Gym fitness equipment

There is no absolute "god-level equipment" and no useless "junk equipment." Whether it is an Internet celebrity model or an outdated old equipment, as long as it matches your training goals, stage and physical condition, it is the best choice - the debate over the advantages and disadvantages of free weights and fixed equipment that has been quarreling for more than ten years is essentially just a difference in applicable scenarios.

To be honest, I went through this pit when I first started working out. I always felt that the newer the equipment with more functions, the more powerful it was. When I entered the door, I grabbed a Smith rack with a touch screen. I had to squat on it to practice leg training. As a result, after two months, I had a faint pain on the inside of my knee. After looking at it with a familiar trainer, I found out that I was born with hip hips. The abduction range is small, and the fixed track of Smith just blocks the adjustment space of my hips when squatting. It is not as good as the old barbell in the corner that peels off the paint quickly, revealing the copper color. When free squatting, it can be adjusted according to the angle of my own joints. After squatting for two weeks, the knee pain disappeared.

The "free weights vs. fixed equipment" debate that has been raging in the fitness circle for almost ten years is, to put it bluntly, a matter of stance. When I go to forums, I always see two groups of people fighting: the free weight party says that fixed equipment is a "lazy tool" for novices. If you lock the trajectory, you can't train the core at all, and all you train is dead muscles; the fixed equipment party also says that the free weight tolerance rate is too low, and novices will most likely injure their waists and knees if they hit the weight. It is a completely unnecessary risk. In fact, both views are reasonable, and both are quite one-sided. Take the 180-pound novice friend I brought last year as an example. When he first came here, his core was as loose as a deflated rubber ball. He could even squat 20 kilograms with an empty bar and swayed from side to side. If I had forced him to do barbell training according to the free weight party, he would probably not have done it for two days. I had to take a break, and instead started training with fixed-track equipment such as leg presses and Hack squat racks. First, I felt the strength of my quadriceps. After practicing for two months, I stabilized my core and then transitioned to free weights. Now I have no problem at all with 140-pound squat sets.

In addition to these "mainstream players" in the large equipment area, many small equipment that people simply don't notice can often bring unexpected results. Many people enter the gym and stare at the dumbbell racks and squat racks. They don't even take a look at the elastic bands, kettlebells, and medicine balls piled in the corner. They think they are only used by girls to practice yoga. This prejudice is really big. I used to have a popping sound from the shoulder impingement, which caused excruciating pain when I practiced shoulder presses. I did fixed shoulder presses for more than half a year, but it didn’t get better. Later, I listened to a rehabilitation practitioner’s advice and used a light-weight elastic band to activate external rotation before each shoulder exercise. After half a month, the snapping sound disappeared, which is much more efficient than me using heavy weights. There is also the gantry that has been robbed for many years but many people use it incorrectly. The resistance of the steel wire is constant throughout the whole process. Whether it is chest clamping, high pull-down or rope curl, the pressure on the joints is much less than dumbbells. There are many veterans around me who have been practicing for five or six years. Now the isolation movements of warm-up and finishing basically rely on the gantry, but they rarely use heavy dumbbells.

Speaking of which, there is another detail that many novices overlook. Adjustment before using the equipment is more important than what equipment to choose. Last week I saw a little girl practicing lat pull-downs. The seat was adjusted too high. When she was doing the pull, her whole body was pulled off the ground by the counterweight. Her latissimus dorsi muscles could not even feel half a dime. Her arms were sore for three days, and it was just a useless exercise. There is another piece of trivia that most people may not know: the weights marked on the equipment may not be accurate. I used to go to a community gym where the leg press machine was marked with a weight of 200 pounds and I could pedal easily. Then I switched to a Shangjian, and I could barely lift the same type of leg press machine that weighed 160 pounds. After asking the boss, I found out that the weights at the previous gym were hollow and were falsely marked by almost a third. I was so complacent before that I thought my leg strength had increased.

To put it bluntly, the equipment in the gym is just a tool, just like the spatula in a chef's hand. You can't say that a wok is more advanced than a frying pan, right? Use a wok to fry vegetables and a frying pan to fry eggs. The most important thing is to adapt to your current training needs. There is no need to listen to what others say about advanced equipment and insist on using it. When you practice, the target muscles feel contracted, the joints do not hurt, and you can see improvements in strength or form after training, then this equipment is the best for you, right?