I see people exercising every day- a lot of them in gyms. And every day I see people making some fundamental mistakes in their exercising. These mistakes lead to underperformance and decreased results, but also to muscular and postural imbalance and ultimately injury and joint damage. Today let’s talk about one type of super-common mistake made by exercisers in our society– the use of “non-functional” resistance and cardio machines. This includes machines like the leg press, the ab machine and the elliptical.
I’m using the word ‘non-functional’ in quotes because functional is an overused word and a vaguely understood concept nowadays. It’s a little tough to define. So, let’s just cut to some examples.
Let’s take a real-life movement like standing up from a chair. When a movement like this is done as an exercise (repeatedly, maybe done with added resistance like weights, done as repeated jumps from a squat position…) , it’s a squat. In this everyday movement, a number of muscles work in conjunction: certain muscles are primary movers propelling the body while other muscles assist those main movers and still others stabilize numerous aspects of your body’s position throughout the movement. This complex and delicate balance of muscle work makes this more than a movement, but really a movement pattern. A partial list of muscles at work during a squatting and standing movement includes: the quadriceps, the gluteals, the hamstrings, the deep and superficial spinal muscles, the deep abdominal muscles, the hip adductors and abductors, the ankle dorsi- and plantar flexors…. and more. Functioning properly in this movement means they are finely tuned in terms of order and speed of firing and varying amount of force produced. This happens partly through development of the muscles and other soft tissues. But neural control of those muscles is what determines how a movement pattern is executed.
This exercise is functional for everyone who wants to be able to stand up and sit down from a chair, car or toilet. And it’s functional for people who want to be able to pick things up off the ground, push things, walk or run up hill and jump. It’s also a fundamental exercise for building strength for athletes, bodybuilders and recreational exercisers.
In real life, whether in sport or in activities of daily living, you move in patterns. Your brain learns certain patterns of firing muscles and those muscles, and their related connective tissues, become stronger and better at performing those patterns. Every pattern of movement or position (like sitting) that you repeat or maintain for periods of time, trains your brain and body to function just that way. The important take-away from this is that repeating particular movements trains you to move that way preferentially.
So, now let’s look at the common gym mistakes I mentioned. To pick a specific example, let’s look at a leg press machine in a gym, as that is vaguely related to a squat. There are different versions but they all (that I’ve seen) have some things in common. Using a leg press uses similar muscles to the squat as primary movers (mostly quadriceps and gluteals.) But in the leg press you are sitting (or lying) and leaning back. Muscularly, this means that core stabilizers that need to work in a squat, don’t need to fire as much and so don’t get stronger doing this movement. Neurologically, your brain learns patterns of muscle firing specific to this movement. In this case, it learns to fire major leg muscles independently of many core and other stabilizers. This is different from any pattern you are likely to use in life.
So, whereas a squat is functional to sitting and standing, jumping and landing and even picking things up off the floor, the leg press is functional to what? Lying on the floor and lifting your kids on your feet?
(This sounds slightly harsh. I’m not saying no one should ever use a leg press… Just not everyone and not too much.)
The bottom line is this–weight and strength machines that isolate movements are ok sometimes for rehab or what’s called pre-hab (working with specific muscular imbalances, sometimes by isolating particular weak muscles in order to create better muscular balance, biomechanical alignment, neuromuscular function and reduce injury.) But the lion’s share of your exercises should be movements that use multiple muscle groups together, possibly move through different planes of motion and that in some clear way (muscularly and neurologically) support some real-life movement patterns.
This does mean fewer machines (weight and unnaturally patterned cardio machines like ellipticals) and more exercises on your feet, with free, weighted items for resistance (weights, medicine balls, sandbags etc.) and/or with your own body weight.
And yes, you probably need some qualified instruction to learn appropriate exercise selection for you and proper form and programming for these exercises. But in my view, it’s well worth it. You’ll have your body for the rest of your life. It seems a worthwhile investment of time and probably some money to learn ways to use it that will help you become fitter, more vital, more functional and less injured.
And on top of that– appointments with a qualified trainer or conditioning specialist are motivating!
What do you think?