A friend of ours was lying on a weight
bench holding two dumbbells over his head when his cat hopped on the bench.
While trying to shoo the cat away by squirming around, our friend kept the weights
overhead for so long that he tore a rotator cuff muscle. The point
of this story isn’t to scare you away from using free weights. In fact, the
best approach to strength training combines free weights and machines. Just
know that barbells and dumbbells require plenty of concentration. Here are
several good reasons to use dumbbells and barbells:
Free weights are
versatile. With
barbells and dumbbells, you can do literally hundreds of exercises that work
virtually every muscle group in your body. Most weight machines, on the other hand, are
designed to perform only one or two exercises.
Free weights give your
muscles more freedom to move. Suppose that you’re lying on a bench
pushing a barbell above your . You can press the weight straight up over your
chest, or you can move your arms a few inches back so you’re pressing directly above
your neck. Or you can position your arms anywhere between. All these movements
are perfectly legitimate ways of doing the exercise and working your pecs, and
some motions may feel more comfortable to your body than others.
Free weights involve
several muscle groups at once. For example, chest press movements work your chest, shoulders, and triceps.
However, when you perform these movements with a barbell, you also call on your
abdominal and lower back muscles to keep your body still and to keep the bar
balanced as you press the weight up. With the equivalent weight machine, you
don’t have to worry about holding the bar still, so your abdominal and back muscles
don’t get much work.
