Rage against the machines

2009, January 26th



Fitness machines are so bad.
Two days ago I had an overweight member, came in for a training. I thought to have him try circuit training, so I took him to the selectorized strength training equipment area. While he worked out, I was thinking all the time: “These machines are so bad; I will never, ever buy them again in the future”. I did not speak about the brand from my club, but about all selectorized machines. They are all bad.
I speak about the heavy machines, with a weight stack which enables you to select the weight inserting a pin along the stack; the plate loaded come in close too. I am talking about “the chrome and fern”, about the conversation machines; conversation machines, because you can chat with your friend while using them.
How did the machines appear on the face of the earth?
Around 60’s, 70’s almost no one did strength training. Not even athletes. That time Arthur Jones founder of Nautilus, thought about a way to make strength training more appealing to masses, so he invented the first weight stack selctorized strength training machines. Arthur Jones was very knowledgeable about strength training, but that time something else beside sound training advice was needed to lure the consumer to fitness clubs. In the beginning it was OK, but since then the machines took over like a monster who transforms itself as the time passes. Now we know a lot about exercise; you can find tons of good advice on the web, books and magazines. You do not need the machines anymore to get into strength training; you can use your reasoning and common sense to start and exercise well.
People trust the machines. The machines are good in all the other fields and industries; they brought a lot of work power and industrial progress. But when it about physical exercise, what you should consider first is your body and its ability to move. Physical exercise is about your body moving and not about moving the machines.
Why do people shy away from free weights? Because training with free weights it is “too difficult and exhausting”. The whole purpose of training is overloading (you may read “exhausting”) your body and waiting for recovery and supercompensation (improvement), than overload again. Training is about pushing your body towards its limits over and over and over again. It is about your heart pounding and about your muscles pulling. It is about challenging yourself, conquering yourself and becoming better every day.
Training it is not about being comfortable on a “Glute master”, chatting your way through your workout. “Machines are the wusses way out of exercising”.
Check out a quote from “Dinosaur training” of Brooks Kubik.
“The typical gym is crammed with non-essential machines, most of which are less than half as functional as if they were designed by a baboon and assembled by an orangutan. The purpose of the machines is to entice members of the public into shelling out their cash to join the establishment and reap the (R)¨benefits? of training on what the instructors (who are nothing more than glorified sales-people) tell them are the (R)¨latest? and (R)¨most scientific and high tech machines on the market. Ninety percent of the equipment in the average gym could be melted down or sold for scrap without diminishing the value of the place one iota.”
Machines are designed to be sold to the club owners by the producers, they are bought by club owners to enable them to sell more memberships, and they are used by gym members to PRETEND they work out. Yes, pretend, mimic or fool themselves the same way a baby fools himself with a pacifier. Machines are not designed for training and getting results.

Why do I despise them so much?
First of all they are not functional, they rip you off your time and effort you dedicate to training. If you train using the machines you will get less than a third of the results you would get using free weights; you would be much, much better off by just doing body weight training. Sometimes you might get to see some results even training on the machines. Training on the machines, of course it is better than not doing any kind of training. No matter what you do, if you are persistent enough, you may see some results. Even if you fish with a stone, you might cripple a fish sometimes.
What is the meaning of “they rip you off your time and effort”? You come to the gym to exercise and to get results, so the machines will lure you into exercising, but will not deliver any major improvements for your physique and conditioning. That is right. They trick you into using them. I have to admit they are appealing. They look “so professional” The kettlebell and the barbell against the machines pale in the mirror. They are like a girl which looks beautiful when wearing a lot of make up and designer clothes. Underneath her make up she is ugly, under the clothes her body looks unappealing, she is weak, stupid and uneducated.
The problem is that many so called trainees would use only or almost only the machines. They won’t get visible results and give up saying. “I have tried. I signed up for a membership, I trained for a while, but I did not see any improvements. I guess fitness training doesn’t work at all, or it doesn’t work for me”
The machines feel bad. The path of movement, the friction, the adjustability, the amplitude, the sound they make when used, the position of your body are all bad. Try doing a push up or a kettlebell standing shoulder press. Everything that you hate when using a machine is not present when you do free weights or body weight training.
I will never buy them again. I will go against the modern wave in fitness industry, of having a high tech club. I am sure that they will disappear someday, because people will understand they are not needed. I do not wish they disappear all together. You can have some in one corner of your club and in the rehab department. But they should be like an endangered animal seen only on TV and at the ZOO.
In the future I will make a pink squat rack and pink dumbbells and kettlebells to appeal more to women. Women are more pro machines, because the rubber floor area with free weights is “for men”; but I am sure that proper information aided by the pink color of the “women power rack” will make changes - changes of thoughts and changes of your physique.
It is hard work to make club owners and members grow unfond of machines. On the other side there is an army of sellers and designers dressed with fancy suits and backed up by the deep pockets of equipment producers. But I am sure that our army of athletes backed up by big hearts and strong forearms will win the fight. We will win because we are right, because free weights and body weight training will be around forever and ever.
One day all these big machines producers with nice ad campaigns and armies of “pencil necks” sellers will go down like the typing machine, like the camera film and like the pager. Their machines will become obsolete when almost everybody will understand the truth about physical exercise and fitness equipment.
Club owners and managers will someday realize that they do not need to waste the expensive space and a lot of cash for selectorized machines in order to close more membership sales. They just need common sense, good training advice and lots of heart and passion for health and fitness.
I am speaking here about machines designed and sold by Life Fitness, Nautilus, Cybex, Body Masters, Gym 80 and all their imitators.
I specially dislike Technogym, the Italian company with some of the best marketing and sales team in the world. They associate themselves with the Olympic Games and top athletes. If all Olympic athletes would train on Technogym equipment, their results and performance would not be even at high school level. The Technogym machines are not good enough even for the Paralympic athletes; most of them too will be much better off training just with body weight and free weights.
As I wrote in my yesterday’s blog: “There is nothing but the money”.

I will give you here the simplest alternative to selectorized training machines: body weight training. Body weight training will give you much better results than any machine based training. Believe me, because I am not selling pushups for a living.
Just do pushups, for your upper body pushing strength and core stability, squats for your lower body and pull ups for upper body pulling strength.
There are different ways of doing body weight drills to satisfy everybody from my grandmother (she is 80) to NBA star LeBron James.
I will come later with pics for every drill bellow.