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Free at last, free at last
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3/10/2008
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About 25 years ago, I made my first foray into weight training when the Y I belonged to opened a Nautilus center. At the time I was doing a lot of swimming and bicycling, and I wanted to add some strength training to my regimen, but those barbells and dumbbells seemed just a little extreme. Nautilus seemed like a good first step.
About that time my bike club had a guest speaker on Nautilus. I was feeling pretty proud of myself because he seemed to validate my choice of Nautilus. To my dismay, one of our club members, a serious weightlifting, challenged him on his whole premise, arguing that freeweights were far better for building strength and endurance. I don't remember all the technical points he and our speaker raised to back up their points of view, but I do remember the speaker pointing out that the cam mechanism was safer. In any case, I continued to work out with Nautilus.
A quarter century later, I would come around to my fellow club member's point of view.
Over the intervening two decades, as the demands of marriage, fatherhood and my career forced me to put my training on the back burner, I continued to work out sporadically with weight machines. When midlife crisis finally hit and I returned to the gym this last time, my trainer gave me your basic circuit training program using Cybex machines. And I did begin to get results in terms of weight loss.
However, the more research I did, the more I wanted to give freeweights a try. I read several articles that maintained that freeweights built more lean muscle, which would in turn burn fat 24/7. I also read that while weight machines tend to isolate single muscles, freeweights worked more muscle groups at once. My curiosity aroused, I asked a trainer to give me a little coaching on freeweight exercises. I started incorporating barbell bench presses and a few other upper body exercises into my routine, but I was looking for a more organized approach.
The Star-Ledger, like all newspapers, receives dozens of review copies of new books each day from publishers hoping somebody on our staff will review them. Only a small fraction of these books ever rate an actual review. Ninety percent of them end up on a shelf in the newsroom we call "Intellectual Recycling." Staffers are free to help themselves to any books that interest them in return for dropping a dollar in a coffee mug to go toward the newspapers summer camp fund. It was here that I ran across a book titled "The New Rules of Lifting" by Lou Schuler and Alwyn Cosgrove. In addition to providing detailed instructions for dozens of freeweight exercises, the authors recommended workout routines for beginners, as well as those for Fat Loss, Muscle Growth and Strength.
I followed Schuler's break-in program, then his Fat Loss program, and the pounds melted away. By year's end, I had lost 50 pounds.
I still believe that rank beginners should start with weight machines, just to learn proper form and determine their limits. However, after an initial break-in period I strongly suggest moving on to freeweights. Safety is still a consideration, however. When you do barbell lifts, especially bench presses, and you want to really push your limits, you really need a spotter so you dont drop the weight on your chest and kill yourself. If a spotter isn't available, its best to use a weight machine.
With 25 year's hindsight, I wish I could look up my old bike club colleague, shake his hand and tell him he was right all along.
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freeweights, bench presses, nautilus, cybex, circuit training
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