This is a classic question that many weight lifters struggle with. Is it better for your workout to consist of free weights or variable resistance machines? The answer to this question is both simple and multifaceted at the same time. In actuality, it depends entirely on your particular situation and the goals you have outlined for yourself. For example, a bodybuilder trying to gain muscle mass as quickly as possible will want to adopt a different strategy from a runner who wants to keep his mass down but develop strength and stamina. And they both will train differently from someone who is recovering from an injury. This article explains the benefits as well as the disadvantages of free weights and machine exercises, as well as recommendations based on your own individual fitness objectives.

Free Weights

Free weights are the method of choice for most old school bodybuilders, and they are very effective for putting on slabs of muscle mass. If you want to bulk up, you will definitely want to incorporate various free weight exercises into your workout. Examples include: bench press, deadlifts, squats, bicep curls, and various others. They consist of dumbbells, barbells, medicine balls, and even the human body itself. In general, a free weight is anything that can be moved in three dimensions, without the use of cables or pulleys.

Free weight exercises have a number of benefits. First of all, free weights require you to use muscles other than the muscles you are actually targeting for your workout. For example, when you are performing a bench press, you are not only using your chest, but you are using the muscles around your chest, your shoulders, and your triceps. All of these additional muscle groups help to stabilize and balance the weight, and it helps you to build up muscles that you aren’t specifically targeting and may not get worked hard enough otherwise. They also tend to build up your joint stabilizer muscles more because you recruit them to help with balancing the weight, which you do not need to do with machines. Additionally, free weights are usually cheaper and more versatile than machines, which generally have only one or two functions each.

There are also some negatives to free weights. One is that they often require a spotter, especially if you are lifting very heavy. You will need a person to make sure you complete that last rep without dropping the weight on yourself. Another is that free weights result in many more injuries than machines because your range of motion is not strictly controlled and there is much greater risk of error.

I recommend free weight training to those who are looking to put on some serious size. You need to lift heavy, for less reps (4-6 per set) to build muscle mass, and free weights are the best option for this strategy. They help you to gain strength and are very versatile; there are several exercises you can perform for each muscle group using just one dumbbell.

Machines

Weight Machines have several benefits as well. First of all, and most importantly, they are much safer than free weights. They control your range of motion, decreasing the likelihood you will tear a muscle or tendon. They also usually prevent you from dropping weight on yourself, which is a very good thing. One of the things that often gets overlooked in the value of machines is their ability to isolate a particular muscle group better than free weights. Rather than calling on various muscle groups because you need to stabilize the weight in addition to lifting it, machines do all the balancing for you. This leaves just the lifting to you and allows you to really target specific muscle groups.

Variable resistance machines are also a great option for people looking to get in shape or tone their muscles, but not looking to put on much mass. You will not bulk up solely using this approach. Additionally, if you are recovering from an injury, all of these things help to make machines the workout of choice for you; they are safer, easier to control, and offer less variables that are out of your control. And if you want to target specific muscles and give other groups a break, machines allow you to do this. Machines are also the primary workout of choice of many athletes who rely on speed and agility and place a lesser emphasis on size and bulk.

Conclusion

Obviously, free weights and variable resistance machines have their own unique strengths and weaknesses. The truth is, if you are not suffering from an injury, and want to put on muscle mass (as most of you reading this site probably do), you will want to combine these two strategies to form your workouts. Personally, I like to do a little more training with free weights than I do with machines, because I want to put on more muscle mass, but I definitely see the value in both. Incorporating a variety of different exercises, and consistently increasing the intensity of your workouts, is really the key to building muscle. You can do this by figuring out which free weight and machine exercises work best for you, and designing a workout regimen around your preferences and goals.