Weight training for women can proceed in 3 different ways when training with weights is your goal, you can workout with free weights, machines or by combining the two together to help achieve overall health for women.

I have to tell you straight out that I prefer the latter (dumbbells and barbells) for the majority of exercises

Free weights demand more from your body and nevertheless allow your limbs and joints to move within their natural motion . Machines make your body move in a motion dictated by the make and design of the equipment .

Most joint injuries and muscle strains come from the result of using machines that put unnatural stresses on the human body by locking you into a far too rigid position.

In the past when I have noticed prople injured during training , it’s generally come about when using machines (and unsuitable form) instead of dumbbells and barbells.

Free weights will give you the ability to isolate individual muscles and train your muscles in very creative ways.

When you use free weights it doesn’t matter what your height, weight , length of your limbs (legs and arms ) you can still get a complete work out.

Many machines today are of great quality and design , and you are provided the ability to make adjustments to the machines for your particular physical proportions. Having said that many machines still seem to be designed with the average person in mind, if your not average you do stand a higher risk of injury.

Now I’m not totally against training with machines I do use them in my training, leg-extensions, lat pull-downs and various other exercises. I believe that you should be using free weights 60 to 70% of the time in your training.

Machines will keep the resistance working along one plane only, this will result in the muscle group your training using less muscle while performing the exercise. The idea is to use as much of the muscle group at the same time to create utmost growth.

The muscle does react differently to the different types of resistance created by using free weights or machines. When a muscle is being hit from various angles and directions constantly as with free weights the resistance will be different and more positive then using machines which are always along a foreseeable line.

Sometimes you will just have to make do with the equipment that is available to you. The main matter is, that you exercise .

Tags: health for women, training with weights, weight training for women

This entry was posted on February 8, 2011 at 11:55 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Posted in Obesity, Weight loss by Matt | No Comments Yet