 If you want to add volume to your workout, get a little bit more of a pump, add different angles. Machines allow you to do this easier than free weights because they're less stressful on the body. They just are. Like if I go and do a back machine workout with three different exercises, even if I'm doing compound lifts or whatever, it's just not as taxing on the body. I'm gonna recover faster. It's gonna be shorter recovery period. So if I'm like, you know, if I'm training hard and I'm pushing my body limit and I want to add an additional five sets to my routine, I could either do two sets of a free weight exercise or one set, or I could add five sets of machines, which has some value. All right, real quick, here's the giveaway. Maps Aesthetic. This is our bodybuilder maps program. One of you will get it for free. Here's how you can enter to win. Leave a comment below in the first 24 hours that we drop this episode. Subscribe to this channel and turn on your notifications. If we like your comment, we'll notify you. You'll get free access to Maps Aesthetic. One more thing, the sale that we're running right now, the Maps Power Bundle, which is Maps Power Lift combined with Maps Strong, retails of $300. The sale is $79.99 for that bundle. So one payment, $79.99, Maps Strong, Maps Power Lift. It ends in 24 hours. So when we drop this episode, you have 24 hours to take advantage. After that, we're not gonna bring the sale back, probably for an entire year. So if you're interested, head over to mapsmarch.com. Here comes the rest of the show. I got a DM the other day from someone that kind of misunderstands our position on exercises and exercise equipment. So in the past, we've been mischaracterized as like being anti-cardial, which were not tremendous value there. But another one that I get is that we're anti-machine that we don't like machines at all, that they're a waste of time, that there's no value, which is totally not true at all. Machines have a place. I love robots. Yeah, everybody knows that. Not that kind of machine. Not only do they have their place, I believe there are times when they're superior. Yes, yes. So it just depends on the context. I think that's anything we say, this is just social media world now, like you say a statement and then someone's gonna take it out of context and then, oh, I can't believe you guys are anti-cardial. No. You have to be anti-machines. It's like, no, we're trying to teach the audience the hierarchy of things. And many times, free weights are far more superior for most people, but there are always exceptions to the rule. There are absolutely times where I had clients where we spent more time on machines than we did free weights. Yeah, so when you're talking to the average person, it's usually the conversation usually has to go around that, right? You're depending too much on machines, you're not getting the value you can get out of free weights. But that doesn't, again, like you said, Adam, that does not mean there's no value. And in some cases, machines are actually superior. I find tremendous value with machines in certain circumstances. Now, I think we should go back a little bit and kind of talk just very briefly on the history of equipment. Obviously, the first forms of resistance training, equipment or strength training were free weights. People lifted heavy things. Dumbbells and barbells and kettlebells, actually it's what dumbbells used to look like. That's what people used first. Machines came a little bit later and they were an attempt to create something superior to weights in terms of results and safety. And so you saw them start to invent things and back in the day, there weren't big machine manufacturers. In fact, I don't know if you guys knew this, but you know, Joe Gold, who started Gold's Gym, most of the equipment that they had in Gold's Gym, he made. This is how he became. So it was, I thought Arthur Jones was the first. Arthur Jones created Nautilus and that was the first. That was one of the first like a company. Big commercial ones. Yeah. Okay, so who, do you know who was responsible for like the first machines? I don't know the very first machines, but I do know Joe Gold was known for the machines that he co-made and put in his gyms. So like low cable pulley row and a cable crossover and he would design them, put them together, put them into gyms. And this obviously gave him an advantage over other gyms at the time, which there wasn't much competition. Well, also too, I mean, with the rise of bodybuilding, wasn't it the focus of it was, how can we create an exercise machine that can really help to kind of refine and target these muscle groups? Because like that, it was starting to kind of segment down to I want to build and develop my delts, you know, a little more specifically, I want to, you know, kind of hyper focus on certain areas of my body more. And then, you know, as a result of that, they started to get it like innovate and create a lot of these types of machines. I thought that didn't happen until later. I was under the impression that the original introduction to machines to the general population was primarily for like rehab and physical therapy. It was designed to be a safer way to train. And that was the original introduction. That was when that's how they were, I guess, maybe first broadly used, but commercially it was like Arthur Jones, Nautilus Equipment. Right, when it was more popularized with the general public. Oh, look, Doug pulled up some really old machine pictures. Now, and I think these are the 1940s and 50s and maybe even a little bit before. The thing is though, these were not widely used at all. Now to be fair, neither were free weights, but even among the population of people that used free weights, machines were extremely rare. Well, you saw gyms with kettlebells, ropes, and yeah, Indian clubs and things like that, where it was more of like a gymnasium, where everybody was climbing on ladders and doing things like that like way back in the 20s, 30s, 40s. Actually, have you ever seen videos of some of the first popular weight loss machines? Yeah, they'd shake their hell out of your hands. It's like a conveyor belt thing wrapped around your waist. You know my grandma owned one? No way. I swear to God. When we were kids, and I don't know what they did with this, in fact, I should ask you. You know what he's talking about, right, Doug? That conveyor belt looking thing that we would shake. It's the famous commercial. I don't know if it's Maxwell or it has the guy with the goggles on and the helmet, the leather helmet, and he's like this big fat guy and it's like shaking and then the cannonball hits him. Oh, that's right. I don't remember that. Yeah, so my grandma had one and I remember you turned it on. Exactly what it was, it was like a canvas kind of belt and it went da-da-da-da-da-da-da and if