Episode 110 - Free Weights vs Machines

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Hello, let’s go on that. You can do this podcast. We’re going to talk about free weights versus machines today. So before we get started, I just wanna let everybody know that I get this question a lot. Hey, is it better to use free weights is a better use machines and so on. And overall, I’m going to talk about the benefits of both walked through this article, kind of give you my, you basically give you my take on everything.

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There’s a place for both of them, but I do think in my opinion, can tell you that free weights do a benefit for as the results more so than machines. And I’m going to go into all of that, but there definitely is a place that I still use and will use machines, you know, for the rest of my life as well. So, and cables and attachments like that.

But anyways, the machines or some sort of cable machine that you can put a pin in or select authorized type of way to equipment, that isn’t just a weight, a dumbbell or a barbell. So it was the next so I went through this article called trainer essentials.com. They talked about free weights versus machines. It’s an article, a great, great little article with tons of research that you can deep dive into.

So I’m gonna walk you through this and give you my take so free weights versus machines. There’s tons of studies on this and I’m going to talk about a few key components that the benefits and so on. So when the, in this article, it talked about support for less experienced users is one of the sections. When it talked about support for the less experienced users, strength, train machines are really safe.

You can sit on, it has a really guided range of motion. It talks about the, it goes in just one direction. You really can’t do it wrong, and you really can’t hurt yourself very easily using a machine. So it’s a very fixed guided motion. It teaches you generally has a diagram, like all of ours, a co often as we can have a QR scanner, you just take your phone, your camera up to it, hold it.

And we’ll show you with an instructor instructing you how to use that machine. So if you’ve never used a gym OKC, all you have to do is have your phone. You pretty much walk around and scan machines and do your workout. So it’s complete mind, freedom to have something very simple. And it still works in stimulates good muscles and tones of the body. So less experienced users, machines are huge free weights.

On the other hand, they don’t provide the same level of support for experience inexperienced users or non-experienced users. You have to really have somebody teach you the form, the technique, how to stabilize it. If you’re trying to do a bicep curl, you have to keep your, your, your, your, your elbow in one fixed position, you gotta curl up and you gotta like control things.

You gotta stabilize your core. Your head neck and spine has got to stay in alignment and stable. So there’s a lot of different things where you can just sit on a machine and you grab it and move through the range of motion. And it’s a lot simpler. So there’s definitely differences, free free weights and strength training machines, but for less experienced users, machines win by a long shot.

Next step is potential for increased user injury. It talks about how free weights don’t support the guided motion. And so, yeah, you have to have like a spotter. You have to have somebody kind of teach you and guide you in the potential for injury for freeways is way higher. You just, you just don’t. If you don’t or aren’t trained on it, you don’t have somebody helping you with it or helping you pick the right amount.

It’s just more prone to, you know, really binding a joint or putting a joint through a range of motion that is just not meant to go through. So, but machines on the other hand, like I said, it’s a fixed motion, has a diagram. It only lets it go through a certain range of motion.

It’s generally very safe for that joint for most users, unless have some sort of bone or joint issue or you know, some sort of you know, you know, basically joint issue of some sort. Then it talks about variety of exercises in the next section. Talk about how free weights have an endless variety.

Like I’ve made up so many exercises that had only been finding books, just cause I used to be a trainer and have dead time in between clients and go out there on the floor and play around and create a new way to do bicep curl a new way to do like a hanging app crunch or a new way to do never seen it before never trained on it.

But you use body weight and free weight stuff and you can create stuff that’s just totally out of the box. It’s kind of fun. If you’re a kind of a gym OKC junkie, like, like I was or M so anyways, free weights, endless variety of exercises then on the other end is like, I guess the the machines you generally have anywhere from like most of the workout circuits have anywhere 10 to, to about 20 some types of fitness machines.

There’s a QR scanners. You can scan it. It’s one simple range of motion. Here’s a few seat adjustments or pad adjustments, but for the most part it’s pretty straightforward. Now I have used some machines and created my own way of like flipping around backwards on the machine to do a shoulder press, like instead of facing outward with the pad on my back, I’ll face inward with the pad against my chest and do the shoulder press.

And there’s a lot of great ways that I’ve actually been creative with machines to hit muscle groups in different angles, especially when I was bodybuilding, but there’s, there is a lot simpler for a variety of exercises, for sure. Freeways wins with machines, you know, I would, I, I have actually created quite a few variety of ways to use it, but it’s not diagrammed on the machine, but yeah.

