Be Fit Fitness Blog

Which types of weights should you be using when working out: free weights or exercise machines? Personally, I like to use a combination of both free weights and exercise machines, including pulley machines. It all depends on the type of exercise that I am doing.

Let’s take a look at exercise machines. They are great for beginners because you don’t need a spotter, therefore they are safer. You can feel confident that as you increase the amount of weight, you won’t hurt yourself or be stuck on a repetition. Machines can help you focus more on targeted muscles. Some machines even have different hand grips to help you hit different muscles and add some variety to your workout. The only drawback is that machines tend to move in a single plane, a limited range of motion. Although, by incorporating a workout using certain types of machines, you can achieve different range of motion and a wider range of motion.

With respect to pulley machines, they allow you to change hand grip bars and you can get constant tension on both the positive and negative movements. They also give you a wider range of motion, particularly while doing chest crossovers. Therefore, pulley machines offer you a lot of variety which can mimic the exercises that you can do with free weights.

On the other hand, free weights tend to give you a wider range of motion. Basically, you control the motion. There are also so many types of exercises that you can perform with free weights. You can even combine your free weight workouts with a Bosu Ball for a total-body workout.

If you are working out with heavy free weights, you may need a spotter.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 2nd, 2009 at 1:12 pm and is filed under Exercise. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.