Free Weights vs. Machines vs. Bodyweight Exercises

For maximum muscle gain, focus of your workouts should consist of free weight exercises. Not machines or bodyweight exercises. This is not to say that you should not use machines or bodyweight exercises, but they should not be focus of your training. To get an effective, muscle blasting workout, you must stimulate most muscle fibers as possible, and machines do not do this.

The main reason for this is a lack of stabilizer and synergist muscle development. Stabilizer and synergist muscles are supporting muscles that assist main muscle in performing a complex lift. The more stabilizers and synergists worked, more muscle fibers stimulated. Multi-jointed free weight exercises like bench press, require many stabilizer and synergistic muscle assistance to complete lift. On other hand doing a bench press using a machine will need almost no stabilizer assistance.

Since machines are locked into a specific range of motion and help to support weight along that path, they fail to stimulate muscles that surround area you are working (stabilizers). This is a mistake. If your stabilizer muscles are weak, then major muscle group will never grow!

Free weight exercises like dumbbell press or squat, for example, put a very large amount of stress on supporting muscle groups. That's why you will get fatigued faster and not be able to lift as much weight as you did on machine. But you will gain more muscle, become stronger very quickly and have a true gauge of your strength.

If you use machines in your program, they should be used to work isolated areas and only after all multi-jointed exercises have been completed.

Beginners should begin with a limited combination of machine exercises, bodyweight exercises and mult-jointed free weight exercises. Before increasing weight levels, they should work on becoming familiar with proper form and execution of each. Soon, bodyweight exercises will become insufficient to stimulate growth and they will need to focus on more free weight exercises.

Multi-Jointed Exercises

The exercises that work large muscle groups are called compound (or multi-joint) movements that involve simultaneous stimuation of many muscle groups. These compound exercises should be foundation of any weight training program because they stimulate most amount of muscle in least amount of time.

Here are basic movements:

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Benefit of Whey Protein.

Here is low-down on a much-talked about subject, whey protein. It is foundation of many bodybuilders’ diet.

I can’t count times that I’ve heard a conversation that goes like this. Kevin, how is your Uncle Buck’s gout doing? Are you still driving that old Ford truck? What is this Whey Protein all about? Well I thought I should write an article about protein madness. This is a low tech, up front approach. I could get into amino acid profiles or a study on how it effected mountain goats in Himalayan Mountains sex life when they were fed high doses of 100% whey protein. But do you really care about that? What you want to know is if it is good for you or not.

How Whey Protein is Made.

Whey Protein is created by taking whey (a diary side product) and processes it separating protein from fat and carbohydrates. Then it can be further cross-filtered and made into 100% whey protein. With all fat and carbohydrates nearly gone, it makes it cholesterol free.

Benefits of Whey Protein.

What I have found is that a lot of people think that whey protein will add weight or make a person fat. Or they think it tastes like cement mortar mix and will give them gas. Some of benefits of whey protein are,

 It is a very lean protein with very little fat and carbohydrates  It is easily assimilated by body’s digestive system. It is naturally high in Glutamine. It also mixes rather well in liquids. Whey Protein Comparisons