free weights or machines?

today's a public holiday. ANZAC day. a day to commerate the australian and new zealand soldiers who sacrificed their lives in..... okie. i am not gonna talk about ANZAC day. haha. i am gonna talk about my day. today all i did was stay at home and try to finish up my stupid ASSignment which i have no idea of doing thanks to the lecturer who doesnt provide any form of guidance. But i still managed to finish it. haha. today my topic is regarding whether to use free weights or machines when training. In the past, when i just started off training in the gym.. i always thought that machines were the way to go. plus i always trained alone so doing free weights would seem stupidly dangerous if i did not have anyone to spot me. Plus, with the bodybuilding mentality, you would believe that machines would allow you to isolate the muscles you intend to work on. However, after much training experience (not much la but i would say quite abit), i have come to the conclusion that free weights are now the way to go. It gives you so much more variety and it would actually benefit you more in a functional sense. Hardly when performing your daily activites you will sit down and exert a certain amount of force (unless you are taking a dump in the toilet). So you should be on your feet moving things around or picking things up from the ground. All these are only possible during training when you use free weights. yes you may argue that there are machines to mimick these free weight movements. But the biomechanics of the movement will not be the same as everyone has different limb lengths while the machine is fixed at moving at a certain angle. Plus there are more options training with free weights.. you can train with bodyweight exercises (on the ground or using rings) or with kettlebells... slosh balls (the big red water ball i have).. olympic movements.. so much variety to fit possibly every training goal possible. So from now on.. i am gonna push myself to start prescribing more free weights exercises to the people i write programs for to really advocate this school of thought. today's workout

Fran

21-15-9 reps for time:

40kg Thrusters

Pull-ups

8:18 mins.

Finisher: 4 5-min rounds with 1-min rest intervals and body kicking technique on the speed-ball

I managed to achieve another PB today in Fran. My last timing was 8:20mins so i shaved 2 seconds off my time.. but this time it's not a modified Fran anymore.. its a full Fran. so i am quite happy. Plus i managed to do 15 thrusters in a row for the first set of thrusters. so overall.. i think it was quite a good workout. but it was quite tiring to box after that as my arms were like jelly and i could hardly keep them up when boxing. haha.