Keeping the weight close to the body is the normal way to handle any load you work with. You already do it this way without thinking about it. For instance, pay attention the next time you pick up something heavy from the floor. You stood as close to it as you could before you lifted it, because your experience has taught you that the closer the load is to your feet, the easier it is to lift. Chances are that when you’ve gotten hurt handling your lawnmower, it happened because the weight was not close enough to your center of balance.
The increased use of various types of benches altered the basic nature of barbell training, and this enabled the bench press to replace the standing press as the basic upper-body exercise in the gym. Benches allow the center of balance to be moved to your back or your butt, and this is how the bench press or any seated barbell exercise works. But otherwise, the default position in barbell training should be standing with the load, both feet evenly spaced under the weight.
The barbell offers a way to load the body’s normal movement patterns with progressively heavier weights, a process that essentially forces the body to get stronger whether it wants to or not. After all, if you start with an empty 45-pound barbell laying on the floor and add just 5 pounds to it every week, in 6 months you’re deadlifting 175 pounds. In a year, you’re up to 305. And almost nobody starts with only 45 pounds – your mom is stronger than that from having picked your ungrateful ass up off the floor all those years.
Barbell training is simple, logical, effective, inexpensive, and most importantly, proven. It has worked in its current form for decades for millions of people, and it has formed the successful strength training foundation for athletes since the early 20th century. So why is it that modern gyms are loaded with machines rather than just barbells and weights?
[---]
An even more important consideration for machine exercisers is the constrained, artificial movement patterns enforced by the design of the device. The normal way for legs to move is knees and hips flexing and extending in a coordinated fashion. Agonists and antagonists functioning simultaneously; calves, hamstrings, quads, and hip muscles all working together – you know, squats and deadlifts, running and walking. Sitting on a machine with your butt held down in the seat by your hands with your knees extending all by themselves, or flexing your elbows while your shoulders and upper arms are held motionless…well, that’s just stupid. And it’s an excellent recipe for overuse injuries, since one moving joint amid several others held artificially motionless forces tendons and ligaments to do things they aren’t designed for. Moving Arthur Jones’s Nautilus machine through Arthur’s idea of the perfect movement for an isolated muscle group falls woefully short of adequate physical preparation, for both sports and life.
- More Here
The increased use of various types of benches altered the basic nature of barbell training, and this enabled the bench press to replace the standing press as the basic upper-body exercise in the gym. Benches allow the center of balance to be moved to your back or your butt, and this is how the bench press or any seated barbell exercise works. But otherwise, the default position in barbell training should be standing with the load, both feet evenly spaced under the weight.
The barbell offers a way to load the body’s normal movement patterns with progressively heavier weights, a process that essentially forces the body to get stronger whether it wants to or not. After all, if you start with an empty 45-pound barbell laying on the floor and add just 5 pounds to it every week, in 6 months you’re deadlifting 175 pounds. In a year, you’re up to 305. And almost nobody starts with only 45 pounds – your mom is stronger than that from having picked your ungrateful ass up off the floor all those years.
Barbell training is simple, logical, effective, inexpensive, and most importantly, proven. It has worked in its current form for decades for millions of people, and it has formed the successful strength training foundation for athletes since the early 20th century. So why is it that modern gyms are loaded with machines rather than just barbells and weights?
[---]
An even more important consideration for machine exercisers is the constrained, artificial movement patterns enforced by the design of the device. The normal way for legs to move is knees and hips flexing and extending in a coordinated fashion. Agonists and antagonists functioning simultaneously; calves, hamstrings, quads, and hip muscles all working together – you know, squats and deadlifts, running and walking. Sitting on a machine with your butt held down in the seat by your hands with your knees extending all by themselves, or flexing your elbows while your shoulders and upper arms are held motionless…well, that’s just stupid. And it’s an excellent recipe for overuse injuries, since one moving joint amid several others held artificially motionless forces tendons and ligaments to do things they aren’t designed for. Moving Arthur Jones’s Nautilus machine through Arthur’s idea of the perfect movement for an isolated muscle group falls woefully short of adequate physical preparation, for both sports and life.
- More Here
No comments:
Post a Comment