Is it Real Strength or are you Slave to a Machine?

Promising I'd revisit this topic from an older post, I'm back to open this can of worms.

Occasionally, a new client will ask me to show him/her how to use the machines in the gym. It's a legitimate request coming from someone unfamiliar with the equipment having the desire to get a good workout when they come to the gym themselves. The presence of the machines do seem to offer a shortcut to a better workout. However, the only shortcut you'll be getting from a machine is a shortchange on real strength and quality muscle.

I overheard another trainer explaining to a new client that on most machines there were only two adjustments to be made: The seat height and the amount of weight to be used. Sit down, push or pull, that's it. And that is it. Your biceps, triceps, or lats will get a nice workout but you'll use few stabilizer muscles, if any. That's fine if you wanna look pretty, but don't complain when you hurt your back picking-up a bag of groceries. Or, in other words, that muscle is of little use off of that machine.

Muscles don't work in isolation and you shouldn't be thinking they can be trained that way (muscle isolation is not possible on garden-variety gym equipment). Most muscles work in pairs: agonists and antagonists. When you raise your arm towards your shoulder the biceps muscle (the agonist), contracts. When you lower your arm the triceps muscle (the antagonist) contracts. This action is also a stabilizing force for joints.

If you're content with the results of your machine-based workout, that's great. If not, then arm yourself with a great weight lifting or bodybuilding guide or hire a personal trainer who will show you how to use free weights and cables to grow quality muscle.

Forced Adaptation: Making your Workouts Work!

Over at my Big Muscle Blog, I touched briefly on workout routines becoming "routine." Blame it on our highly adaptive nervous system. Our nervous system is at the front lines when we encounter the world in which we live. When I put a weight in a client's hand and show him/her a new exercise, it's their nervous system that's evaluating that new exercise, not so much their muscles. In fact, unless your nervous system gets on board with that new exercise, there probably won't be any muscle adaptation, let alone growth: Adaptation first, next comes growth!

There's a principle called forced adaptation whereas a muscle is given a new stress (a change in weight, a change in the number of reps, or a new movement) and the result is that muscle adapting to the change (growing). This translates into mixing things up in the gym. If you've been doing the same workout for several months, it's efficacy is probably on the wane by now. There's a simple solution: Mix it up or hire a trainer who will show you new movements that will keep your training sessions moving forward.

You're Sitting on Your Greatest Muscle-Building Asset

The glutes, quadriceps, and ham-strings burn a remarkable volume of gram calories while they are being trained. As a Palm Springs Personal Trainer I've directly observed the real-word benefits with clients: Those squats, lunges, and dead lifting sets take a substantial energy toll on the entire body but yield great results. Because your body works systemically (think about it functioning as a huge furnace), those tortuous leg exercises trigger an increase in your body's whole metabolism. That burn lasts long after the exercise is finished, too. It takes the body a couple hours to return to your typical metabolic state while still consuming gram calories at a higher than usual levels.

With these large muscles, you are sitting on your body's best fat-fighting resource: Your glutes and your legs – the two body parts that encompass the leading mass and fat-burning muscles on the skeleton. They're capable of fantastic bursts of energy but additionally call for sizable amounts of gram calories to make that occur. Muscle is vibrant, it's alive and needs to be fed. Fat, on the other hand, consumes very little energy. It is, after all, the form in which the body deposits excess energy, i.e., excess gram calories. By focusing on your large thigh muscles, you super-charge your body’s calorie burning capacity and also target those in which adding muscle-mass is easiest.

What's the implication? No excuses avoiding hard leg training. The possibility for muscular growth and transformations that leg training supplies for your whole entire body is too good to refuse. An effortless, twice-weekly training routine is to split your legs into front and rear. One day, focus the muscle in front of your legs, the other day, train the muscles on the rear of your legs. And if you're trying to develop a well-developed and shaped, beefy, muscular backside; do your lunges and squats! Try this training arrangement for 8 to 10 weeks and then switch it up.

Are You a Quart Low?