by Mac » Sat Oct 21, 2006 9:43 am
Actually, through functional exercise, we are not trying to turn work into exercise, we are trying to find exercises that help us work (or play) better. Almost all exercise devices have some kind of drawbacks. The most beneficial free weight exercises are generally multiple joint exercises, that is movements that involve rotation around two or more joints, such as most presses, squats, pulldowns, etc. Single joint exercises, such as a bicep curl, are not real efficient. There is no resistence at the beginning of the movement, the dumbell is just hanging from your hand, the resistence is greatest when your forearm is at a 90 degree angle to the rest of your body, that is parallel to the floor, you are trying to lift straight up while gravity is pushing straight down. At the end of the movement when the dumbell is at shoulder level, there is once again no resistence, you are just supporting the dumbell at that point, there is no resistence to the bicep, so in reality only a small part of the bicep is being fully worked. I have trained with individuals that had used free weights exclusively that were very strong in exercises like the bench press, but were surprisingly weak in some movements when they tried working out on Nautilus equipment. The reason being that Nautilus and other similar machines can apply constant resistence through a full range of motion, the muscle is taxed equally throughout the movement, unlike freeweights. With dumbells and barbells you are always limited to what you can handle in your weakest position. The drawback with most weight machines is that they mostly work in a linear fashion, that is they travel along a predetermined plane, they force your body to go in the direction that the machine dictates. Most don't require you to support or balance the weight, you are limited to the movement that the machine wants you to travel in, so a lot of the surrounding muscle groups are not involved in the exercise. That's one of the major drawbacks of machines, they sometimes don't relate well to real world activities and sports, because people just don't function along a predeterminded path. But getting back to Dewdman42's original questions on funtional exercises, there are definatley some exercises that are better than others depending on what you're looking to accomplish. If you're willing to put the time and effort into an exercise program, you might as well put in the time to figure out what is going to be the most beneficial to what your goals are.