The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Gym question: why is it that online gym experts always recommend bench press, squats and deadlifts over any of the other machines in the weights room?
My gym is relatively empty when I go in the middle of the work day, I see a trainer once a week and go one other time (and do pilates on another day, guys I’m trying here). I say this because the reason he has me doing machines doesn’t appear to be that the bench press rack is always busy or something. I can do all three of the above exercises (with embarrassingly low weights, but still). But he almost always has me doing other stuff, particularly for legs where we do leg extensions and leg press and just do some squats at the end. For arms and back we usually use cables(?) (I don’t know what it’s called but it looks like this).
So is my trainer just a schmuck who knows nothing and should be putting me on the basic 5x5 or whatever? Are gym owners idiots for spending all this money on machines when all the weights room needs is squat racks, benches and free weights? Or do they do so solely for the unenlightened who don’t know that squats and deadlifts are all you need? Enlighten me.
Unless you are focusing solely on powerlifting, it's generally a good idea to include a vertical press and upper body pull, probably a vertical and horizontal pull. So really at least five, probably six exercises. Bench honestly kind of sucks as an exercise, but everyone knows about it, so it's embarrassing to have a bad bench if you regularly lift weights. Weighted pushups and dips are probably better if you think you'll never get asked how much you bench.
The basic reasoning for free weight over machines is that to lift a free weight you have to control all six degrees of freedom, whereas for a machine you only have to control one. Squats also require you to practice loading the whole kinetic chain, rather than just the legs as in a leg press or leg extension. In terms of "functionality," that has much better carryover to general physical preparedness. Cables are somewhere in-between, but harder to load heavy enough to provide a near-maximal load for a healthy average-sized adult.
Machines sell memberships and do "work," especially for hypertrophy, but it's very rare to see someone get legitimately strong on only machines.
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