you put it around your waist, I think the theory was it shook the fat off your body. They also had these roller machines, so you would stand and it would have these rollers and they would roll up and down your thighs or up and down and it was like to smooth out your fat. Like if you were a piece of clay, I guess. It was Sasha or whatever. It's pretty interesting. I found these vintage photos and they're from the 1800s. Oh, yeah, wow. So there was this guy named Gustav Zander or Zander from Stockholm and this was back in 1865 and you can see some of these things are fairly legit machines. Some of them are kind of crazy but for example, this one, look at that. That's a curl machine. It's a curl machine. Yeah, and now again, these were, I mean, free weights were unpopular. This is even more like nobody had access to this kind of stuff. Yeah, super novel. Yeah, I actually did not know this existed back then. Maybe Doug, you could look up commercial gym equipment like first popular commercial gym equipment. So that's definitely Arthur Jones. Well, what he did was Arthur Jones went the performance muscle building route and he became somewhat popular through his Colorado experience, which I brought him out, brought up on the show before. Yeah, yeah. He took KC Viator, who at the super genetically gifted bodybuilder, I think he won Mr. Universal America, which back then was a big bodybuilding competition at the age of like 18 and KC Viator had come to him totally deconditioned, lost lots of muscle. He had an illness. I don't remember what it was. And Arthur Jones said, I'm gonna train you just purely on nautilus equipment. And we're going, and he also had other people in there and we're gonna look at your results throughout the process. Now he also employed this super high intensity training technique where he would train you to failure and beyond very low volume, but it was like balls of the wall type crazy. Anyway, the results that people got were insane. Still disputed today. I forgot how much muscle KC Viator gaining a month. It was like, it sounds like impossible, but nonetheless that kind of got things a little popular. And then in still in the seventies, you didn't have a lot of bodybuilders using machines except for maybe a low cable pulley row and maybe like cable crossover. Otherwise they didn't use machines. The eighties you started to see more machines and a lot of it had to do with the commercialization of gyms. So you go to a gym and machines looked sleek and advanced. Then of course they used machines to attract women that's a big portion of the consumer population. Hey, these aren't gonna make you bulky like bodybuilders use these machines over here. Were they a big consumer back then? Women, they were a big consumer base that gyms were not tapping into. Oh, that's what you mean by that. I thought you meant like there was, they were a big consumer within gyms already. And I'm like, that's what kind of started to attract. There's a lot of things that played a role. They used to put purple and pink mats. Exactly. It's so stupid. Well, I mean, aerobics classes exploded. That was a lot of women. Cause I mean, they were smart. They looked at the consumer base and said, we're just attracting dudes. We're not gonna make much money. There's a lot of reasons why gyms took off and became a successful potential successful business model. But that was one of them. It was like, we're able to attract women to our facilities. And the ones that did that well did the best. And so that's kind of how machines came into the fray and more and more people started using them. But I do before we get into why or when machines are better than free weights, we should talk about why just quickly free weights, we often praise them above machines. Now for me, one of the main reasons why I tend to advocate for free weights more often is the carryover that you get from the strength that you get in the gym with free weights carries over more so to the real world than machines. And mainly because free weights, when you're moving things or lifting things in the real world, it's always free. You're never lifting something on a track or with a cable. It's always a couch, a box, your kid. And free weights are more like that than machines are. And you see more carryover. Like if you get stronger with a barbell squat or an overhead press, you're gonna see that carryover to the real world more than you will. You know, with other types of things. Yeah, it'd be nice if things in the real world were nicely balanced and followed a track and predictable and all those types of things. But in reality, I mean, your body has to do all kinds of things to pull off some of these movements to be able to stabilize, to not rotate, to get the action out of the muscle, to lift. And so it is a different experience. And it is something that's very valuable in terms of translating towards real world strength and then also like athletic pursuits. But I mean, machines definitely fit a gap that's there in terms of being able to add volume, apply more safe ways of loading, that type of thing. Did you guys know what was the first machine that got really, really popular of all the machines? Like was there like a leg press come and then that kind of blew everybody's mind? Cause we're looking at stuff that goes all the way back in 1800 and that obviously wasn't popular. It wasn't even popular in the 40s and 50s. And then all of a sudden Arthur Jones comes, starts to build them in the gyms and stuff that get really popular. Were there like a couple of them that really started to take off? I can only base it off of what I know from the bodybuilding routines of the 70s that's when machines started to kind of come in. And it was lat pull down, low cable, pulley row, cable crossovers were the most commonly used machines among bodybuilders. And leg press, probably, right? Leg press is a little bit, but that started coming later. I mean, bodybuilders in the 70s all squatted. I mean, they all did barbell squats on a regular basis. What's up, Doug? One of the early ones is a Smith machine back in the 1950s was born because of Jacqueline's assertion that some form of machines was needed to safeguard members from injury. Oh, Jacqueline. Yeah. And then the other one is this guy named, I believe it's Zinkin. Well, while you're on the Smith machine, I've said something that I don't, I haven't fact-checked myself about. And I was told, or I remember either being told or reading a long time ago that originally Smith machines were designed for upper body only. Interesting. Oh, I don't know. For the reasons that you said, exactly what you said, but the original intent was purely for upper body. Interesting. I know Jacqueline had some of the first gyms. In fact, he had a couple here in the Bay Area, if I'm not mistaken. Oh, really? Yeah, he did. I think it was