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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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.
Most women who go to the gym are afraid of "getting big", they want to look "toned", not "muscular", even though practically none of them will ever get past "toned" without steroids. Compound exercises with free weights are associated with bodybuilders and powerlifters, so most trainers simply don't offer them to women at all, maybe some hip thrusts in a Smith machine or some squats with a body bar on a Bosu ball. My trainer has also complained about women who avoid all leg exercises except those that isolate the glutes, even though there are compound exercises that really hit the buttocks.
Squats and deadlifts and bench presses and barbell rows and pullups are all you need if you don't have much time per session but have enough time to do many sessions. Machines are great when you are limited by a specific muscle or want to train the muscle at peak contraction or extension. For example, if your bench press (pecs + front delts + triceps) is limited by your pecs, you can follow it up with overhead cable triceps extension with a heavier weight that will fry your arms and lighter sets on the pec deck or even lighter, embarrassingly lighter, sets on the cable crossover machine that will test your pecs at peak extension.
I knew one woman that this happened to - she was stocky and spent a summer lifting weights and wound up with stretch marks and broad shoulders. It ran in the family; her brother and father were extremely strong. She's the exception that proves the rule.
Is she single?
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