Are Workout Machines Damaging Your Body?

I’m typing this off the top of my head and going from my personal experiences, from what I read from my NASM certification, and from Paul Chek’s studies.

Let’s start out with the fact that most people sit while they work, drive, eat, have conversations, use their phone, etc. And then they go to the gym and use machines that require you to sit down. Having the body in a sitting position over works certain muscles and weakens the opposite muscles.

On top of that, your entire core (torso not including limbs) is not doing it’s job to stabilize since your body is ‘relaxed’ while you are sitting. Which may be a reason why people have back, shoulder, hip pain and muscle imbalances.

In a nutshell, using machines places the load only on the targeted muscle and do not require the core to be stabilized, which does not translate to every day activities.

I would recommend using free weights instead since you can duplicate real life movements more effectively and also engage your core while standing with free weights and being able to move in any plane.

I hope you enjoyed this post that I just wrote from the top of my head (no edits, extra research) and it’s my first one on Medium. I used to write blogs for a company I used to be part of, so I’m not a complete noob when it comes to writing.