i read a very interesting article in some magazine (i forget which). i'll paraphrase the idea :

when you tire on an exercise (BB/DB bench), its not your muscles getting tired of moving the weights, but rather the stabilizer muscles (rotator cuff) that's making you stall out. the hypothesis therefore is to exercise on BB/DB bench until you hit failure, then hit the smith machine up using the same weight or more, and run that till failure.

this is similar obviously to drop sets, but you're using either the same or sometimes more weight on the smith.

on paper this sounds like it makes sense for mass, but on paper all kinds of things look great - even origami. any thoughts on this, or anyone that has used it?

Volcom's been incorporating something that looks quite similar to this in his log. He'd probably be the guy to ask.

I did it a while back with shoulders. I would do all my sets of DB presses and lateral raises, then run over to the smith and hit a few sets of front and back shoulder presses. In between those sets I would do high rep, low weight sets of DB raises again. Overall it worked great for mass and strength, but overtime for ME,... lead to over training.

same concept as moving from a compound movement to an isolation movement.....do it for a lil while...it cant HURT....thats for sure....

i use the smith machine regularly. generally, as you stated, when im already fatigued and safety becomes a factor, but also allows me to use different hand and foot positions on certain exercises without having to worry about balance, thus fully concentrating on the muscle being worked. also, as stated, great to mix in with super sets, drop sets. dont use it all the time, as free weight movements to help develop those stabilizer muscles, but the smith can be a great addition to workouts and is very versatile.

man, i'm finally seeing a use for the smith machine besides upright rows. thanks for the input all of you guys. repped.

Since my shoulder injury, ive been using it quite a bit, but before that I did the same thing brk nemesis did for shoulders, tremendous results.

Originally Posted by swollwilliams

i use the smith machine regularly. generally, as you stated, when im already fatigued and safety becomes a factor, but also allows me to use different hand and foot positions on certain exercises without having to worry about balance, thus fully concentrating on the muscle being worked. also, as stated, great to mix in with super sets, drop sets. dont use it all the time, as free weight movements to help develop those stabilizer muscles, but the smith can be a great addition to workouts and is very versatile.

yeah, I use it mainly for narrow-grip bench - allows me to experiment with the different hand and feet positions as well, and just conc. on the muscle movement.

It makes sense.. Especially if you got bad shoulders/rotator cuffs. If isolation of the chest is what you want then why overwork your shoulders? that's why you have a shoulder day.