called Grecian. I think that might've been one of his gyms. I don't know if you guys have heard that. Here's him on a Smith machine right there. Look at that. Doing a squat. Now, Jacqueline is, I mean, he's the godfather of fitness. Is that Jacqueline right there? Yes. Oh, that's a young Jacqueline right there. By the way, if anybody's never heard of him, look him up. In his fifties, he set a world record in push-ups and pull-ups. I think it was 1,000 each. That nobody touched for decades. Yeah. In his seventies, he swam from Alcatraz, San Francisco to Alcatraz. Pulling a boat with his teeth. Pulling 70 people on row boats with his teeth, hands and feet shackled. And it's on video, by the way. You can look this up. So great. That's so insane. Another name that comes up is Harold Zinkin, who created the Universal Machine. Oh, there you go. That's the one that was in every, that's the high school. Is that the cable one that has, or the one that has the CD row, the military press? Universal. So on each side, there's a station. Yeah, yeah. I do remember that. That was at my high school. Those were so crappy. They were so crappy. They were the worst machines of all time. They were so dumb, so bad. But yeah, so the carryover is one of the main reasons. Because, you know, consider this, like, we all trained, for the most part, I'd say at least 90%, maybe correct me if I'm wrong with you guys, but 90% of our clients were everyday people. They weren't fitness fanatics or bodybuilders or athletes. And everyday people, they like to look good, they wanna be fit, but they don't wanna be strong in the gym and then weak in the real world. Like, that's a terrible, that's almost like a waste of time. Like, okay, I'm strong in the gym, that's nice. But then when I go lift the couch or a box, I hurt myself or I'm not strong. Like, I want that to carry over into the real world because I don't know about you guys, but when my clients would come back and say, man, Sal, I was moving and I felt so strong while I was moving or, you know, I had a female client once tell me that she put her suitcase in the overhead compartment for the first time and she felt so good about that or, you know, I was playing with my kids at the park and I felt so stable, I haven't felt like that in a long time. So free weights just give you that carryover and it's mainly because the world is made up of free objects and so when you're moving objects in the real world, it's more closely related to free weights which is what makes it, you know, in my strong opinion, one of the reasons why you get such good carryover, you know. The next thing I would say is this. Now, and this is an interesting part of free weights. We talk a lot about safety with machines. Here's where machines can get dangerous and I've seen people hurt themselves on machines because of this. When you're using a machine, you have to follow the path of the machine. So if you're taller or shorter or your range of motion is compromised for some particular reason and you're pushing or pulling or twisting on a machine that's on a track, you have to follow the track and if that track is inappropriate for your body, that becomes a problem. Free weights, I could train someone that's three feet tall, seven feet tall, someone who's got long arms, short arms and whatever, the free weights follow the person and that makes free weights super valuable and probably one of the reasons why free weights in bands are more often used with physical therapy than, you know. Well, I think that's the most valid critique of the Smith machine in my opinion. Like, I mean, there's, we've talked about the Smith machine before and using it for upper body, not so bad because you can do things like a military press or something where you're pretty much staying in the same path but doing something like a squat or a lower body exercise, like, you know, your spine doesn't look like that. You're not going straight up. Yeah. And you can't, like when you do a free weight squat, the bar path, yes, we're targeting it to be as close to straight up and down as possible but it's not realistic. It's unnatural. Yeah. Yeah, so you end up forming your body into an unnatural position just to follow the track and that's been a big critique of mine of it. Also too, it's just, I mean, from just kind of one of those perspectives, it's a lot easier in terms of like a bench press because you're taking away a lot of the stabilizing mechanisms that are involved. You just push. Yeah. Which is great, you know, for somebody that might have issues or injuries or things that are inhibiting that from happening, but at the same time, like you have to know what you're working with and the reason why you're doing it is everything. Yeah, the two leg exercises that I would, not often, but I may have done a few times with a Smith machine would be a modified squat, look more like a hack squat because of the bar path. Yeah. You're under the bar, your feet are out in front of you. Yeah. So you're going straight up and down with your back, your feet are in front of you, it's more like a hack squat. And then the other one would be a stationary lunge because again, the bar goes up and down and sometimes I would use it to teach someone had a lunge and they would hold onto the Smith machine for balance when doing it, but like a squat or like try deadlifting on us, you can't deadlift on a Smith machine. Well, you can. It's just, it's not going to be a deadlift. I mean, people do, there's a lot of people that do that. So I mean, I always feel for the Planet Fitness people, there's a lot, Planet Fitness does not have any barbells. So you can't just go over and do deadlift, there's not like a deadlift platform there or anything. So, you know, you have people that are even following mass programs that have a Planet Fitness and then so they've had to make that modification and use the Smith machine. Yeah, I've never been a real fan of that. You know, as a kid, I was, I'm tall, I was 6'3", right? So I remember going to the gym and- Not fitting, right? Yeah, like, you know, like some gyms have like, were the, would it be like colored? Were my knee joint and where my ankle, and so you can kind of, you can kind of line it up and nothing ever lined up right for me because I just didn't have that average body type that the machines were built for. I remember talking to, oh, I can't remember his name. He was one of the founders of Hammer Strength and we were talking about machines and Hammer Strength took the market by storm. Another, you know, machine, plate loaded. Yeah, I actually really enjoyed Hammer Strength. Well, what they did with Hammer Strength is they tried to- They combined. They tried to make a machine- Free weight with the machine kind of- Yeah, they tried to make it emulate free weights in many ways and it became very popular but I remember