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Should I Use Free Weights or Weight Machines? | Weight Training Basics from Answer Fitness®

Free weights and weight machines each have their advantages and disadvantages. Learn how to use both to get great results in the gym.

Few issues are more hotly debated among health and fitness professionals than whether free weights are better than weight machines.

The good news is that you really don’t have to choose between the two, since they both can help you increase strength, build muscle and increase muscle definition.

There are, however, differences between the two. And understanding these differences can help you make better decisions about when each type of equipment is appropriate for your weight training, and how often you want to include them in your workout routine.

The Advantages of Weight Machines

Weight machines are often the first choice of equipment for people who are new to weight and strength training. And this is for good reason.

Weight machines by design encourage good form, because they limit the range of motion to the specified exercise you are performing. They also isolate the specific muscle group you are targeting by disengaging secondary muscle groups that normally are called upon stabilize the body during performance of an exercise.

If you’ve never performed a bench press (a free weight exercise), for example, you may not be familiar with how to align your arms properly in relation to your body in order to perform the exercise effectively and with minimal risk of injury. A chest press machine, on the other hand, will ensure that your arms are positioned correctly and will give you a sense for how the movement should be performed.

By starting out on weight machines, you can work on get a feel for the exercise, which can then be applied to a free weight workout.

Machine weights also tend to allow you to use more resistance, because you aren’t limited by the smaller (and often weaker) stabilizer muscles that are called upon to balance a free weight. This can help you make bigger gains in strength, and can help beginners establish a more solid base before moving on to more challenging free weight movements.

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Weight Training Basics: Making Sense of Weight, Repetitions and Sets

Learn the fundamentals of weight, reps, sets and form before you pick up the dumbbells.

Adding weight training into your workout isn’t as difficult as it seems. Understanding the four basic principles of weight training is a good start, but what about all of this talk about weight, reps, sets and form?

Understanding Weight, Repetitions and Sets

There are four basic terms you need to understand, because you will hear them frequently in the context of weight training.

Once you understand them, you’ll finally be ready to hit the weights with confidence and purpose:

1. Weight or Resistance
   This is the amount of weight that you lift or move during weight training. Choosing the right amount of weight is critical and it will vary based on your goals (that “specificity” thing again.) It will also have a direct impact on the amount of repetitions your perform. Repetitions and weight are tied so closely together, that it’s best to discuss them in relation to one another.
2. Repetitions
   Repetitions indicate the number of times you move a given weight during a specific exercise. So if you are doing bicep curls with a dumbbell, and you curl the weight twelve times in a row, you’ve performed twelve repetitions (also called “reps.”)  Determining how many repetitions you should perform is really a function of your goals as well as the amount of weight you choose to use. In general, you will want to perform as many reps with good form as the particular muscle you are training will allow before you cannot perform another rep. Obviously, the amount of weight you choose has a direct impact on the amount of repetitions you perform. The higher the weight, the less reps you’ll be able to perform.
3. Sets
   Sets are simply a grouping of repetitions for the same exercise seperated by a brief rest period. So let’s say you performed 12 repetitions of dumbell bicep curls, rested for two minutes, and performed 12 more repetitions of the same exercise. You will have performed two sets. Simple, huh?
4. Form
   Form means you perform a given exercise properly, with attention to the positioning of your body, your posture, the correct movement during the exercise and proper breathing techniques.  Practicing good form ensures that you thoroughly work the muscles through their intended range-of-motion and do so with minimal risk of injury.

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Weight Training Basics: The Four Principles of Weight Training

Learn the basics of weight training and start burning more fat, increase your strength and get more fit than ever before. 

The research is in: Including weight or resistance training into your weekly workout makes good health and fitness sense, regardless of your level of experience. 

You know the benefits of weight training, so now it’s just a matter of doing it.

But before you hit the weights, you should take a few minutes to understand the key principles to effective weight and resistance training.  Having knowledge of these tried-and-true rules of weight training will ensure that you make progress in the gym, no matter what your individual health and fitness goals may be.  

There is a lot of jargon thrown around by fitness trainers and gym-goers that you need to understand. Sometimes it can seem like a foreign language, but once it’s been explained in plain language (we like to call this “gumping things” at the office), it will make all of the sense in the world.

The Basics of Weight Training: What You Need to Know To Get Started

Okay, so you’re convinced you need to start including weight training in your workout routine.

Great. Now where do you begin?

Let’s start with the four basic principles of weight training:

• Overload: This just means you expose your muscles to more weight, resistance or stimulus than they are used to performing during your normal every day activities.  To do this, you need to lift an amount of weight that only allows you to complete the intended amount of repetitions. Remember, your overload weight will increase as you continue training and your body recovers and adapts. Which takes us to the next concept, progression.

• Progression: Progression means that you continually overload your muscle with more stimulus each time you weight train.  Since your muscles are constantly adapting, you will never get stronger without increasing the force they have to exert or the amount of work they do. Progression doesn’t necessarily always mean adding additional weight. You can overload the muscle progressively in a number of different ways, including performing more reps with the same weight, increasing the volume (total number) of sets performed, changing the tempo or pace of your repetitions to keep the muscle under tension for longer periods of time, or simply lifting more weight than last time. The key here is to always push your muscles harder than the last workout in some fashion.

• Specificity: Specificity is a fancy term for performing weight training with a specific and distinct goal in mind. So if your goal is to add additional muscle mass, your choice of exercises, repetitions, sets and weight used will be different than if you are training your muscles for endurance.  Know your goals before you start weight training, since it will impact how workout routine.

• Rest and Recovery: There is a common saying that muscle is built outside of the gym, not in it. Weight training stresses your muscles and requires that you allow yourself adequate rest and recovery time. Typically that will mean giving your muscles 48 hours to recover before training that same muscle or group of muscles again. Understand that recovery time is highly individual. Some advanced trainees need less recovery time than beginners. And the intensity of your weight training will in large part determine the length of rest that’s right for you.

Next up, we’ll learn about choosing the appropriate weight,  repetitions (reps),  and sets to meet your goals.

As always, you should consult your physician before undertaking any resistance, weight or cardio training program.

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Weight Training: Burn Fat, Be Strong & Stay Healthy

Find out how adding weight training into your fitness routine can pay off big with more muscle and less fat

Weight training is one of the most effective additions anyone can make to their workout routine. It improves overall strength; encourages a more lean, “toned” appearance; can reduce the risk of injury (especially as you age) and is a potent metabolism booster, helping you burn fat even when you aren’t exercising.

Yet many people never even start weight training because they either don’t know where to begin, are intimidated by the idea of lifting weights, or think weight training is something only bodybuilders or power lifters can benefit from.  

What Exactly Is Weight Training?

Weight training is simply performing an exercise under resistance or with added weight to challenge the muscle to become stronger and larger.

When you weight train, you are resisting the force of gravity (which is increased by adding weight to the movement) during the exercise. You can increase resistance by adding additional weight in the form of dumbbells or weighted bars, or by utilizing a cable and pulley-based weight machine or cable-station.

Weight training improves strength and increases muscle size because it “overloads” the muscle and works it beyond what is normally required every day to meet your basic physical needs. This overload literally damages the muscle. However, the body, being the wonderful machine it is, responds by repairing the muscle in a way that over time allows it to meet the increased strength needs that regular weight training requires. So you get stronger over time, and your muscle also becomes larger to meet the demand.

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