Let’s be honest. Those big metal things in the gym staring back at you, goading you, looking ominous and, well… un-handleable, don’t seem to be a womans best friend when she first starts out at the gym.

The pre-setup machines with their nice instructions, comfy seats, and general lack of appearing to be capable of injuring someone seem a much nicer option. They aren’t. I’m here to tell you why.

natural movement vs controlled movement

Let’s start here.

A machine controls the plane of motion your body travels in the movement of the weight. This does force your body to work the muscles it indicates it’s meant to. For example, a shoulder press cable machine DOES work your upper pectorals(chest), anterior and middle deltoids (front and middle of your shoulder) your traps (upper back) and your triceps(back of your arm).

Let’s now take a look at the same exercise done with free weights. This would be the equivalent of the Military Press with a barbell, or the standing or seated dumbbell press.

In these exercises you use your upper pecs, your anterior and middle deltoids, your traps and triceps. Sounds the same right? Wrong.

In order to perform the exercise with free weights, first you have to pick the weights up, adding 10, 20, 30 lbs or whatever to your bodyweight.
Next, you need to heft the weight to shoulder height in order to get to the starting position of the exercise (Whether you step back off a rack or you clean it to your shoulders, you are still maneuvering a considerable weight).
Then you initiate the exercise, while holding your body tense in order to balance and compensate for movement.

This is where the two really diverge. In order to maintain your bodies balance and to compensate for the pressing motion your entire body works as one. Your abdominals and lower back muscles are contracted in order to maintain spinal position, your legs are taking the added weight and all this time you are learning to balance and manage a heavier weight distributed across your body as a whole. There is a far greater level of muscle recruitment throughout your body while performing free weights. Some people refer to this extra muscular recruitment as ’stabiliser muscles’ and this is essentially correct.

Compare this to sitting down (like you have all day at work) on a machine and simply pushing up and letting the machine back down.

We are talking apples and oranges. The difference is major, and the reason why most athletes and anyone serious about their fitness trains with free weights.

so how TO approach free weight training

I’m not going to lie to you, the learning curve is steeper for learning how to use free weights effectively and safely -but not by much! You do need to take it a little slower, watch a few videos on youtube or wherever and just take it easy until you get the hang of it. To be fair we are only talking about a couple of training sessions to ‘get it’, so really its not much of a disadvantage.

When starting out I suggest starting with a nice light weight – no they aren’t all HUGE scary weights – and learn from the bottom up.

Of course, you will need an excellent program to know what kind of exercises and routines you should be doing, and of course here’s the sales pitch, The Girlfriend Workout has all of this for you and more.

Happy lifting!

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