-
@ Beef
2025-03-01 22:33:36
Training ideologies often lead to tribalism when they shouldn’t. As with all things, there are no solutions - only tradeoffs.
The reality is that free weights and machines are both tools. The one you should use is determined by your objective.
In either case, creating tension within the target muscle group is always the objective when it comes to building muscle. It's this mechanical tension that's responsible for initiating the growth process by destroying already formed muscle cells. Both machines and free weights accomplish this objective.
As a general rule, the more stable you are during an exercise, the more tension you can create within the target muscle.
The difference is simply that machines offer more stability. That’s neither better nor worse, it just is. Stability within exercises is a spectrum. We create stability by bracing against things. The more points of contact and the more of your body that braces against things, the more stability you will have.
Because of gravity, we are forced to have at least one point of contact braced against something at all times. Typically, it's the floor. A pistol squat offers a very low amount of stability because of the lack of bracing. In this example, only one foot is braced against the floor.
Adding a second foot to the ground and doing a body weight squat enhances stability. Holding onto a bar or a bench in front of you while squatting now adds another layer of stability.
A hack squat is a machine where both feet are planted on a platform and the user rests the posterior portion of their entire upper body - from their lower back to their head - against a pad. This machine has a fixed movement pattern which further reduces any instability.
These are all examples of different exercises that follow the same movement pattern, yet offer varying degrees of stability.
Which should beginners use? Again, both is the best approach. But what would happen if you limited yourself to mostly one or the other?
Predominantly using machines as a beginner will allow you to forego the lack of development in your ability to stabilize yourself. The machine stabilizes your body for you in a way that beginners simply aren’t able to at first. You are braced by a seat, a back pad/chest pad and maybe a handle or two as well. In addition to this bracing, the movement path is already carved out for you. You simply position yourself appropriately and push (or pull), and the machine does the rest. This allows you to focus more on creating tension in the target muscle as well as learning to train to failure safely.
Predominantly using free weights as a beginner will force you to develop stability from the start. There are no pads anywhere to brace your body against. Your body must learn to brace against itself. **You** become the machine. This may limit your ability to create maximum tension in the target muscles at first, but the stability you create this way will translate to systemic muscular development. You'll become thicker everywhere because your body works as a system to stabilize itself against gravity.
The stability built through free weight movements will transfer over to machines. If you can stabilize yourself with just a barbell, the stability you can create while braced in a machine will translate to even greater tension. You’ll be stabilized by your body AND the machine.
Since it makes the most sense to do both, the only thing left is understanding which circumstances are better suited for machines vs free weights. Since fatigue is something we all contend with during a workout, it makes sense to program the least stabilized, most demanding movements earlier in the workout and the most stabilized, least demanding movements later in the session. This not only allows you to create the most tension possible throughout the workout, but is also the safest approach. It would be unwise to schedule barbell front squats at the end of a workout when fatigue is high and energy is low. Not only will you fail to generate maximum tension, but you’ll put yourself at higher risk of injury.
TLDR; use both, but do free weight stuff first.