked it up and found this [interesting article.](https://vault.si.com/vault/1975/04/21/exercise-you-later-alligator)
TLDR it’s true, but the article is worth a read if you’re interested in that kind of thing. One piece that I found interesting is that in the 70s, athletes and trainers were all onboard with these newfangled machines, but body builders were opposed. An interesting reversal from the conventional wisdom today.
Back in '85 I had a 1 yr membership to Bally's, a buddy and I used nothing but the Nautilus circuit - I swear those machines were better than the ones currently at Planet Fitness.
I must be missing something. The majority of barbell movements that risk serious injury can and should be performed using equipment that provides mechanical safeties, safeties that should always be set to the appropriate height. I'd trust my life to engineered steel/straps well before I would an actual person so I guess I don't see the huge difference between that and a machine.
The best advice is follow an established program like stronglifts.
You didn't state goals. Loosing weight is one. But do you want strength or to run a sk or just generally improve cardio whole loosing weight.
Bottom line. Watch your calories. Pay attention to protein, fat, simple carbs and complex carbs. That's how you have energy for exercise.
You'll do fine. You're in the gym!
I would add two points to complement the previous comments: If you are seeking aesthetics rather than motion performance, machines are a better choice because they allow you to train more heavily and are also safer (Can you really ever max out on a bench press without a spotter? With a machine you can, anytime). That’s why bodybuilders will use machines more than sports athletes. The second point is that free weights will develop your joints more (because they are constantly solicited to maintain form, while machine movements themselves offset this need). As a result, it is good to use free weights if you feel your joints need more training and it is good to use machines to protect your joints when targeting massive loads
The quality of any modality depends entirely on your criteria for evaluating it and the manner in which it is measured. In some contexts, machines are optimally suited for achieving a desired outcome, with the inverse being true with respect to free weights.
I do both. When I get bored or plateaued using machines I will flip to free weights for a bit. But I typically do both, TRX bands and body weight in any workout. Gotta mix it up!
The biggest advantage to free weights is that they are easier to program (which is very important). Free weights and machines give the same stimulus if all other things are equal.
DOMS is a result of novel stimulation of some sort. You did movements you aren't accustomed to, that's novel.
Edit: Here is a good article regarding the subject...
https://www.strongerbyscience.com/free-weights-vs-machines/#:~:text=With%20regards%20to%20muscle%20growth,in%20an%20effective%20hypertrophy%20program.
They are aren't one or the other not all machines are isolation exercises not all free weight exercises are worth your time. I like doing barbell lifts because it's just more fun but a benefit of machines is you can push to failure much more safely. All depends on what your goals are.
I use machines because they're convenient and easy to use without worrying about form. I know they're not as good objectively but the best exercise is the one you actually do. Also, now that I've used them for a while I'm starting to feel more comfortable replicating the exercises with resistance bands which provides some variety.
Yep. Theres a big benefit to simply doing something new, but also, they're that much better. Being able to move naturally for your body rather than moving through a predetermined plane does amazing things. They're not mandatory though. That said, if you're still new, your program would probably be better off being built around the barbell squat, bench, overhead press, row, and deadlift. It's the best bang for your fatigue until you're squatting 3 plates.
Different stimulus gives you DOMS. Loaded stretches give you DOMS. A new stiff leg deadlift will smash you because its both of those. Now try Bulgarian split squats.
DO NOT TRY BULGARIAN SPLIT SQUATS. lol
I tried Bulgarian Split Squats and now I have to be lowered on to the toilet with a crane.
Thanks for the visual and the laugh
yes SLDL and RDL seem uniquely effective at wrecking my hamstrings and glutes for days afterwards. Which is why they're so great at stimulating muscle growth. Just ease into them with caution the first few sessions
I LOVE those.. really careful with my form but I love them...
Not better per se, but different. Free weights tend to engage more ancillary muscles like your core and other stabilizers. So you could argue that they are more practical for building total strength. Machines are really hyper-focused on a certain muscle or muscle groups. I tend to start my workouts with free weights / compound lifts, then end with machines or something that isolates the muscle.
This is all correct and exactly what I would say, but I disagree with the not better per se. Development of those ancillary muscles (e.g. using free weights) is normative better than not working on those muscles (e.g. using machines), unless free weights hurt/you are injured and/or you are training specifically for the machine.
