Reinventing Fitness - What's wrong with machines?
- By Chris Hardwicke
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- 21 Dec, 2015
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Are machine's ruining your workout?
I have always loved the gym and I have done a gym workout routine for forty years. Six years ago, my gym was home to one of the largest, most unique collections of equipment in the Southeast, from state of the art modern pieces to 50-year-old pieces that are widely considered to have never been improved upon. Today I use none—not a single one and today there are thousands of trainers who are coming to the same conclusion.
The manufacturers of gym machines are responding to the demand for more functional, real-life movement, but a machine, by design, will always have great limitations. Workout without limitations—that sounds good, right? Well that is exactly what the global movement is all about.
Just as when children are left alone with a big cardboard box to play with, only their imagination limits the possibilities. Machines will always have their place as it will be very tough for commercial facilities to integrate this wide open, new world of fitness and health. Also, in the face of the big change, gym memberships have become quite cheap. Many people will also feel more comfortable using machines, as the wide open work requires a wide open mind. People often find this work intimidating as they must frequently face their own fears when operating “out of the box.”
Weight machines most often require us to sit down or lie down to work. Whether we are working the legs, chest, back, or arms, we are seated or lying down. Both positions create a disconnect. We disengage the core, which effectively negates the functional training connection that directly links upper body to lower. The purpose of these machines is to train muscles in isolation, which by design, eliminates the muscle synergy created in “real life” situations. The lying and seated positions also deliberately create STABILITY but injuries most often happen due to INSTABILITY because we slip, stumble or step on uneven ground.
Let us look at the movement we call “rowing.” We sit at the rowing machine and pull a handle (or rope) to our torso. A functional use of this motion might be to rake the yard. When we rake the yard, our whole body from our head to our toes is performing a symphony. The arms and shoulders reach and pull, the abdominal muscles contract and twist, the hips rotate and your legs constantly move and plant into a strong position to resist the pulling and twisting.
If you train each of these muscle groups in isolation they will only be strong in isolation. You will not have trained the synergistic muscles that functionally connect your lower, middle and upper body. In addition, you will not have learned to stabilize your body while working. This requires constant footwork on the ground and a neural imprint of precisely where your feet are and where they are going.
If you train these muscle groups together, they will be FUNCTIONALLY much stronger. Outside of the gym we do nothing with our muscles in isolation. The symphony is always playing. If you are a weekend athlete you will be stunned by the improvement in your game, no matter what game. Not only will you perform better, your risk of injury will be substantially reduced.
In my example of raking, Frontier Movement would greatly reduce the risk of back injuries commonly associated with this chore. If we row at a machine and we become strong while seated, we automatically think we can pull a bigger load but the bigger load will likely expose the weak link, in this case the back or core which has not been trained as an integral part of the relevant movement.
Using a chest machine while seated or lying down also gives total back support and disengages the core while a push up or standing cable chest press totally engages and challenges not only the core but the legs as well. Unless you are extremely strong and forgot you car jack, you will never need a pushing motion where you will have total back support as on a machine. It is more likely that you may participate in pushing a car one day (or a lawn mower) and you will find that functional training movements serve you best.
I can go through an entire fully loaded commercial gym and show you MANY non-machine movements that will give you all the benefits of ANY machine PLUS integrate that isolated movement into a functional real life movement that has an entire package of benefits for the whole body.
I had the great fortune of guiding 40 clients through six to ten years of primarily machine training and then taking those same clients directly into “machineless” training. The healing results defy the imagination. The same clients whose bad knee, shoulder, ankle, and (especially) backs persisted through all workout and healing modalities were totally healed while working without machines.
Furthermore we all have improved our sports and recreation abilities. The greatest testament of all would be to speak to my clients, who have participated in a great clinical trial as we moved from traditional gym work to the ultimate workout.
We are fight or flight, hunting and gathering animals. In our DNA are all the tools for energy creation. Through the Kreb’s cycle, we can convert ALL food to energy. We can live in excess of 40 days on water alone. We can walk 300 miles without anything other than water. Though it is occasionally not evident, we are the most highly evolved animals on Earth.
To better understand how we create more energy, we would do well to visualize a spiral. If we follow the line of the spiral we see that it moves up and then levels out, reaching an ever-increasing height. The same is true when we create energy. Our energy levels cannot simply rise straight up. We must also level out to create energy (rest).
If you have been sedentary for a long time and one day you decide to go jogging for a couple of miles, you will be tired for several days after. You will need to rest. Tiredness is the downside of the spiral. From just that one run, you have created more energy that is yours to use AFTER recovery. This increased energy is the upswing of the spiral. If you continue to run and rest, the spiral will go up and level out with the net result being a gain in energy. Our heart becomes bigger and our lungs more toned, the relevant jogging muscles are stronger and more efficient.
To return to our car analogy, our engine has become bigger and stronger. When running a couple of miles no longer challenges us we have ADAPTED to our running regimen. At this point, if we do not run faster, farther or longer we will not continue to increase our energy. Our current level of running will MAINTAIN our current level of ADAPTATION (energy level). If we stop running we will gradually go back down the spiral. If we do not allow for full recovery through proper sleep we will also see a drop in performance. Sleep is an important part of the leveling out of the spiral.
In a nutshell, we must work hard enough to go higher “up” the spiral, and then rest, through which we will adapt to higher and higher levels of energy.
You can feed all the fuel you want to a weak engine and it will still not go faster. You can cleanse the fuel lines all you want and you will not increase YOUR performance if your engine is small and weak.
We have total control of our energy level. We are responsible for creating our own energy. If you do not have any, you have created the weak engine I am talking about. It is very easy to look to cleanses and supplements, but a strong engine can run very well for a long time on junk food, much as putting cheap gas in your car often takes 100,000 miles to have a negative effect.
In our car analogy, we fixed everything but the engine and still we had no better performance. A big difference between human engines and car engines is that if you park your car in the garage for a few years, the engine remains just as powerful. The human engine, however, will actually shrink. Your entire system can get clogged by parking it on the couch too long and not taking it out for a good drive once in a while. If you only drive it to work and back it won’t continue to run well for long. You will see what I mean when you finally “floor it” and black smoke pours out of the exhaust! It may even stall! Quick, before it’s too late, let’s make this thing run right, faster, and longer.
Why don’t you have some coffee, sugar, or fruit? That ought to pick you up! How about an energy drink with some wild sounding jungle herbs? Most of us regularly look for energy in a particular food or drink and we are eventually forced to acknowledge that it does not work.
We have an epidemic of blood sugar problems (hypoglycemia) that affect an estimated 60% of this country. In fact, most companies give workers a break at 10 a.m. and often this is not because they are generous, but productivity has markedly slowed. At this point you have only been at work for two, at most three, hours! Certainly you are not already out of energy. Notice that your break room is filled with caffeine, candy, and salty and sweet carbohydrates in hopes of kicking you back into productivity.
Further notice that the great ‘medication stations”—convenience stores— that are filled from one end to the other with these items! I can fix your “Blood Sugar” problem such that you can fully access energy you already have, but that will NOT create more!
Many alternative modalities promise to remove “blocks” to your energy or increase the flow of energy. Often “cleansing” of some type is recommended. Notice that removing blocks and increasing FLOW are NOT the same as creating MORE energy. For a better understanding of energy, I shall use a car for my analogy.
Let’s say that the tube that carries gasoline to the engine (the fuel line) is clogged. The car runs poorly. When you clear the “blockage” you “increase the flow” of fuel to the engine. While this is important and I often recommend energy-flow work, you will NOT have MORE energy, but full access to the energy you already had.
How about if the carburetor is not mixing the air and gasoline correctly? Again the car runs poorly. Many vitamin and supplements companies make “increased-energy” claims based on improving your fuel mix. While supplements and diet can sometimes correct nutritional deficiencies, you will only have better fuel, not more fuel. This is very important as better fuel is necessary for high performance. Many people in third world countries suffer from malnutrition and cannot perform well. However, you and I are likely getting everything we need for our day-to-day performance and even our “weekend warrior” athletics. Body builders, high school, college and professional athletes may well need supplements if their diet is less than perfect but I’m willing to bet that quality fuel is not your problem.
For now, let’s assume that your fuel system is clean enough and you eat a good enough diet. If this is the case, and most often it is, the cause of your lack of energy is that your motor is small and inefficient and that nothing you put in the gas tank can change that!
