I’ve been lifting once a week for 20-45 minutes for two years and have noticed that I am stronger in everyday life and my body looks better (arms/shoulders/etc). There’s definitely a benefit to be had even if you think 45 minutes twice a week is too much.
Here’s my questions:
I only use machines because I was intimidated by the risk of injury with free weights. What are your thoughts on machines in general?
What is your advice for someone who wants to move from machines to free weights?
How do you track your progress? I use a very bare-bones android app that is simply called “Strong” which I use to keep track of my reps/sets/weights, and find it really useful as it tells me what my previous weight with that machine/exercise was. There’s a lot of paid options out there. Do you have any advice?
If your gym has a good selection of machines, you can totally get really jacked just using them, see my above comment for Barbells vs Dumbells. My first questions to you would be how you’re training your legs and abs since machines for those can be rarer.
I should double down on the point that injury should not be on my mind. Here are some factoids since I can’t tread them into a coherent narrative very quickly: * When the median american lifts weights, aka someone who is much more careless than yourself, he gets injured way less often than in any other sport. * Even for injuries that happen in the gym, accidents like tripping and weight falling on you make up a bigger share than what we think of as “injuries”. Wear shoes, don’t walk around weights looking at your phone, be sensible etc. * Injuries are most often not a consequence of “misperforming an exercise once”. They are rather the result of bad programming. Every rep you do with your legs hurts your knee a little bit, and it can heal some amount per week. Injury comes when you do more (load, reps, sets, speed) in aggregate than you can handle, which is really difficult for a beginner, and for someone training for not that much per week. * Acute injury, aka when you break something during a lift, should be a worry only for the strongest among us. It’s just math. Your muscles can produce some amount of force, which your tendons must be able to transfer without snappin. For normal humans, your muscles are nowhere near strong enough to do this. WIth years of strength training (and PEDs which strengthen your muscles without strenghtening your tendons), you can maybe get there.
My advice is to be mindful of technique when learning a new lift, film yourself or ask someone to watch if you can, and make sure it looks the same as in the video.
Advice for moving from machines to free weights? Pick like 2 or 3 free weight exercises that look cool to you / are hard do do with machines and swap them into your program. Rinse and repeat after months. You may have many worries, and I can dispell most of them if you lay them out.
I also use strong, I have the premium membership. I looked into all the other apps, their features are not beter tracking afaik, but algorithms that create programs for you, or just access to pre-made programs
I think the reason I worry about injury is because I am far, far more clumsy than average, am really bad with form in general (I am in a theatre troupe and we often have to learn choreographed movement or rarely simple dances and I’m always the worst at it), and when I did running I ended up with a hip injury that still gives me grief (that said I am trying to build back up to hopefully running 10-20k a week again as I did really love it).
So, yeah, essentially, I’m terrified of baking in poor form and then injuring myself over time, as well as terrified of dropping a weight on myself (that said, I have never dropped a weight on any machine, so maybe that’s a good way to update myself).
The lower body exercises I do on the gym are the leg press, hip abduction/adduction, leg curl, leg extension. They also have an ab and back machine but to be honest I hate them and only use them rarely (once a month when I’m having a good week and want to do everything). But I do alternate between leg-focused machines and arm-focused machines when I exercise. Sometimes I do split sets between two machines if it’s quiet but that’s obviously rare because I want to be courteous. I aim to do 7 rep sets, and will lower the weight if I can only get around 4 and raise the weight if I can get 10+.
Thank you for the suggestion, it honestly didn’t occur to me that I could just add in one or two free weight exercises and use the machines for everything else.
My fitness goals are “have nice buff looking arms”, “do a pullup” and “lift up my husband (~80kg) in the traditional wife-carrying pose”, though I’m not pursuing them relentlessly or optimally, they’re just milestones I want to reach.
What free weight exercises might be best for getting me there, and have the most straightforward technique?
Those are great goals. If you want to be “lifting your husband” strong, look up the starting strength squat and deadlift guides. For upper body exercise suggestions, I think the list above is great.
For injury risk, I would really not worry, given the injury statistics are so low, and they are from people who DON’T focus on technique. The median gym goes is a 30yo guy swinging as much weight as possible around, and he’s mostly fine.
As far as technique goes, define failure as “I can’t do another rep without changing technique” and you reduce your chance of injure drastically.