Variety also always goes to the free weights, barbells, dumbbells, body, weight, motion stuff, and things like that. So, okay. Then it talks about progressional potential. It says here’s a variety of possible exercises. Also leads to a greater purpose progress potential. There’s a lot more scope in the increase of difficulty and freeway exercises.

The machine ones you can use different techniques, loads, or combinations that make the exercise more challenging. I do agree with that. Free weights has just more, more variety for progressing or creating with different types of weight loads to it. Now, machines, there’s only limited amount of what it can do. It’s like I said, a fixed machine with a fixed goal with just one type of exercise in mind for it.

And so on accessibility is the next section. Accessibility free weights are a lot cheaper and they’re generally more accessible. You can go to most gym OKCs that have just barbells and dumbbells. You can do tons of different things with just a barbell and a dumbbell and your body.

So there’s like an endless way, but you’ve got to be very, very knowledgeable on how to work [inaudible] body. So accessibility, I would say it’s always accessible a lot cheaper. You can go to a park and that it can be some free weight stuff, and you can do tons of stuff just with the park. Now as a, in a gym OKC with machines, as a trainer.

You can use tons of different options like machines and cable machines and bodyweight stuff and dumbbell stuff and barbell stuff, and combination of all of those together to really work with a client. And so I think that’s kind of the cluster of everything that makes it really great. I do use free weights. I use machines, I use cables, I use body weight stuff.

And so the bottom line is just got more tools when you’re in a gym OKC, but free weights are definitely more accessible and you can just literally have those sitting in your room and do a workout with that.

If you’ve got a good if you got your phone look up stuff, or you got a diagram on how to do stuff but I definitely think there’s a huge advantage when you have a million dollars of equipment and, you know, 300 different types of machines that do different types of stuff in different angles. And then having a trainer with you too, that has done this for years and train thousands of people and train their bodies.

So there’s definitely a benefit there too, but accessibility goes to free weights. So, and then it talks about all these studies, a freeway it’s versus machines, the pros and cons, and it talks about different studies and sites. It where you can click on that. And this article, like I said, came from trainer essentials.com. That article was called free weights versus machines studies.

And so this article that I’m writing, like I’m talking about just free weights for some machines, and this is the article that I kind of chose to deep dive with. So there’s several different people that did some studies. So what do these studies show? There’s a guy by the name of Katar man Katar men that talked about the one rep max for the Smith machine ended up going up more with free weights.

However, the one rep bench is greater for free weights than the Smith machine. So that’s what he had to study on Santa’s is this other study? I would assume it’s the guy from that study. You have to click on it, but their takeaway on that was autumn performance enhancement use integrated approach to training, using all available tools appropriately.

And they found that free weights were superior to most machines, stone free weights have a numerous advantages of machines. It’s another study by stone. Marie talked about the one rep maximum. So the maximum strength and was one.

So this is really interesting. Murray study talks about maximum strength for the one rep for just doing one rep was better with free weights, but however, peak velocity and average velocity was greater with machine conditioning. So basically muscular, this is kind of my term to it. Muscular strength, just raw strength was better with, with free weights, more muscular velocity, maybe muscular endurance type stuff.

Average velocity was better with machines. So that’s what his studies should. Schwinn Bach said. Training was freeway through machines, result machines result in similar increases in strength and mass muscle mass and strength and testosterone increases and cortisol ratios. So he’s, they’re very similar. So that’s what his city showed.

And then McCall says, so just that greater strength activity during free weight bench press compared to the select derived pin loaded machine bench press. So what’s your take, what’s my take.

Everybody has opinions on it. I would lean, you know, that, I mean, knowing and training and bodybuilding, when I trained really hard doing primarily free weights, I felt like my body had the messed best benefit. I think a lot of that comes too, just to so many more stabilizer muscles are being worked where the machine just holds you in place, or you’re sitting there and everything like your core.

Like your abdominal, your transverse abdominis, and muscles in and around your spine. Everything’s just totally relaxed. We’re opposing if you’re standing there and you’re having to hold a free weight away from your body, there’s a lot more stabilizers working a lot more engagement of supporting muscles to keep your structure informed. So you actually have to kind of be the machine and lift the weight load.

So it’d be the machine as in guiding you and holding you in place and also move the primary weight move or the primary muscle that’s activated. I do think weights are gonna assume it more activity, more central nervous stimulation, more hormone creation. So that’s going to stimulate overall stimulation to the body will be more achieved with free weights, but if you’re really, really focused on pushing hard on a machine.

