Newsletter

Quote: “In order to be wealthy, you must be healthy”

Is training with only machines best for me? Not necessarily! 

According to research performed by the National Academy of Sports Medicine isolated strength/machine training decreases the co-contraction ability of a joint, ligaments and muscle movement, which increases your chances for injury. In other words it trains your body to move in a very limited manner. It decreases your ability to activate and move many different muscles along with the central nervous system in synergy (together) during multiple movements. Thinking logically and practically, do you move muscles usually sitting down or in one slow controlled path? When you step down stairs, play sports, run, jump or rotate you have to decelerate, accelerate and stabilize, all while asking your muscles to propel you one way or another and then rapidly decelerate/accelerate again continually. For example, in tennis when you go to hit the ball your external rotators of your hip turn, external oblique rotates, the left internal oblique pulls inward and you then rapidly change that muscle contraction to accelerate your musculature the opposite direction to hit the ball. In other words lots of muscles are moving in many different directions fast from one point to another. 

Train how you move! The conventional sitting down and doing leg extensions for the front of the legs, lying on your back and doing leg presses or sitting in a machine doing chest presses eliminates a lot of stabilizer muscles involved in the practical movements of life and focuses in on isolation of muscles in non practical positions. Sitting and lying down exercises done for the legs will have zero correlation to the many muscles and stabilizers used during walking up and down stairs, it is a 180 degree difference in position and muscle recruitment. That is why the machine lat pull down has a zero correlation to doing a pull-up, the muscles are working in 180-degree different use.   

Human movements work this way, in a multiple muscle recruitment from the body.  Slow isolated and controlled machine training is great for bodybuilding purposes because of the inordinate amount of isolation placed on one muscle helps build it quickly.  Besides that goal, to only perform machine training you would be susceptible to incur injury, while making you a less useful human being in the real world of human movements.        

By: J. D. Reber M.S. & B.S. Exercise Science, CSCS & NASM- CFT

Remember, eat healthy and live wealthy!

Personal training in Lenox, MA