For the exercises you’re doing now, I’d say there is a lot of “redundance / over-optimization”, e.g. the leg press will train both your adductors and abductors. If you want to do 2 leg exercises instead of just one (like I suggested in the post), I’d pick one form each category): [squat] : Leg press, Back Squat, Front squat, split squat, hack squat, smith machine squat, dumbell-on-shoulder squat, goblet squat [hinge] : Deadlift, Romanian deadlift, good Morning, reverse lunge.
I can’t help myself but to gym bro since it is LW.
(I’ve been doing lifting for 5 years now and can do more than 100kg in bench press for example, etc. so you know I’ve done it.)
The places to watch out for injuries in free weight is your wrists, rotator cuffs and lower back.
If you’re doing squats or deadlifts, use a belt or you’re stupid.
If you start feeling your wrists when doing benchpress, shoulder press or similar compound movement, get wrist protection, it isn’t that expensive and helps.
Learn about the bone structure of the wrist and ensure that you’re trying to hold the bar at the right angle with the hand. (this is a classic for wrist pain otherwise)
Do rotator cuff exercises once a week
Finaly generally, start with higher reps and a bit lower weight , 8-12 is the recommended range (but you can do up to 20 as post says) and get used to the technique over time, when things start hurting you know you’re doing it wrong and you should have someone tell you what you’re doing wrong.
Essentially, if you’re doing bench press, shoulder press or anything involving the shoulders or chest, the most likely way to injure your self is through not doing this in a stable way. The rotator cuffs are in short there to stabilize these sorts of movements and deal with torque. If you don’t have strong rotator cuffs this will lead to shoulder injuries a lot more often which is one of the main ways you can fuck up your training.
This is the quickest link i found on this but the 2nd exercise in the first category and doing them 8-12 reps for 3 sets with weighted cables so that you can progressive overload it.
So for everyone who’s concerned about the squats and deadlift thing with or without a belt you can look it up but the basic argument is that lower back injuries can be really hard to get rid off and it is often difficult to hold your core with right technique without it.
If you ever go over 80kg you can seriously permanently mess with your lower back by lifting wrong. It’s just one of the main things that are obvious to avoid and a belt really helps you hold your core properly.
I’ve been lifting once a week for 20-45 minutes for two years and have noticed that I am stronger in everyday life and my body looks better (arms/shoulders/etc). There’s definitely a benefit to be had even if you think 45 minutes twice a week is too much.
Here’s my questions:
I only use machines because I was intimidated by the risk of injury with free weights. What are your thoughts on machines in general?
What is your advice for someone who wants to move from machines to free weights?
How do you track your progress? I use a very bare-bones android app that is simply called “Strong” which I use to keep track of my reps/sets/weights, and find it really useful as it tells me what my previous weight with that machine/exercise was. There’s a lot of paid options out there. Do you have any advice?
If your gym has a good selection of machines, you can totally get really jacked just using them, see my above comment for Barbells vs Dumbells. My first questions to you would be how you’re training your legs and abs since machines for those can be rarer.
I should double down on the point that injury should not be on my mind. Here are some factoids since I can’t tread them into a coherent narrative very quickly:
* When the median american lifts weights, aka someone who is much more careless than yourself, he gets injured way less often than in any other sport.
* Even for injuries that happen in the gym, accidents like tripping and weight falling on you make up a bigger share than what we think of as “injuries”. Wear shoes, don’t walk around weights looking at your phone, be sensible etc.
* Injuries are most often not a consequence of “misperforming an exercise once”. They are rather the result of bad programming. Every rep you do with your legs hurts your knee a little bit, and it can heal some amount per week. Injury comes when you do more (load, reps, sets, speed) in aggregate than you can handle, which is really difficult for a beginner, and for someone training for not that much per week.
* Acute injury, aka when you break something during a lift, should be a worry only for the strongest among us. It’s just math. Your muscles can produce some amount of force, which your tendons must be able to transfer without snappin. For normal humans, your muscles are nowhere near strong enough to do this. WIth years of strength training (and PEDs which strengthen your muscles without strenghtening your tendons), you can maybe get there.
My advice is to be mindful of technique when learning a new lift, film yourself or ask someone to watch if you can, and make sure it looks the same as in the video.
Advice for moving from machines to free weights? Pick like 2 or 3 free weight exercises that look cool to you / are hard do do with machines and swap them into your program. Rinse and repeat after months. You may have many worries, and I can dispell most of them if you lay them out.
