Chapter 13: Demystifying Strength Equipment 199
The advantages of free weights .......................................................
Free weights are much more versatile than machines. Whereas a weight
machine is designed for one particular motion, a single pair of dumbbells can
be used to perform literally hundreds of exercises. For instance, you can
push dumbbells overhead to work your shoulders, press them backward to
tone your triceps, or hold one in each hand while you squat to strengthen
your thighs and butt muscles. You can change the feel and emphasis of an
exercise by simply altering the way you grip the bar.
Another important benefit of free weights is that they work your muscles in a
way that closely mimics real-life movements. Machines tend to isolate a par-
ticular muscle so the rest of your muscles don’t get any action. But free-
weight training requires several muscles to move, balance, and steady a
weight as you lift and lower it. Free-weight exercises allow you to strengthen
muscles that wouldn’t get much work if you were doing isolation exercises
with machines. Some people find they gain strength and increase in size
faster when they do the majority of their exercises with free weights.
The drawbacks of free weights ........................................................
For some novices, free-weight exercises are hard to get the hang of. You need
more instruction than you do with machines — there are a lot more mistakes
to make and injuries to avoid. Also, free-weight exercises require more bal-
ance than machine moves. If you’re short on time, a free-weight workout
probably will take you longer than a machine workout. Instead of simply
putting a pin in a weight stack, you may have to slide weight plates on and off
a bar. But if a gym has various free weights available without having to
change plates, this may not be the case.
Special tips for free weights .............................................................
Anyone using free weights needs to be very careful, even with light weights.
Debbie Bacon of Phoenix, Arizona, learned this lesson the hard way. While
waiting for her husband to come home late one night, Debbie decided exer-
cising might help her stay awake. She was doing shoulder exercises with 7-
pound dumbbells when she got so tired that she lost control of the weights
and they crashed together. Unfortunately, her right index and ring fingers got
in the way. The incident involved a fractured fingertip and a piece of acrylic
nail that got lodged where it shouldn’t have been. But we’ll spare you the
gory details. Suffice it to say that free weights require your full attention.
Here are a few other tips to make free-weight training safe and fun: