There are surprisingly many scientific studies comparing machines to free weights. You have to be careful about who is sponsoring them of course, but generally you’ll see pros and cons start to emerge if you read many of them. I’ve done my best to summarize them in Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of this series. Now, in Part 4, I want to share a few of the better studies and go a little deeper into each one. These were some of the studies I used as the basis for the earlier parts of this article.
Smith Machine Squats Inferior To Free Weight Squats
In a recent study (see Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research: December 2009 – Volume 23 – Issue 9 – pp 2588-2591) researchers figured that the Smith Machine was probably better for activating certain leg muscles because the lifter wouldn’t be focused on stability so much. The logic, like most people would have thought, was that attention to stability reduced activation of the leg muscles in free weights, whereas the Smith Machine users could focus more on the leg muscles.
Well, turns out they were wrong! They measured the same lifters (i.e. people) using a weight on each exercise equal to 8 reps maximum. And they measured 7 different muscles (including some abs and lower back).
Surprisingly, (more…)
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Continue reading about The Science Of Machines vs Free Weights – part 4 of 4 articles
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