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machine vs free weight

machine or free weights

  • machine

    Votes: 1 5.0%

  • Free weights

    Votes: 19 95.0%
  • Total voters
    20
  • Poll closed .
Primarily I use free weight in order to utilize additional secondary/stabilizer muscles. However, it can be beneficial to use machines to hit those primary muscle groups extra hard to get past a plateau.

Just my 2 cents.
 
i prefer free weights most of the time. i like working on my stabalizers, it's a plus for baseball. but if your first starting out i would recommend that you start out on machines, just to get the basic technique down, and then you can slowly incorporate free weight exercises. any questions just ask!
 
I'm no pro but i use a combination of both. For example if today is shoulders/legs i'll do leg press for my machine, squat for free, a military press, shoulder press with free weights, and hop on a machine to hit my shoulders super hard. On free weights you have to stabilize that weight. On a machine you can just explode and give it all you have. You might shoulder press free weights 60 lb per arm. But on a machine you might do 80 per arm. Gotta do both!
 
Free weights are the best, not only for the muscle but for the ligaments and tendons. Machines don't work the tendons or ligaments. With free weights yuo have to control the weight from swaying ect. Nothing tops bench, cleans, snatches, squats or deads no machines are better than those.
 
PowerlifterMB said:
Free weights are the best, not only for the muscle but for the ligaments and tendons. Machines don't work the tendons or ligaments. With free weights yuo have to control the weight from swaying ect. Nothing tops bench, cleans, snatches, squats or deads no machines are better than those.
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You forgot to add that working out with machines is ****ing boring.

My 2 cents.
 
both, especially with the machines we have today as opposed to yesteryear. Some machines make it possible to do things we can't with free weights.
 
if i were to do a machine, it would be the freemotion ones. those are pretty cool, it's basically like a bowflex but only one exercise
 
You should start a hardcore routine of Pec-Decks, hamstring curls and machine lateral raises......:lol: JK....

Machines SUCK! Stick to heavy compound movements.
 
The only machine I own is a low/high pulley machine. pretty much just use it for some tricep work.

Everything else is free weight...But then again my focus is moving big iron which isn't everyones focus. But it has gotten me to the elite levels of powerlifting.
 
start your workout with freeweights and end with machines, this way ur stabalizer muscles are worn out but your target muscles still have some juice left in them and this will target the main muscle to finish it off
 
Alright thanks everyone for the responses I think I'm going to be on a 5 day schedule of doing free weights first and finishing it off with machines, you make a good point young.

I want to focus mainly on my chest and arms so I will be doing them two times a week.

Monday - chest/arms
tue- legs
wens- back
thur - chest/arms
fri - shoulders.

I run for about 10 minutes before I start really working out,

now I just have to put together a strong workout.
 
Darkridder said:
Monday - chest/arms
tue- legs
wens- back
thur - chest/arms
fri - shoulders.
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Don't do that. Think about it, your delt are used pretty extensively during bench pressing so you shouldn't hit them the day after. You'll over train in no time. Doing legs and back back to back is not a good idea either because legs are used in deadlifts. And you HAVE to deadlift.

Make Wednesday an off day and workout over the weekend. 5 days in a row's too much. Your CNS will be dead.
 
central nervous system which is comprised of your brain and spine. compound movements such as dead lift, squat, etc help increase strength tremendously in all other aspects of weight lifting. helps put on mass/strength, and increase t levels
 
Darkridder said:
Please explain why deadlifting is a must and what is CNS?
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CNS is central nervous system. If you overtrain you'll be overtraining your CNS and that will make it so you overtrain the muscles and they can't recover. Deadlifts are one of the best exercises for building up the back and are one of the big three, squat, deads, bench. Squat's the most important exercise, deads are second.
 
There's already another thread on this board that's pretty much run this topic into the ground. I'd recommend searching for it if you want to save some time.
 
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