Freeweights or Machines, Which Is Better?

Colin writes in:

I started working out about 6 months ago and I’m feeling great.  I have a question, which is better, freeweights or machines?  Also, is it true that people who use freeweights get injured more?

Hello Colin, congratulations on your 6 months of working out.  You’re past the hardest parts.

I think I answered a similar question a few months ago but since I couldn’t find that article myself, I guess I’ll answer this again.  If any reader manages to find the original post, please link it in the comments.

As for your question.  Let me handle the second question first.  Yes, free weights do pose a greater injury risk.  First of all, it’s easier to injure yourself through simple mishaps such as dropping a weight on your foot or falling down, things that are nearly impossible when using a machine.  In fact, my only gym injury in 6 years happened because I dropped a dumbbell on my head.  Second, because your body isn’t confined to a limited range of motion, there is a greater chance to stress muscles and joints in an inappropriate manner while working out with free weights.  For example, if you try to do dead lifts incorrectly with free weights, you can strain your back or your legs.  Doing back exercises with a machine is much safer since your range of motion is limited.

However, that said, I am still a big proponent of free weights and believe that they are superior to machines in a number of ways.  When you work out with machines, you are limited to a very specific set of motions and muscles.  For example, when you do a back exercise on a machine you are only working out the back muscles, nothing else.  When you do a similar back exercise with free weights (dead lifts for example) you are working out the back but you are also recruiting the leg muscles, shoulders and upper arms in a variety of ways.  Yes, the back muscles are still the ones being worked out, but you’re also seeing benefits all over your body.  In other words, working out with free weights is a more “natural” way of working out.  You’re doing motions that your body does normally, only with weights.  Where as machines limit you to a very narrow motion.

The key is good form.  If you have good form, you will minimize your injury risk and maximize your free weight workout.  Good form means control and isolation of muscles.  It means you lift the weights with the muscles you’re trying to work out, recruiting other muscles only for stability, and you control both the speed and the range of the lifting motion.  If you don’t have good form and you have no desire to learn good form, you should stick to machines.  You’ll get a better workout and you won’t injure yourself.

A Good Shoulder Workout

Do me a favor, stand up, arms at your side.  Now lift your arms forward until they point straight out in front of you.  Got it?  Good, now put your arms back at your side.  Again, lift your arms but this time straight out to the sides, not to the front.  Hold for a second and put them down.  Finally, lift your arms straight up above your head, hold for a few seconds and then put them back down at your side.  So why the heck did I have you do this?  Because it’s a good illustration of what’s good and bad with many workouts.

Why Direction Matters

It’s funny, but when I say the shoulder muscle group most people hear only the first two words.  They hear shoulders and muscle and that’s all.  So they go ahead and incorporate one or two shoulder exercises into their routine and call it a day.  Unfortunately, the shoulder group is just that, a GROUP of muscles, all working together to move your arms around.  Depending on the direction of the movement, some of these muscles work more, work less or don’t work at all.  Some do a lot of the pushing and pulling and others will just do stabilization so your arms go in the direction you intend.  The important lesson is that they all need to be exercised.  That means a good shoulder workout is one which incorporates a variety of movements, each working out different muscles in the shoulders in different ways.  Let’s take a look at a workout like that.

Front Raises

Lateral Raise

This guy has amazing form by the way!  Look at how steady he is as he raises the weights.

Shoulder Press

Pushups

Pull Ups

Compound Exercises

By the way, if you look at all of these exercises, you’ll see that none of them are machine ones.  I’m not a big fan of various exercise machines because I feel that they isolate muscles too much.  That is, you only work one muscle at a time.  I’m a much bigger fan of these free and body weight exercises which workout multiple muscle groups at a time.  For example, push ups workout the shoulder, the chest and even the abs and back.  Pulls ups work the shoulders and the upper arms and so on.  Plus when you do free and body weight exercises, you recruit a lot of other muscles to stabalize you even if they’re not doing the actual lifting work.

Still, even if you’re a big fan of machine exercises, make sure to workout your muscles in a variety of different ways.  Take a look at these exercises that I listed here.  Each is different even though they all work out the shoulder.  If you only did one of them you’d be doing yourself a disservice.  Now granted, a lot of you are like me and don’t have an unlimited time in the gym to do a dozen different types of exercises, but you do have enough time to do 5 or 6 different ones for each muscle group.  If you manage your time well, you shouldn’t be spending more than 10 minutes on each muscle group.

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Think about your day to day use of your shoulder.  Are you only using your shoulders to move your arms one way?  Are you always moving your arms forward?  Of course not.  So make sure your workout accounts for all the ways in which you use your shoulder!

And remember, this doesn’t just apply to shoulders.  The only reason I picked shoulders is that, due to their flexibility of motion, shoulders are the best example for this.  The same lesson applies to all your muscle groups.