I also use strong, I have the premium membership. I looked into all the other apps, their features are not beter tracking afaik, but algorithms that create programs for you, or just access to pre-made programs
I think the reason I worry about injury is because I am far, far more clumsy than average, am really bad with form in general (I am in a theatre troupe and we often have to learn choreographed movement or rarely simple dances and I’m always the worst at it), and when I did running I ended up with a hip injury that still gives me grief (that said I am trying to build back up to hopefully running 10-20k a week again as I did really love it).
So, yeah, essentially, I’m terrified of baking in poor form and then injuring myself over time, as well as terrified of dropping a weight on myself (that said, I have never dropped a weight on any machine, so maybe that’s a good way to update myself).
The lower body exercises I do on the gym are the leg press, hip abduction/adduction, leg curl, leg extension. They also have an ab and back machine but to be honest I hate them and only use them rarely (once a month when I’m having a good week and want to do everything). But I do alternate between leg-focused machines and arm-focused machines when I exercise. Sometimes I do split sets between two machines if it’s quiet but that’s obviously rare because I want to be courteous. I aim to do 7 rep sets, and will lower the weight if I can only get around 4 and raise the weight if I can get 10+.
Thank you for the suggestion, it honestly didn’t occur to me that I could just add in one or two free weight exercises and use the machines for everything else.
My fitness goals are “have nice buff looking arms”, “do a pullup” and “lift up my husband (~80kg) in the traditional wife-carrying pose”, though I’m not pursuing them relentlessly or optimally, they’re just milestones I want to reach.
What free weight exercises might be best for getting me there, and have the most straightforward technique?
Those are great goals.
If you want to be “lifting your husband” strong, look up the starting strength squat and deadlift guides.
For upper body exercise suggestions, I think the list above is great.
For injury risk, I would really not worry, given the injury statistics are so low, and they are from people who DON’T focus on technique. The median gym goes is a 30yo guy swinging as much weight as possible around, and he’s mostly fine.
As far as technique goes, define failure as “I can’t do another rep without changing technique” and you reduce your chance of injure drastically.
For the exercises you’re doing now, I’d say there is a lot of “redundance / over-optimization”, e.g. the leg press will train both your adductors and abductors. If you want to do 2 leg exercises instead of just one (like I suggested in the post), I’d pick one form each category):
[squat] : Leg press, Back Squat, Front squat, split squat, hack squat, smith machine squat, dumbell-on-shoulder squat, goblet squat
[hinge] : Deadlift, Romanian deadlift, good Morning, reverse lunge.
I can’t help myself but to gym bro since it is LW.
(I’ve been doing lifting for 5 years now and can do more than 100kg in bench press for example, etc. so you know I’ve done it.)
The places to watch out for injuries in free weight is your wrists, rotator cuffs and lower back.
If you’re doing squats or deadlifts, use a belt or you’re stupid.
If you start feeling your wrists when doing benchpress, shoulder press or similar compound movement, get wrist protection, it isn’t that expensive and helps.
Learn about the bone structure of the wrist and ensure that you’re trying to hold the bar at the right angle with the hand. (this is a classic for wrist pain otherwise)
Do rotator cuff exercises once a week
Finaly generally, start with higher reps and a bit lower weight , 8-12 is the recommended range (but you can do up to 20 as post says) and get used to the technique over time, when things start hurting you know you’re doing it wrong and you should have someone tell you what you’re doing wrong.
Why are rotator cuff exercises good?
Essentially, if you’re doing bench press, shoulder press or anything involving the shoulders or chest, the most likely way to injure your self is through not doing this in a stable way. The rotator cuffs are in short there to stabilize these sorts of movements and deal with torque. If you don’t have strong rotator cuffs this will lead to shoulder injuries a lot more often which is one of the main ways you can fuck up your training.
what set of exercises do you prefer to strengthen and stabilize the rotator cuffs?
This is the quickest link i found on this but the 2nd exercise in the first category and doing them 8-12 reps for 3 sets with weighted cables so that you can progressive overload it.
https://e3rehab.com/rotator-cuff-exercises/
So for everyone who’s concerned about the squats and deadlift thing with or without a belt you can look it up but the basic argument is that lower back injuries can be really hard to get rid off and it is often difficult to hold your core with right technique without it.
If you ever go over 80kg you can seriously permanently mess with your lower back by lifting wrong. It’s just one of the main things that are obvious to avoid and a belt really helps you hold your core properly.
Here’s the best link I can find:https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9282110/#:~:text=[1%2C2] It is,spinal injuries during weightlifting training.