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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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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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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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
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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.
Some bodybuilders swear by machines if they are designed to isolate muscles, maximize time under tension throughout the lift, and reduce injury risk.
If you can do those lifts competently, you may not need a trainer. If a trainer is why you show up, you can ask a program based more on free-weights. Many trainers are schmucks. Good trainers can design you an evidenced based program, and help you track results.
Evaluating a proposed program from your trainer can filter out most schmucks. Example: if your goal is adding muscle tissue (ie hypertrophy), the program should know, in advance, your approximate target weights (percent of estimated max. this may take a take to figure out), rep-ranges (6-30 for hypertrophy), target reps-in-reserve (RIR) (1-4), progressive overload, weekly volume, and exercise selection. In theory, trainers exist to do this, motivate you, watch your form, give you tips, and critically assess your true RIR (to make sure you're approaching physical - and not mental - failure). Different numbers if your goal is strength.
Note: if you are approaching true physical failure with good isolation on your cable work, while in the proper rep rangers, then it produces the same result. Compound lifts are often better loading the muscles as you get stronger. Back, and especially leg muscles, are the most powerful so eventually cables and some machines shouldn't be optimal. Approaching true physical failure with progressive overload is how we add new muscle tissue. Good trainers should be assessing this along the way. Good trainers should instruct you to lift X weight isolating Y muscle until you are Z reps away from total failure, based on the previous week. Less good trainers say things like "today we're gonna do this for 10 reps".
Diet is half the picture, but that's not what they do.
They're catering to the largest customer base.
Gyms like this exist and I like them. Different customers.
Unless you're just being modest,or humorously self-deprecating, don't worry about this. Many studies show weight lifting and strength training works for the vast majority of people. Over 20 years of lifting I've pulled in plenty of friends and got them stronger than they ever thought possible. "All" it takes ~6 months of steady progressive overload, 2-3x/week, a decent diet, and injury avoidance/prevention. I love it more than most, so I keep up with it.
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