I am sitting at my desk writing this blog post to you on Tuesday evening.  Wondering what I should actually write about, kind of crazy as I always have something to say 10 steps ahead of what I am saying.

So after pondering about it I am just going to stick with the theme as the "shut up and train."

I have been doing A LOT of studying recently as always but it is usually a pretty good split between  business/marketing, inspirational, and training methods.  But recently the majority of my reading has been on training even listening to audios when I drive all over the place.

One big thing that has been talked about is the lack of movement in training and the just plain laziness of people these days.  I am not talking about outside the gym but inside the gym.  It just really sets me off when you step foot in the majority of the gyms and health club facilities these days and all you see are people working their jaw muscles more than anything else.  You see people pounding away on the same damn cardio machine that they have been using for months now with minimal to no results.  Or the people that do a set then rest for 5 friggen hours and then do another set.  But do not even get me started on the machines!!

 

Ok actually do, because that’s what I really want to touch on.  I know it is not every ones fault for using the machines at these places.  The reason I say that is because that’s basically all you see these days in gyms.  Most will have one squat rack and a few benches possibly, but 10 million machines that basically do the same thing as the one right next to it.

 

So I have made a list of some problems I see with machines and why you should stay away from 99% of them 99% of the time.

1. They make you lazy!

    This is a huge problem I see, with everyone sitting down for an exercise that puts you basically in a lounge chair to perform it.  Trust me as I have used them plenty of times to relax in back in my typical health club days.  I have even see people reading newspapers while performing ab exercises or even magazines.  COME ON! you are hear to work out not read, so get up and move around stand up and do a shoulder press, use a barbell or some dumbbells for squats.  Why is that better?  That brings me to number 2.

 

2. Moving your body through its natural plane

    Remember that we are the most sophisticated machine on the planet.  A living, breathing, machine that is meant to move around.  We are not built to sit and perform these exercise.  One reason being they can actually restrict your body’s natural movement to perform the exercise.  Our body has a natural way that it FREELY moves to perform tasks.  By using machines you prevent this from happening.

3. You do more harm than good

    One thing you hear a lot are well you should start with a machine because its safer, and I know because I was told that at first.  WRONG!  When most people do this they stick to it and never progress.  Also like I said above we are meant to move, so stop treating yourself like you were made in a china tea set shop.  When you are in a seated position performing the majority of these exercises your secondary stability muscles are not activated like they should be to build the strength you need to perform these exercises in their natural movement.  So to give you an example, you have been using the seated shoulder press machine for months and you feel all strong because you can lift 2/3 of the stack and one day you decide to use DB(dumbbells) instead.  You are judging your strength off of the weight you did on a machine(first mistake) and you pick a set of heavy DB and start to press over head.  Half way through you start to hyperextend your back creating a overly excessive arch in the back when you start to press the DBs up and pull something in your back.  The reason this has happened because your body has not PROPERLY used your stability muscles to help support the rest of your body with the amount of load you press above your head.

4.  Improper muscle recruitment

    Ok so this ties into my last one as well.  When you are doing exercises using the machines you are in a fixed position so in theory yes you are less likely to get hurt.  Which is why health clubs use them.  But when you perform exercises how you should, you have not build the neuro pathways in your body to active the proper muscles to support your own body weight and/or external loads(such as a DB shoulder press).  Our body was meant to activate so you can perform these movements in your daily life and inside the gym but when you are in these seated fixed positions it does not learn how to handle them.  It also does not translate into the real world, tell me the last time you had to pick up a heavy object and set it on the counter or put it on the shelf.  Were you in such strict seated position and your arms moving in a perfect angle of flexion and extension and having that smith machine to help you squat or deadlift that object?  I do not think I need to hear the answer but you get my point.

 

5.  Real world application

     So I am brought to my final point from my last one.  Most of the ways you perform the exercises with these machines are to perfect for your own good.  You move the way in such a strict safe way that the real world application does not translate to what we do in our everyday life.  Think back to the example I just gave you.  Do you think about working in that proper form to lift object in your life, most likely not.  So when you do and you are not in these fixed positions that you are forced to stay in on the machines, your body does not work as efficiently as it should.  These are the times when most people come under injury because there body as not learned how to and it has not been taught how to.

 

Remember in its basic form exercise is muscular education.

Wow I feel better now! haha  I really hope you take away from this and think about what you really are doing when you exercise not just going with the motions.

Please let me know what you think by leaving comments below.  Have a wonderful day

Matt Holmes is one of the top up and coming Strength and Conditioning Coaches on the West Coast.
He is the owner of Body Synergy.  Matt and his company provide all women’s bootcamps, kids youth programs for the city’s recreation department and he has mens strength training camps.

As Matt loves "treats" the ProGrade Cravers are his favorite product.   So if you are like him and love sweets but do not want to feel guilt and have a healthy alternative then they are for you too!

You can check out more about what Matt offers and get loads of training, nutrition and lifestyle tips at his blog www.BodySynergyTraining.com

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This entry was posted on Friday, December 19th, 2008 at 3:09 am and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.