talking to him and he said, you know, here's a deal with machines. A lot of people don't know this but they're designed for a five nine male who weighs around 170 pounds. That makes a lot of sense. I was gonna bring that up cause like I'd have clients that were a bitch on the shorter side or, you know, over six foot and it was just like such a pain to try and conform their body to try and make it work. It just, regardless of how many notches they had to kind of pull the pads out to help you stabilize it was just, it didn't work. There were machines that had to hand the bar to a client because they couldn't get to it because they were too small or too short. So yeah, that becomes an issue and again, they're designed for the average person. So there's a bit of limitation there and if you're outside of that then what happens is the machine is designed to be perfect for a particular size. So then it becomes less and less perfect because your size doesn't necessarily fit to it. And so this is why, again, like for example like some of the worst ones, like one of the worst ones is you ever do the seated tricep extension which if you fit in the machine, I'm gonna tell you something, it's a great tricep exercise. Rarely do I ever fit. My arms are too big, I'm getting in there and it's all weird. Shoulders are too broad to fit in the thing. Yeah, so it just didn't work. But with free weights, it doesn't matter how long my arms are or how wide my shoulders are it follows my body. And so used properly, it can be more appropriate. The other thing that free weights give you that you can't really get from machines is the stability component. Totally. Which I would make the case, especially as a trainer training a new client would make the argument. And this is where probably most of our argument comes from of why free weights are so superior. Because most clients that we train, the very kind of first phase you're in is stability. Just learning how to balance. Yeah, stability is kind of the foundation of programming for clients. And so they have to learn that first and if you go straight into machines, you don't get that. And I think that is a very limiting factor for a lot of people starting out. It's a great point because the thought process for a trainer initially when you have a beginner is that you wanna go with the safest type of a workout. And machines do provide that. However, it's not addressing a lot of these glaring issues that you're seeing in their movement patterns. And free weights are much better at that in terms of having to face those types of challenges for their muscles and for their joints. And it's critical that you do that then because then we build upon that and we get stronger and more muscular. And if we don't address those imbalances and issues and dysfunction, it's gonna really result in a bigger issue down the road. Would you guys make the case that you actually increase your risk of injury by getting strong without addressing stability first? Of course. Yeah, because now you've got more force capability with the same or slightly better or even worse stability than before. So now the risk of injury, I mean, like let me put it this way, if I had the stability of a 15 year old kid with my ability to produce force, I am gonna hurt myself. Well, it's like having a terrible steering or suspension and then giving a car an extra 200 horsepower and thinking that it's not gonna increase the risk. Totally, totally. I remember learning this like, so when you first become a trainer, I'm sure you guys remember this. There's a lot of lessons you learn because of the mistakes you make with your clients. So I had this kid that I trained, this 15 year old kid, who was one of my first clients and I'll never forget him because he eventually became a personal trainer. But anyway, I thought he's a kid and if you've ever trained a teenager, they have the worst stability, especially overhead pressing. Part of it's because they're young, part of it's because they're growing so fast or like clumsy puppies you've ever seen. Yeah, like young giraffes. Yeah, and you have them try and hold the lightest dumbbell overhead that they can definitely lift but they can't balance it. It's like all over the place. So I had this kid do machine overhead presses and we did it for like two months and his strength went up quite a bit and then I thought to myself, now it's safe to go to dumbbells because I mistakenly thought stronger on the machine than we moved to dumbbells. We went and we went light. I remember we went light to dumbbells and I luckily caught it. He almost dropped a dumbbell on his face because he could push it up but he didn't have the stability. So he went like this. Especially at the end range like that. Yeah, and I remember it went like this and he was gonna drop it on his head and I caught it real quick. And I remember thinking like, man, you can press. Wow, that's weird. Yeah, I remember how much it was. Well, something like, you could press 100 pounds on the machine but these 10 pound dumbbells are gonna drop on your head. And then I remember thinking like, oh, he can push it. Because if I held his wrist, so you could probably lift twice as much but it was a lack of stability. So, and that's what free weights give you a lot. So whatever you lift with a free weight as you get stronger, you're also gonna build the stability to do that exercise because it's free. So that's the thing. And then the last one, this one's the controversial part but we make this argument all the time because of the factors we listed before and because of factors we don't yet understand. We haven't yet identified. Free weights tend to build more muscle and as a side effect tend to burn more body fat. And there's reasons I can explain why and then there's reasons I can't. Like it's hard for me to explain why a barbell squat or a barbell bench press or a barbell row just in my experience training clients and myself and train lots of people just makes people stronger and build more muscle than the same amount of volume with machines. Well, it's just, they're more demanding. I mean, it would be my answer to that. Well, mine would be the stability in the muscle recruitment point. I think that's part of it. But if you have someone stand on like a wobbly board with more instability, it's still not as good. It's like there's gotta be like a point where you're diminishing return. No, I get that. That makes sense. Cause it's not all about, I mean, I guess that's why we made that, all of us as trainers when we were younger made that stability mistake, right? When we learned like the importance of- Went too far? Yeah, went too far and then that's where the returns start to diminish, you know? Well, in terms of instability, if you address that and you get your muscles to respond sort of subconsciously going forward, like they get