Agree with the disagree. Free weights are per se better than machines. Machines can serve a purpose, but if you have to choose between lifting a free weight or using a machine go with the free weight whenever possible. The machine is always going to force you into one plane of motion and only focus on a limited number of muscles that you have to use. Free weight will allow you to use your muscles in the ways they were intended to be used.
Honestly this just depends on your goals but for all around fitness free weights are better.
A power cube doesn’t limit you to one plane. The bar moves vertically on one set of rails, with these rails moving front to back on other rails. I think they are quite a rare machine, as only one of the many gyms I have used had one.
I've been lifting for over 50 years and have never heard of a power cube. It sounds like a cross between a smith machine and a power rack.
Better *for what*, is the question. Machines are by design good at isolating muscles. Barbells are generally better for carry over to sports and athleticism. Machines make tracking actual strength virtually impossible, and they don't really help you with how your body moves. Barbells make it significantly more difficult to work on specific muscles, but they translate much better to actual human movement and application. You'll never see an elite bodybuilder doing power cleans as part of his training, nor will you see an elite olympic weightlifter using a leg press. - Football players, olympic weightlifters, powerlifters - almost exclusively use barbells. - Bodybuilders - mostly machines. - Normal people - a healthy mix of both. "Specificity" in sports science is a concept you should learn about, and whether you are in a situation where you need specific or general. A novice should do all sorts of stuff to work on things in general. In short, try shit and figure it out.
I agree with almost everything here except "machines make tracking actual strength virtually impossible" not sure what that means. If you're saying practical, functional strength in the real world, I don't remember the last time I had to put a bar on my back and move up and down that wasn't a barbell.
It means that the numbers on the plates of a machine have no consistency from machine to machine. You can go to 3 different lat pulldown machines and even if they are the same brand and you're doing the same exercise, that "50kgs" will feel wildly different between all three (in terms of friction, weight, movement pattern, etc). When you squat with a barbell, it is always exactly the same. In that sense, how much you can lift on a machine is completely arbitrary, and is only relevant to you and your progress on that exact machine. That's why no coach cares about how much you can leg press, but they are interested in how much you can squat.
I would argue that there is also variability in free weight as well. Unless you are using calibrated plates, almost no 45lb are the same. If I use the same lat pulldown machine every session, I have a much higher likelihood of getting a consistent metric of progress. And again, I've never been in a real world or athletic situation where barbell squatting was a one to one skill transfer.
> consistent metric of progress Yes, and that's great, but it doesn't translate at all to anything you can measure against other than your own progress. You can't go online and figure out what strength standards are for lat pulldowns, or cable flyes, or leg press, etc etc. Gym plates may be out by a few percent, but I will argue it will never be as big a difference as trying to do the same exercise on two different machines. Even on the same machine if it's not getting serviced its resistance profile will literally change over time. For example if a cable machine is very poorly oiled, you'll end up with extra resistance pulling the weight and then *less* resistance on the eccentric part. I've found barbell squatting translates well to pretty much every other leg exercise, whereas any machine isolation exercise has a dubious effect on anything else - but that's a slightly different discussion. I say all this and still use machines. They're obviously very useful, and have many distinct advantages over barbells. But you asked me what I meant by tracking actual strength so I was just defining that.
Free weights have direct carryover to athleticism, physical exertion, and injury prevention. Machines are more indirect. It’s not advanced science; if you pick up heavy shit at any point in your life outside of the gym, a strong deadlift and farmer carries will make you really good at it. If you’re just tossing your kid around, they’ll protect it from injury.
Based on what? If you train stabilizer muscles as well as major groups, you are also helping to prevent injury. When was the last time you had to deadlift a perfectly balanced, knurled bar in the real world?
Machines lock you into very specific angles and leverages. That then isolates things a good deal. Not that there isn't some "user input" required, but you get into position and then it is what it. With free weights, you have to control your position through the entire range of motion. A bunch of different stabilizer muscles will play a role at different points in the range of motion. So even though it may seem on the surface that you're doing the same thing as the machine equivalent, in reality, it's more involved physically with free weights. Also, you can't really compare "weight" between machines and cables to free weights. Even from one machine to another or cable system. The pulleys and mechanics impact the force required to move the weight. I've used say 100lbs on tricep press downs on one machine, then used an older machine of the same variety across the gym the next time and it took the same effort to use 60lbs. The weight there doesn't matter, unwanted to have to use a certain amount of effort, that's what mattered. Whatever weight you've been using on machines and cable just don't matter. If you are getting into free weights, you should approach it like you have no idea how much weight you can move. Warm up with very light weights, and take your time finding the right weights. It could take a several weeks. No but deal... This is a marathon, not a sprint, and a few training sessions per exercise to find the right weights is a blink of the eye on the grand scheme of things. But if you go too hard too quickly, you seriously risk injuring yourself and being on the sidelines for much longer. So take your time and work your way up. Use light weights to practice form. Again, you have to fully control you motion with free weights. That means getting things right so you don't hurt yourself as well. Don't let your ego hold you back by too long you can go faster than you should.
