Wasting his time with this

I have had a few new clients ask me why we don't do very many "machines."  For some reason, they were under the impression that you had to use machines to get a good workout, which couldn't be farther from the truth.  Here are a few reasons why free weight, free range of motion movements are a thousand times better than machines. 

Free Weight Exercises Train Movement Patterns
Whether you are talking about a sport or activities of daily living, you need to train movements and not just muscles if you want to get optimal carryover from your training to your activity.  Training compound, multi-joint movements such as squatting, pushing and pulling through a natural range of motion has much better carryover to other activities, and will build muscular awareness, balance and stability in multiple planes of motion. You cannot do this with most machines.

Machines Don't Train Stabilizers
When you perform machine exercises, the resistance is supported by the machine.  All you need to do is move the weight through its permanently set path of motion.  None of the smaller stabilizer muscles are called upon to perform the movement and thus are never trained or activated.  When you return to a functional movement in sport or daily activity, this can lead to inhibited performance and injury.  As an example, if you go from doing chest presses on a machine and then try performing a free weight bench press, you will be weak and you will shake as soon as you get some weight in your hands because you will have no stabilizers.

Machines Have a Set Range of Motion
Machines are built with a set range of motion for whatever exercise they are designed for.  Everybody has different body structures with different lever lengths, joint angles, etc.  If you have a specific limitation or condition somewhere along your kinetic chain, performing an exercise on a machine with a set motion pattern that your body is not built for can do much more harm than good.

Free Weight Exercises Train a Maximal Amount of Muscle Simultaneously
This kind of ties in with the first point, but when you perform multi joint free motion exercises, you stimulate a maximal amount of muscle simultaneously. This is ideal for any activity carryover as well as for fat loss.   This does not happen with most machines.  For example, lets take a look at the leg extension machine.  With this machine, you sit down and simply extend your knee, working your quadriceps muscles alone.  Never in any situation will your quadriceps work completely alone.  They need to work together with the many muscles of your hips and other areas of your legs and core.  In addition, this exercise puts lots of unneeded stress on your knee joint; thus, unless you have healthy knees, its contraindicated for a lot of people.  Finally, performing a single joint motion such as this will not release fat burning or muscle building hormones and will not force your body to work very hard. 
The back extension machine pictured up top is another good example.  Simply leaning back and extending your low back is doing nothing.  Your back needs to work together with your glutes and hamstrings.  Promoting extreme ranges of motion in flexion and extension in the spine without any motion in the hips like the machine pictured above does, actually contributes to pain and injury instead of protecting against it.

 
In conclusion,  if you want to build the best body possible, finally get rid of pain, or improve your performance as much as possible, you HAVE to train with free weight exercises.  Now, I am not saying that ALL machines are bad.  There are different types and categories of machines and there are some that are good and some that have their place in certain programs.  They just have to be selected appropriately and put into the right area of a program.  Hopefully this clears up some of the misinformation some of you may have seen or heard.

Wanna actually strengthen your back? Ditch the back extension machine and start doing deadlift variations.  (Note I said back extension MACHINE and not back extensions, which are completely different and are actually useful :)

In my opinion, the glute ham raise is the best assistance exercise for the posterior chain.  It effectively trains hip extension and knee flexion together and hits the hamstrings, glutes, calves, and low back.  This is how the body works with pretty much any physical activity, such as when you jump, squat, deadlift, and run. 

This makes the glute ham raise much better and more effective then a plain ole leg curl, which only trains knee flexion and has limited ability for carryover to other activities compared to a ghr.  I am not saying there is never a time for a leg curl variation (I like to use single band leg curls from time to time), but in most cases, ghr's are the way to go if you want the most bang for your buck.

For some reason,  a lot of gyms still don't have a glute ham raise.  (Maybe because most gyms and trainers still don't have a clue and are living in the 1970's.)  There is really no reason why there should not be a glute ham raise in every gym around; so hopefully those that don't will sooner or later come around and get equipment that will actually help their members instead of hurt them like a lot of the machines that are currently found in many places.

Have an awesome weekend!

Wasting her time?

Since I train many of my clients at a commercial type gym (luckily not as bad as a Bally's, Anytime Fitness, or something like that ),  I see at least ten things a day that uneducated people do that get me fired up (not to mention some of the programs that some of the previous "trainers" had people doing, I'm not even going to get started on that topic now).  Guess what the most commonly used ab exercise is that I see.  Crunches!  The crunch is easily the most overrated and overused exercise around.  Not only do most people do them wrong when they do them, but they do way too many of them also.  By the way, you can do crunches and ab work all day but unless you have your diet on track and train your full body with multi joint movements, you will never have good abs.  Sorry to break the news. 

The movement of the crunch depresses the rib cage and rounds the shoulders forward.  A lot of people already have overly kyphotic shoulder postures and shortened rectus abdominis muscles (six pack muscle) and crunches are the last abdominal exercise they need to be doing.  The lower abdominals and obliques are usually the weakest ab muscles that I see when I start working with someone. 

That being said, there are MANY ab exercises that are not only better and more effective in general, but also much better for many individual's needs and for carryover to specific activities.

Planks, side bridges, rollouts, russian twists, standing abdominal work, cable chops, reverse crunches (done correctly), and leg/knee raises and lowerings are just some of the multiple exercises that are more effective then crunches.

Now, I am not saying that there is never a time when some form of a crunch may be appropriate for a certain individual.  In fact, Stuart McGill, THE spine and back expert, has a version he calls the curl up that can be effective for certain individuals at the right time.  Even when he does use his version, all other torso muscles are trained and balanced out.

If you are like most uneducated people that I see, chances are that you need to drop the crunches, quit wasting your time, and do something that will actually help you.  Notice I said nothing about situps, I'll cover those in another post.