Don’t Use Machines, Be the Machine!

Exercise machines were designed to provide a safe alternative to free weights. 

Most commercial gyms install machines because they are considered to be ‘safer’ and allow gyms to employ personal trainers who have completed a weekend course and have no coaching experience or creditable strength and conditioning background. They can just about explain how to use the machine ‘safely’ and that just about covers the gyms insurance liability. 

What’s the issue with machines?

Generally when you use free weights you move the weights around you, in the optimum and most efficient movement pattern. This improves your Central Nervous System efficiency, coordination, proprioception, balance, kinaesthetic awareness and improves your motor control. 

However with machines you move around the machine. The machine dictates how you move the weight and you have no control over the movement pattern. The path is pre-determined and can't change it. Ultimately, this can put your body into unnatural positions and take your joints through dangerous ranges of motion. Over time, this can lead to muscle strain and even serious injuries.

Machines to avoid like Covid!!!!

Smith Machine

Avoid any exercise on the Smith machine, especially squats, bench presses, and deadlifts. Although its main benefit is that you can stop the bar whenever a set gets too heavy, the Smith’s bar moves in a fixed path, and that forces your shoulders and elbows into awkward positions.

The Smith machine also balances the weight for you, which reduces the tension in your muscles and robs you of strength, stability, and size gains. In separate studies in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, researchers found that squats and bench presses done with free weights activated far more muscle than their Smith machine counterparts did. If safety is your concern, find a good S&C coach who can coach you properly with the correct technique.

Smith Machine Squat

Leg Extension

People mistakenly believe the leg extension prevents injuries. When you're stand and your knee is in extension, there is a small amount of tension going through the patella tendon and a small amount of contact area between the patella and femur. When you squat and your knee flexes the tension on the patella tendon increases but at the same time so does the contact surface area of the patella/femur to accommodate the increase in force. 

When you use the knee extension machine the opposite occurs, with your knee flexed there is a small amount of tension going through the patella tendon and a large contact area between the patella and femur and as you straighten your leg, the tension increases but the surface area decreases. So when your knees becomes fully extended there’s the maximum tension and minimum surface area. Also it places dangerous torque on your knee joints because it pulls your shins back as you lower the weight.  Then people wonder why they have knee pain after doing leg extensions.   

Leg Extension

Knee extensions also develop an imbalance between your quads and hamstrings, which can causes knee issues. As you move, your quads always work with other muscles, never in isolation—even when you kick, you flex your hips, twist your trunk, and stabilise through your other leg.The best way to strengthen your quads is to involve your entire lower body as well. Such as squats, lunges, deadlifts and step ups. 

Leg Curl Machines

Your hamstrings are built to work with your glutes to create movement. Seated or prone leg curl machines, don’t activate your glutes efficiently, which increases your risk of hamstring pulls and knee injuries. By isolating the hamstrings alone, they become hyperactive and ‘shortened’ over time.

The best exercises to build strong hamstrings, maintain hip extension and glute activation are deadlifts, Romanian deadlifts and good mornings,

Shoulder Press machines

You never push overhead in a perfectly straight line—the movement drifts forward and backward, your arms twist, and your bodies centre of gravity changes. Machines, however, eliminate that freedom. Although the seated military press can add muscle to your shoulders, it also spawns shoulder problems because it strains your joints as you reach overhead. If both handles are connected, you can even create imbalances where one arm works harder than the other. 

Benefit of Free Weights

Machines lack Dynamic Correspondence

With minimal dynamic correspondence with athletic movement patterns. The machine selects your movement path so you don't develop as much efficiency, thus the gains in strength or size you make are less transferable to daily living or the sporting environment.

Machines don't Activate the “stabilisers muscles" the same

Because the movement path is fixed you don't activate, the smaller muscles to stability the joints nor stimulate your Central Nervous System (CNS) to coordinate the movement pattern. Another issue is the lack of core activation since you're usually seated or lying down.

Machines Dictate the Movement Pattern

Machines aren't fully adjustable and the resistance curve might not fit you optimally. They don't work the same for everyone.

Optimal Activation for Strength Adaptation

The central nervous system works harder with free weights because free-weight exercises demand more coordination, which is important for the body to develop. If you improve CNS efficiency, your strength potential and capacity to increase performance in other movements will go up.

Free weights (and pulleys) are best when...

• Your main goal is increasing athletic ability and dynamic correspondence to your sport

• You want to focus on increasing strength 

• You want to train smarter and optimally using fewer exercises

Never say Never 

Ultimately It's all about selecting the best tool for the specific job you want to do. Going "no machine" or "no free weights" is about as smart as going "no carbs" or "no fat." Sure, it can work for a while, but it makes the process more complex, less fun, and ultimately less productive in the long run.

Be The Machine

If your unsure of how to train, rather than put your health in the hands of a personal trainers who will put you on machines because it’s ‘safer’, and risk you long term injuries, employ a accredited Strength and Conditioning coach who can coach you safely through the different exercises.