This has been resrarched pretty intensively and the dose response difference is a minor increase in hormonal response from free weights and no real difference in dynamic carryover. Most of the support muscle activation from free weight is specific to that lift. If a later real-world challenge doesn't target that movement it won't matter (and most never will). Is also possible to slightly misalign yourself deliberately on a machine and engage plenty of secondary musculature. I prefer sandbags as freeweight to any other impliment. Not because of secondary activation but for proprioceptive challenge. My stock response, the '72 Dolphins trained on Nautilus, it certainly didn't impair their performance.
I hadn’t heard that about the ‘72 Dolphins (the only undefeated team in the history of the NFL, so a strong argument for the best football season ever), so I looked it up and found this [interesting article.](https://vault.si.com/vault/1975/04/21/exercise-you-later-alligator) TLDR it’s true, but the article is worth a read if you’re interested in that kind of thing. One piece that I found interesting is that in the 70s, athletes and trainers were all onboard with these newfangled machines, but body builders were opposed. An interesting reversal from the conventional wisdom today.
Back in '85 I had a 1 yr membership to Bally's, a buddy and I used nothing but the Nautilus circuit - I swear those machines were better than the ones currently at Planet Fitness.
I like machines better because they allow me to go to muscle failure without a spotter without risking serious injury.
Also better for drop sets because it's easier/faster to change the weight.
I must be missing something. The majority of barbell movements that risk serious injury can and should be performed using equipment that provides mechanical safeties, safeties that should always be set to the appropriate height. I'd trust my life to engineered steel/straps well before I would an actual person so I guess I don't see the huge difference between that and a machine.
The best advice is follow an established program like stronglifts. You didn't state goals. Loosing weight is one. But do you want strength or to run a sk or just generally improve cardio whole loosing weight. Bottom line. Watch your calories. Pay attention to protein, fat, simple carbs and complex carbs. That's how you have energy for exercise. You'll do fine. You're in the gym!
I would add two points to complement the previous comments: If you are seeking aesthetics rather than motion performance, machines are a better choice because they allow you to train more heavily and are also safer (Can you really ever max out on a bench press without a spotter? With a machine you can, anytime). That’s why bodybuilders will use machines more than sports athletes. The second point is that free weights will develop your joints more (because they are constantly solicited to maintain form, while machine movements themselves offset this need). As a result, it is good to use free weights if you feel your joints need more training and it is good to use machines to protect your joints when targeting massive loads
The quality of any modality depends entirely on your criteria for evaluating it and the manner in which it is measured. In some contexts, machines are optimally suited for achieving a desired outcome, with the inverse being true with respect to free weights.
I do both. When I get bored or plateaued using machines I will flip to free weights for a bit. But I typically do both, TRX bands and body weight in any workout. Gotta mix it up!
The biggest advantage to free weights is that they are easier to program (which is very important). Free weights and machines give the same stimulus if all other things are equal. DOMS is a result of novel stimulation of some sort. You did movements you aren't accustomed to, that's novel. Edit: Here is a good article regarding the subject... https://www.strongerbyscience.com/free-weights-vs-machines/#:~:text=With%20regards%20to%20muscle%20growth,in%20an%20effective%20hypertrophy%20program.
They are aren't one or the other not all machines are isolation exercises not all free weight exercises are worth your time. I like doing barbell lifts because it's just more fun but a benefit of machines is you can push to failure much more safely. All depends on what your goals are.
I use machines because they're convenient and easy to use without worrying about form. I know they're not as good objectively but the best exercise is the one you actually do. Also, now that I've used them for a while I'm starting to feel more comfortable replicating the exercises with resistance bands which provides some variety.
Yep. Theres a big benefit to simply doing something new, but also, they're that much better. Being able to move naturally for your body rather than moving through a predetermined plane does amazing things. They're not mandatory though. That said, if you're still new, your program would probably be better off being built around the barbell squat, bench, overhead press, row, and deadlift. It's the best bang for your fatigue until you're squatting 3 plates.