Definitely think you’d get some good benefits. I do a lot of machine stuff. Now that I’m like 40 just cause it’s, I have a, I’m more prone for injury. My joints aren’t as durable as it used to be. So I do more machine weights than I ever have in the past, but you know, crawling under, you know you know, five or six plates on my back doing a squat on each side, you know, opposed.

And, and isn’t really the risk isn’t worth the reward at, you know, at 40 and neither is, you know, my, my goals are different now, so I want to be fit and I don’t want to just be huge and muscular now. So I’ll do more controlled motion with lighter weight and do some machine variation, some body weight variation, and then lighten up the freeway load so that I don’t impinge the back.

Or the nerves or the joints or the shoulders and things like that. So so for me in health and wellness, I think if you’re just health and wellness training for the most part and conditioning for the body, you know, I think they’re kind of interchangeable, but I do like the free weights. So I definitely the body will build faster, but using both most people that aren’t competitive bodybuilders.

Or fitness and figure competitors I think machines and a combination of machines and free weights are fine. Well, anyways, I use them all with my clients and did all that type of stuff when I bodybuilding. But so anyways, that’s the take on freeways for some machines.

That’s the study. I want to remind you that when you’re trying to get in shape, remember 70 to 80% of your success is the food. What you do in the kitchen is what matters most. So when you go to the gym OKC and you think you’re so cool, cause you’re going to lift a lot of weight and not cool. Make sure you putting as much energy and focus in the nutrition component at home apex 24 hour fitness and ESM Cooper Institute.

I’ve got like five certifications for a minute. I passed trained over 5,000 clients. I promise you, you can’t outwork a bad diet. You’re still going to stay fat. You’re just, you’re not going to get results. I’m not going to tone up and be a more fit version of yourself unless you get that food in control. So it’s focused on the food.

Number one, really get a good workout. What I talk about on the weights is really for the most people, most people aren’t really consistent. When it, when you come down to it, 80% of Americans don’t even work out on a regular basis. So I just want to encourage people to keep people encourage people to keep be consistent. The best results are when people are consistent.

So I don’t want to see come to the gym OKC and then quit in a week. I want you to come regularly. So keep your workouts simple and the same, get a good template, go to our free trainer classes at Colaw fitness, pick up our CF 30 book. It’s a book that I’ve written that tells you what to do your first 30 days of working out. So that you can follow a very simple, structured diet plan, workout plan that will work.

And I guarantee you, you lose 10 to 30 pounds of fat and build muscle. If you just start following that plan. So action steps for you guys. If you want to be successful is fitness. Come to the club. It’s only $1 down as low as $5 a month. That’s where two people can work out tan and massage for as low as $5 a month. We also have a 30 day money back guarantee.

If you don’t like it, you get your money back. In the first three days. There’s no commitment. No, no I got ya. So it’s a great win that first 30 days to check it out go to the free trainer classes. That’s step two as go to free trainer classes, go to all the orientations doesn’t cost. Anything, show you how to use the equipment, show you how to use the club.

And then pick up that 30 book. It’s 10 bucks. It’s hardly covers the cost of the book and shipping and storage and all that stuff, but 10 bucks. And you can have a workout journal that I personally have built a trainer that’s worked with over 5,000 clients and built a multimillionaire company in many States.

So somebody that’s really done the time, not some guy who’s like I worked out for three years and I go to trainer shift, good. Or I went to college for four years and trained for a little bit. But the guys that worked with thousands and thousands of clients and built a multimillion dollar business in multiple States. So this is where I’m not trying to say I’m super smart.

Actually you’ll see the simplicity of it is the beauty of it. Keeping things simple and the same and following a really accurate plan, being consistent is what makes it work.
It’s not some sort of fitness fad that changes every 60 days that people who try to hook you on, but keeping things simple. And this book will give you the templates to follow and be consistent and make a new lifestyle habit. So follow the food plan.

Start exercising, reading, reading my daily words of encouragement and the book for your mental health, middle motivation. Google Colaw fitness reviews, Google Colaw fitness reviews, Google Colaw fitness reviews. Read all about me.

Read about the club. About the weight loss, go to YouTube type in Colaw fitness reviews. Read all of the reviews on Colaw industry to Colaw fitness reviews, review it, check it out. My highest desire is your greatest gain. Thanks for listening. This podcast is Charles Colaw. You guys have a blessed, blessed week. Talk to you soon. Bye-Bye.

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