Sagital, transverse, frontal.
These are the formal names for the planes of motion that the body moves through when engaging in free motion. Such motion is natural. Such movements engage multiple parts of the body for the action itself and to support the action.
The more muscles involved, the larger the muscles involved, the more opportunity for fuel/fat burning. So this post is a wee meditation on why you might want to consider moving from that weight stack over to the squat rack; away from the pec deck and over to the dumbbells.
Lots of us go into the gym and use the weight machines. They're so convenient and safe! we can press our hearts out without fear of having anything fall on us, or lose our balance and feel pretty good about the numbers mounting up on the selector stack.
There are a couple of disadvantage of machines to machines:
- they don't support a true full range of motion - your arms or legs will not be moving on the exact planes they would utilize without the weight and
related to this
- because these other muscles that would help you balance if you were using freeweights are taken out of the equation, these related muscles are not getting a work out.
The main muscles not getting a work out are, ironically, the ones most folks obsess about: their core, and in particular, the abs.
When we use free weights (dumbbells, bar bells), we have to engage a variety of muscles to help stabilize the work. It may for a time mean lighter weights than what you can do on a machine, but the pay off is huge in all that related work: do compound resistance movements and you get your abs cooked for free. Eg, try a dumbbell lat row from the push up position: your lats AND your abs will feel it (along with your lower back, delts and pecs).
Free weights also mean more focus on the movement if the weight is sufficiently heavy that we take it seriously (10 reps max), more tension, more recruitment of muscle fiber, and more of all these things means more energy consumption, more fat burning.
The equation is simple: the more muscles we bring into play, the more muscle fiber activated the more energy needed, the more fat will be burned. This alone is reason to think about getting off the machine.
The one caveat is rehab: if you're rehabbing a muscle group because of injury, machines are great. But if you're healthy, and have your doctor's ok to work out, think about getting some advice on putting a program together than uses (1) free weights (2) full range of motion (3) compound movements.
eg, squat, bench press and bent over rows (mix in some ab work too initially) is a great basic routine that fits the bill.