stronger, they know they need to like respond. And now you're adding in the free weights and you're adding more load, you get a louder response. You recruit more muscle fibers. Yeah. And so that has to play a factor. Yeah, and again, there's stuff that's unknown because I've seen exercise scientists debate this and they've got good studies and explanations of why there's no difference. But when they do polls, and I've seen these polls many times, well, they'll ask strength coaches and they'll say which one's gonna produce more muscle and more strength. And it's like 80% always say free weights tend to. And that's my experience as well, generously speaking. But again, this does not mean that machines aren't valuable and this doesn't mean that machines are sometimes more valuable than free weights. And that's where I think we should go because again, I want people to know the true, like the truth about all this stuff so they can apply it to themselves. Well, the first thing we can start off with is the same thing that makes them weak also makes them strong, right? The fact that it's so stable and you don't challenge stability has tremendous value when you need that, right? So example, and that's why I thought it was physical therapy when they first came into the scene was when you had an injury, somebody injured something. Let's say you had, you broke your femur or something along with a hip and like you're doing exercises, you can't do like a starting, rehabbing that person, putting them on a barbell squat will be tremendously dangerous. But putting them on a lying leg curl where everything is in a fixed position or a leg extension, like that's way safer. I'd need would have been a better example. Or if someone tore their ACL or MCL, you know, putting them on a leg extension you would do for extended period of time before. Let's go exercise to exercise. I'm gonna illustrate this point right here because the less stability in some cases makes it safer. So let's go leg extension. I could theoretically do a free weight leg extension. I could strap a dumbbell to my leg, to my foot and do a leg extension. But now let's say I'm dealing with someone who, like Adam said, just had, I don't know, one of his lateral ligaments on his knee operated on. So it's not so stable laterally. Maybe some patella issues are going on, but we're rehabbing them. What I don't want is any potential for twisting or for lateral instability with that, all I'm trying to do is strengthen their quad. So a dumbbell strap to my foot, even though I'm mimicking the same exercise or I'm still doing a leg extension because the side to side is not controlled, that's gonna limit me to hell out of me through that recovery process. Whereas if I put them on a leg extension, there is no issues with the lateral stability. It's all extended and flexed. And in that case, it makes it much safer. Same thing can be true for even an overhead press. If I'm trying to get someone to, like I've worked with clients who've had frozen shoulder, which is really annoying to work through and can be quite tedious. And part of that process is getting them to move through full range of motion first. And we can't do that when there's stability stuff to have to worry about. So sometimes I've even had people, where they hold on to a machine and I lift it for them and they just hold on. I'm just trying to get their shoulder to track properly. If they're stabilizing, it ain't happening. They're frozen. Everything's in a bad position. You wanna in a straight line too. So that way it's controlled. And because of an issue like that, I dealt with the same thing. You are trying to increase very incrementally new angles of range of motion to gain access to. So you gotta be very meticulous and get rid of some of those other variables there that's gonna kinda twist and push it to the side to side because it's just not in that capability yet. Yeah. Or what if you wanna work on scapula retraction, right? You wanna work on someone's ability to pull their shoulders back, to work on the posture. But they have a low back injury. What are you gonna do with three weights? A barbell row? A dumbbell row? Yeah, you could use a bench to support yourself, but look, I've worked with people with back injuries. Having them lay any way prone, even if they're supported sometimes, still is not a good idea. Whereas with the machine, they can sit upright. The pad is in front of their chest. So there's no gravity adding to the resistance pulling them forward. And they just sit there and stabilize and focus on scapula retraction. So in those cases, machines are just safer for the lack of stability, which was also the strength, right? Three weights add. I mean, it also has the benefits of being able to ice, which is kinda similar to that, right? Just to be able to isolate a specific area. Well, here's where bodybuilders love it. Yeah. Because if you're a bodybuilder and you're trying to add more volume to a target muscle, you're also playing this balancing act of overtraining and not adding more volume and work to the rest of the body. So I could do a overhead press standing, which is still a press, but man, I'm standing, I'm activating lots of different muscles. You know, I have to stabilize. I'm already teetering on overtraining because I'm adding a lot of volume or I could do a seated overhead press where everything's already stable for me. And now I could just target more of the volume to the target muscle. So I can be more specific with where I'm adding the volume so I don't have that carryover that could potentially compromise my resistance. There's a lot of value to that because some of these free weights are very taxing on the central nervous system. And it's the next workout that you're gonna get into the next few days, you're gonna feel the result of that in terms of like overtraining. And so if I can keep adding more volume to specific areas of my body that I'm trying to really build and develop and zoom in on, this is where machines, I would prefer machines in that case. This was absolutely necessary for when I was training for shows, I was training seven days a week, sometimes twice in a day. There's no way I'm doing all free weight exercises every time. You'd be fried. No, I'd be absolutely fried. And there was times when I was just sitting here talking about machines, I was thinking about a machine I don't think we've ever talked about that I wish we had or I saw more often. You guys ever done the rear delt fly machine where you lay flat on a bench? I love that machine. Now, is this the hammer strength one? Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you lay face down, they have like one of those chiropractor mats for you so you can breathe, face it down. And you put your arms under your pads? Yes, and then it's on, your elbows are on the pads and you could just, I mean, the- Nothing isolates that, that's a crazy one. I love, that's why I mean, and to isolate a rear delt, which is a small muscle and not- Very difficult. Yeah, and really not overwork or even incorporate much of the rest of the body is really, really tough to do. So yeah, I mean, I was able to do things like that. I was able to come back to the gym in the same day, knowing that I already kind of crushed the weights and then go over and just touch little areas that I wanted to increase the volume, but I didn't want to over stress the rest of the body. This is why we recommend, so Maps Aesthetic is our bodybuilder, one of our bodybuilder maps programs and it's the programming that Adam used when he became a professional physique competitor and we put focus sessions in there, right? So you're already hitting the whole body three days a week, but according to the program, if you have a week body part, you can hit it up to five days a week. The additional two days a week, we recommend in the program use machines, specifically for this reason right here. Easier to isolate, less damaging to the body. Here's an example of easier to isolate. I'll use two exercises that biomechanically are almost identical. A pull-up versus a pull-down. If I want to teach someone to isolate their lats, the pull-down is way easier to do than the pull-up, even if I control for the weight. Even if I put someone on, which by the way, this is cheating now because I'm using a machine, but even if I put someone on a gravatron that lifts their body, they could still isolate their lats better when everything's stable and they're just moving their arms. So the ability to isolate with machines- That's really because you would say their trunk is locked in. Everything's locked in. Yeah, yeah. Because when you do a pull-up, you can't help, but- No. You know, sway a little bit. It just takes more skill. Yeah, more involved. You get more muscles wanting to contribute. There's just much more skill. Even a chest press, right? If I'm trying to teach someone to feel just the chest working, they're gonna get that done easier with a chest press machine than they will with a bench press, even though the biomechanics, theoretically, are identical, right? So the ability to isolate and target, which by the way, this is oftentimes I would use machines for correctional exercise because I'm trying to teach someone to connect to a muscle and the free weights are just so demanding, even easy exercises for them, just demanding in terms of movement that I just couldn't get them to isolate or target that muscle. I'd put them on a machine. Here, this machine's gonna do all this other work for you. Now just feel this area. And then they'd feel it, and then eventually we'd graduate and move to the free weight version of that. Would you say to some of the benefits of the machines, because I know this wasn't on our list, but I'm thinking about it right now is just the novelty of it, right? So there's only so many ways you can do like a dumbbell shoulder press. Oh yeah, so many different things. But you can do that in like weird- Sure, because- Because it stimulates it from different angles. Right, from different angles. It's still an overhead press, but the angle that you're doing it from is different, is there's gotta be some value to that also. Totally, absolutely. Now the next one, this one is one of the main reasons why I would use machines in my training, and that's that some exercises are just impossible to do with free weights. Some exercises would not exist if machines didn't exist. For example, a tricep press downs. Okay, sounds very silly, but that exercise would not exist if machines, you would have to literally, and by the way, there were some bodybuilders that tried doing this. They would get those gravity boots and hang upside down and hold dumbbells and then try and do- That's ridiculous. Like a tricep, which obviously is like- Yeah, I think a better way of saying this is not impossible is I know there's some nerd in here listening right now. So I could do all those with free weight. It's just incredibly less- Ineffective. You can get insanely creative. Yes. Is what I would say. Yeah, leg curls is another one. I mean, I know you could do physio ball leg curls and I love physio ball leg curls. It's not the same. It's not the same. You're not loaded. You got to stabilize quite a bit. And so yeah, I think leg curls is definitely one that, I mean, you can really get those hamstrings from a different angle. What about a leg press? Like name one free weight leg exercise that doesn't involve the upper body having to be, having to somewhat stabilize, right? With a leg press, your upper body is in the chair. You ain't moving. The only thing that's moving is your legs. For rehab purposes, this has real value. I've actually used leg press for rehab. And then for recovery value, like somebody hammered deadlifts and squats is not important to them because their legs already developed or they've had all these hard workouts and they're tired and like, but today's leg day, should I barbell squat? Ooh, that's gonna tax the shit out of your CNS. Why don't we try a leg press because everything's locked into place. And it's an easier way to- Well, also if you have discrepancies left to right if you've just come back from rehab and injury and like you can build and develop safely with one leg, leg pressing at a time to really kind of get them both to respond somewhat at an equal level and build and develop that way. We didn't say it. And it kind of I think falls back in the isolate thing too is the the priming benefits with machines versus free weights too. That's your point. That's something that when I'm looking to target a very specific muscle group and I want to prime it before I go do the big compound lift I'm always doing that with machine. I'm not doing that with them. I'm not priming with a free weight exercise that's gonna be more taxing and recruit other muscles. You know, that's how I use the abductor machine. When I had clients that needed to work on their abductors sometimes I'd have them do an abductor machine so I could feel the abductors activate. Then we'd go do our squats and they would feel- Right, because otherwise you'd use rubber bands but that's not as accessible. So yeah, machines would be perfect. And then yes, you can do that with bands and whatnot but you loading an abductor. Now I'm not, I know I've made fun of abductor machines but in some ways they're superior. Try loading bands to really develop that kind of strength. Abductor machine, you can load the hell out of it, you know? And you could build lots of strength in that area. So now I don't see it's perfect but I don't think you can replace it is in that way, that's what I'm saying. Leg extension, we talked about that really can't do a leg extension. Now I like sissy