Anyone who has ever been in a gym before is familiar with the gleaming banks of shiny exercise machines. Coming in all shapessizes, they are usually cause for the newcomer to the gym to pauseask, "What IS all of that stuff?"

Well, according to the price that the gym paid for any one piece of that equipment, I certainly hope that it notssbbww.comstimulates your muscles,8ttt8.comalso cooks your breakfast, washes your car,brings the kids home from soccer practice! Now the question becomes whether or not those machines were worth the price, or if you'd be better off doing a Home Aerobics video with a can of soup in each hand?.

Personally, I would advise you to get the low-sodium version of the soup, serve it up alongside a tomato sandwich,then go buy yourself some free weights. Yes, that ismy.ssbbww.commy opinion,8ttt8.comit does come with some scientific reasoning behind it.

Natural movement vs. Controlled movement

One of the things that you need to remember is that when you are exercising, you are training for life. You may spend an hour a day at the gym,8ttt8.comthat still leaves 23 other hours for your muscles to function without the aid of that fancy equipment.

Whenever you do any given exercise, the movement of your body during that exercise is called the Range of Motion. The greatermore difficult the Range of Motion, the more effective the exercise is, because your body has to work harder to perform that movement.

Let's take a classic dumbbell bicep curl for our case study. If you aren't familiar with the movement, it is basically performed by standing up straight with your palms facing forward,a pair of dumbbells held down at your sides. You concentrically contract your biceps (also known as flexing your elbow) to bring the dumbbells up to approximately shoulder level,then repeat the movement for a prescribed number of repetitions.

Let's take that same muscle movementdo it using a bicep curl machine. You sit down, brace your upper arms on a pad, grasp 2 handles that are in front of you,do that same fancy elbow flexing movement to move the handles in an upward motion. Pretty easy stuff so far, right?

Now let's examine the muscles that are used in this motion. Wait - I thought we were concentrically contracting the biceps? That is correct,if you are using the bicep curl machine, that is prettydddtt.comALL you are doing. For one, you are sitting down. You know, like you did all day at work,then in your car on the way to the gym. Then, your upper arms are braced on a nice soft pad to keep your upper body stable while you pull the handles upwards. The machine has effectively limited the muscles used in this exercise to the biceps, as well as the muscles in your forearmsfingers as you grip the handles.

Let us now sidestep over to the weight room where the dumbbells are kept,once again get in the start position for a standing bicep curl with the dumbbells. Notice the term "standing". You know, like you DIDN'T do all day at work,hopefully also did not do in your car on the way to the gym. So before we even start the exercise, we are using more muscles than we did on the machine - namely the leg muscles.

Now let's pick up a 10 lb dumbbell in each hand. We'vemy.ssbbww.comadded 20 lbs to our body weight. What is keeping us from losing our center of balancefalling clean over? The abdominal musclesthe muscles of the lower backspine. Now we are using our legs, our abs,our back. Flex those elbowsstart to raise the dumbbells. Now our center of gravity has become a fluid state,our legs, back,abs all have to constantly compensate to maintain posture. Oh,the biceps are also in on the action by this point, as are the forearms, the fingers,the shoulder girdle.

We now have the dumbbells all the way upit's time to start lowering them again, via an eccentric contraction of the biceps (also know as extending the elbow). What muscle group controls the extension of the elbow? The triceps on the back of the arm.

Did you lose track yet? It's okay if you did because you have illustrated the point:

Machine Bicep Curl: Uses the biceps, forearms,fingersCost: Thousands of dollars

Standing Dumbbell Bicep Curl: Uses the biceps, forearms, fingers, legs, abs, back, triceps,shoulders. Cost: $40 for a good set of dumbbells that can be used for dozens of other exercises

In a nutshell, free weight exercises simply USE MORE MUSCLES than machines do, which make them more effective. Does that mean that the machines

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