Break The Lifting Spell

Machines are better than free weights.

Wait...

or is it supposed to be the other way around?

I forget.

Have you heard these kinds of claims?

They've infested the fitness space for as long as I can remember.

Here's how people (usually) end up here:

1. An individual embarks on their lifting journey for the first time.

2. The individual (understandably) has no knowledge of what to do, so they ask others - presumably those who know what they're doing - for advice.

3. The "others" - whether knowledgeable or not - tell the beginner what exercises they should (often communicated as "need to") do.

4. The individual (understandably) likes some exercises more than others.

5. The individual (understandably) assumes there is something special (read as "mystical" and "magical") about the exercises they like.

If this story makes no sense to you, then you're lucky - you're likely someone who's been fortunate enough to learn from intelligent people.

I assume, however, that this story resonates with the vast majority of you (it certainly does with me).

Here's why this matters:

If you get stuck thinking this way, you're very unlikely to find the most appropriate exercises for you and your goals.

Beginners in any domain are often exposed to partial-truths.

Some examples might be:

Squats are the best lower body exercise
Bench press is the king of upper body exercises
Free weights are "harder" than machines
These statements provide no context - they are (almost) totally nonsensical...

But they possess kernels of truth - embedded in these statements are bits of information that are useful.

And because these partial truths exist (squats and bench can be great choices for lower and upper body training respectively, and free weights are generally more difficult to execute motions with compared to machines), people get the sense that they are THE truth.

And this wreaks havoc on the ability of the individual to understand the upsides and downsides of any exercise.

Learning in black and white is necessary to some degree, but when we never develop the ability to think in the "gray", we assume that these partial-truths represent the entire story.

If you can't read between the lines, the lines are all you see.

And when black and white is all we see, our minds become clouded by the illusion that certain exercises and techniques possess mystical and magical qualities that others do not.

But this is patently false.

And it dramatically lowers our chances of finding what may actually be the best possible combination of exercises for us.

Why?

Imagine you do back squats for the first time and hate them - all you feel is your back.

Does that make back squats a horrible exercise?

What if you simply used something to elevate your heels?

Is it still a horrible exercise then?

Well...you may never know, if you're someone who can't see the "gray".

Alright Ben...but what's the takeaway?

Everything you encounter in the exercise world is the result of two things:

1. Our anatomy

2. Force

Anything beyond the description of how our anatomy interacts with force is not exercise.

Personal experience and emotionality are important, but they ideally should not impede our ability to think rationally about lifting decisions.

When you see everything as our anatomy's interaction with force (another way to say this would be "when you identify the physics of exercise"), the veil of emotional ignorance vanishes, and all that remains is the objective description of what an exercise does and doesn't do.

Remove the veil and you're much more likely to remove the limitations you're currently facing in the weight room.