squats for- The dumbbell is just weird. Yeah, you know, I've seen people do it. I like sissy squats better than leg extensions for developing the quads but sissy squats are not appropriate for a lot of people. Yeah. There's a lot of people that is way too hard. It's not gonna work. You're gonna have to go do leg extensions if you really wanna isolate the quadriceps. And then most cable exercises, like if I'm doing chops from different angles- Standing chest fly. Yeah, like all that kind of stuff, like because free weights you only oppose gravity which is going from top to bottom. I can't do free weight exercises necessarily with resistance side to side, or from up to down, right? So with machines those are just exercises you could- Now I'm gonna go off a little bit on a little bit of a left curve here. There are certain machines that I just find superior to the free weight alternative. Like I love dumbbell pullovers. I put them in every program, most programs, I do them myself, but I'm not gonna lie, the Nautilus pullover machine, I have yet to do a free weight version of that exercise that just feels the same. I'll make the case for flies. I think flies on cables are superior. The ability for you to have maximum tension at both ends. And the squeeze in the middle. Well that's what it is. You feel the drop off almost immediately once you get a couple inches. Totally, I mean dumbbell flies are great still. I'm not saying they're not good. They definitely utilize them a lot. But I think cable flies are superior because of the ability for you to do that. And because the way the origin insertion is on the chest, your ability to manipulate all the angles and stuff that you can do with a cable fly. You just very, very difficult to do that. You can manipulate the angle while you're doing it. You could literally do a lower pack, mid pack, all in the same set. And like I said, because of the way the pack is, there's a lot of benefit to being able to do that. Oh yeah, that became one of the most popular machines, the first ones. In fact, pumping iron. I think that's the only, that in a cable, low cable row, those are the only machines I think you saw on a T-bar row. That was it. Those are the only machines you saw me use in that whole documentary or whatever. The next one, we talked about this already which is easy volume, less stress on the body. If you wanna add volume to your workout, you can get a little bit more of a pump, add different angles. Machines allow you to do this easier than free weights because they're less stressful on the body. They just are. If I go and do a back machine workout with three different exercises, even if I'm doing compound lifts or whatever, it's just not as taxing on the body. I'm gonna recover faster. It's gonna be shorter recovery period. So if I'm training hard and I'm pushing my body limit and I wanna add an additional five sets to my routine, I can either do two sets of a free weight exercise or one set or I can add five sets of machines, which has some value. Well, this is how I use machines now more than ever is, and it's more so actually when I overreach, right? So I build my routine, especially right now where my training volume is lower, it's very maps, anabolic-esque, but we openly admit all the time that even being experienced trainers, we still all have a tendency to overreach. So if I'm getting ready to go into day two of maps anabolic and I've got all these barbell movements that I have planned or written out to do, and on Monday, I decided to press some PR numbers or overreach or do a little more than I probably should have and I'm really sore still, I might pivot and replace some of those barbell movements on that Wednesday workout for machines. So I find it really valuable for when I've overreached instead of increasing the risk and doing even more damage when I'm still that sore, I'll make a pivot and go to a machine workout. If I'm just looking for a pump with minimal damage, it's machines, just always, just a lot. In fact, I can train just to illustrate this even further, I can train to failure more often on machines that I can't work free weights because of the damage difference. Less damage for sure. Less damage, like I can go to failure on a leg press, a machine press, a machine row, and I would say if a 10 was the free weight failure comparable exercises, machines would be like a six or a seven. That's a pretty big difference. You're talking a third less damage the body's what experience. Well, and even from a hybrid perspective, like I love training for performance and love compound lifts and to be able to have compound lifts and do those first and then follow it up with machines to add more volume so I can build and develop my muscles a little bit more effectively. Like I love to incorporate machines in the mix. Now here, this last one is my favorite and this one I think people don't appreciate enough but if you're advanced and you love to train, you pay attention to this, you can get real creative. Machines allow you to have an adjustable resistance curve. So earlier I talked about dumbbell pullovers versus the nautilus pullover machine. Here's why I think I like the pullover machine more than dumbbells. When I'm across a bench doing a dumbbell pullover all the most the resistance is at the stretch. Once I get up here, there's like no resistance. The resistance is my triceps supporting the dumbbell. I have no lat squeeze in that position. I have to actively try to squeeze my lats but it's not the same. When you do a pullover machine, the resistance is all the way through and when I come down to the bottom, it's just I have to hold the squeeze as hard as I held the stretch which makes it way more effective. This is the case I was trying to make with the crossover. The cable crossover is the same way. When you're doing a dumbbell, chest fly, I mean the real benefit is in that stretched position. When you, as soon as you get like Justin said, just a few inches the other direction, you're no longer opposing gravity at the same level that you were in the complete stretch position so it's not the strength curve is completely different. Where in cables, it's consistent. It's the same way all the way through. All the way through, which I think that that's a tremendous value is that point. Now, here's where it gets real fun and this is where I'm talking to some more advanced lifters. There's lots of machines. You'll see a pulley that is pulling either a strap or a cable and most people don't touch this because they don't understand it. They don't know what to do but you're able to adjust the strength curve on the pulley and they'll have little places that you could do this. This is where it gets real cool. So I'll use a preacher curl as an example. So there'd be a preacher curl machine so my elbows are sitting on the pad. I'm doing the curl and what I can do with the pulley and what'll happen is you'll see the pulley and it'll be funny shaped. It won't be a perfect circle. It'll kind of be oval, okay? So what that tells you is at some point there's gonna be more resistance on the pulley than in other places and so what you could do with some of these machines is I could make the preacher curl heaviest at the bottom. So this is where it's hardest and then it gets easier at the top or I can make it heaviest at the top. So it's light at the bottom, heavy on the squeeze and there's a lot of machines that allow you to do this. Most people don't touch the pulleys because they have no idea. Well, and by the way, this now makes that exercise novel. Super novel. So if you always do a preacher curl on a standard preacher machine that's the same strength that you can't manipulate. I mean, and that's all you do, right? So you do that all the time. You simply messing with that now makes that exercise novel. And we talk about the importance of novelty when trained that in itself already gives more benefit for building muscle. And now one of the reasons why we'll go back to hammer strength. One of the reasons why hammer strength became so popular wasn't because you could load it with free weights. The fact that you load it with free weights or a weight stack doesn't matter. What hammer strength did really well is they knew what strength curve would feel the best and that's how they designed the machine. So for example, one of the more popular hammer strength machines is the chest press. Okay, so you're sitting in the chest press thing and you push and then the weight moves up and it moves down. The resistance and the stretch position is the lightest. The heavier the more you push out, the heavier it gets. Now people like this because we tend to be weakest at the bottom, strongest at the top. Yeah, so you stack more weight on that. So you stack weight and it feels good to get heavy here and light here, right? If you look at their row machines, you'll also see this a similar design. Shoulder press, similar type of design where it's lighter at the bottom, heavier at the top. And this is why people like them because the strength curve felt really cool on the body. It felt really good. So I like hammer strength, but I really like, and again, nobody does this, but you go to a gym, there's selectorized equipment where you can adjust the pulley. You can make your leg extensions heavy at the bottom, at the top, you can make back exercises heavier at the bottom or the top or the middle. You could take an exercise, do six sets, and it'd be six different strength curves. I used to do this all the time and it feels really awesome. You can't do that with free weights. With free weights. It has to be a different movement. It's a different exercise at that point. You know how I would adjust the strength curve on a with free weights? I'd have to like move my body so like I could do a lateral standing or I could do a lateral, you know, laying sideways on an incline bench or flat. You get to go against gravity somehow in a weird way. Yeah. Well, and it's actually impossible with a certain amount. Like you can't do bicep curls that way. You can't do, you can't manipulate the strength curve with dumbbells. No, you'd have to like lay on a bench and do something weird or I don't know. Yeah, you can get the spider curl angle, but to come from top to bottom and get the. You have to hang upside down. Yeah, yeah. So, which is not happening, right? Or that's pretty ridiculous either. Imagine doing curls hanging down your head Instagram people will do it, but yeah. Yeah. But a huge benefit. So to certain muscles like that, that you don't get a chance to manipulate that and machines provide that ability to do that. So again, another example of where machines can be superior. Are there certain machines that you maybe more so you, Adam, or there's certain machines you just, you said the rear delt one. Yeah. Are there any others that you just love? Like if you see it, you're like, I'm gonna do that. Yeah, I know that the rear delt fly. I mean, and I love a peck deck type of machine, you know, or cable crossover. You like the hammer strength row. Every time we would work out, that would be. Yeah, I love, I love. And that is actually the opposite of what you said with the. It was lighter at the bottom. Yeah, it's heavy. It's heavy to get it going, but then as you get it in. Lighter. It's lighter and you get the squeeze. And so, you know, if you had enough strength to get it off the initial, you know, momentum going, then you get this great squeeze and you could really load it. I used to get an incredible pump on my back from the iso-row, the hammer strength iso-row. Yes, as Doreen eats me that one pocket. Oh, I love, yeah. And they have so many handle positions. So if I'm, you know, more upper. You need this chest supported like that for rows, it's appreciated. Yeah, great, great, great machine. I have a few, and they're all like kind of weird, obscure ones, but that's because you can't do them necessarily free weights, like donkey calf raise. Otherwise I have to tell my, like a guy to sit on my back while I'm doing this. I'm not gonna do that. A guy? Why not a couple girls? I mean, I guess you could too, but. That's what I would do. As weird as it was sound, I feel like a guy would understand more than me. Would you mind sitting on my back while I'm doing this? They would probably receive it more or better in the gym than a couple girls. You pervert? No. So hammer strength, excuse me, donkey calf raise, tibialis raise. Tibialis, there's a tibialis raise machine. I used to love using that with clients when they had shin splints because tibialis raises without that are, it's kind of weird, you know, you have to stand on your heels on a block, people slide down and it doesn't work. Tibialis raises. You have to do those against the wall. It's a little weird. And then there was a, there's a golds, the one on Monterey and I only ever saw this machine in a powerlifting magazine, Ed Cohn, who was one of the greatest powerlifters of all time, talked about using this hammer strength, grip strengthening machine. You ever seen it? Where you load the plates and it's got like handles like this and you squeeze it with your hands and you could do one finger at a time and do all kinds of crazy things. If I see that in a gym. Yeah, I'd love to use that. I'm using that every single time. So there you have it. Those are the reasons why machines are sometimes better than free weights. Look, you can find us on social media. You can find Justin on Instagram at mine pump Justin, Adam at mine pump Adam. You can find me on Twitter at mine pump sale. Also, we have free guides that can help you with almost any fitness goal. You can find all of those. And again, they're all free at mine pump free.com.