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Weight Loss Exercise

Free Weights or Weight Training Machines



Should you do only free weights at the gym or use weight training machines? Something you need to keep in mind and never forget is that when you exercise, you are training for life. You still may spend an hour a day in the gym, although that will still leave another 23 hours or so for your muscles to function without using any fancy equipment.

Whenever you do any type of exercise, the movement of your body during the exercise is known as the range of motion. The more difficult the range of motion is, the more effective the exercise will be, because your body has to work twice as hard to perform the movement.

Bicep curls – Free Weights or Weight Training Machines

Take for the instance the classic dumbbell bicep curl. If you aren’t familiar with the exercise, it is performed by standing up straight with your palms facing forward, and a pair of dumbbells held down by your sides. You’ll contract your biceps to bring the dumbbells up to your shoulder height, then repeat the exercise as many times as you wish.

Using that same movement for exercise on a bicep curl machine, you should sit down, brace your upper arms on a pad, grasp 2 handles that are in front of you, then perform the same movement as above to move the handles in an upward motion.

Now, looking at the muscle contractions in this exercise, you are contracting essentially your biceps if you are using the curl machine, and that is pretty much all you are doing. When you use the machine you are sitting down, which will limit just how much your shoulders give. The machine has several muscles used in this exercise limited to the biceps, as well as the muscles in your forearms and fingers.

Limited Range of Motion with Machines

Free Weights or Weight Training Machines

Weight Workout Machine

Most of the time, when using machine weights, you will always be limited as to what type of exercise you can perform. You must always follow a strict procedure, which is pretty much the same with free weights. Unlike free weights, machine weights offer a certain degree of resistance.

One of the best thing about free weights is the fact that you move a little chuck around to select the weight you want to use. Instead of dragging it over to your exercise area, you simply select it on the machine. When you are tired during a workout, this can be a blessing.

A lot of people argue in the fact that free weights are the best for your body. While this is normally true, many people out there feel that machine weights are the best. There are pros and cons with both machines, although free weights have been around a lot longer and have been proven time after time to achieve dramatic results.

Body builders for example, have used free weights over the years to build very impressive bodies. If you ask most of them about machine weights, they would probably laugh at you and tell you that you need to quit joking around.

Should You Use Free Weights or Machines?

In a nutshell, free weights will use more of your muscles than the weight training machines do, which makes them more effective overall. This doesn’t mean that the machines are a waste of use, as they offer some great advantages. In some cases, it is best to stabilize the muscles that are being used in a movement, which is where machines are the best to use.

The decision on which to use for you should be based on what you hope to achieve with lifting weights and where you plan to use the equipment, such as home or at a gym. Both systems are great for your body, although the free weights are best to use if you want the best possible workout, and always ensure that your muscles are getting the right workouts they need.

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Weight Loss Exercise

How to Workout in Less Time


Everyone should learn the basics of how to workout in less time. One of the real problems that I have seen with people is a lack of a good plan when getting started in a gym. You look at the big loud guys, see what exercises they are doing and subconsciously or not you start doing the same things. Of course the big guys are breaking their body parts up and working each set until failure with lots of long breaks between sets.

Often you don’t need long rest between sets and you never need to spend more than 45 minutes doing a weight workout, in fact mine usually take me about 30 minutes. I think lots of people would like to know how to workout faster.

So here are some rules on how to workout in less time.

1. Start with a weight based warmup – I start by doing one easy set of each (usually with machines) bench press, shoulder press, lat pulldowns, rowing. Many people will start with 5 or 10 minutes on a bike, treadmill, or elliptical trainer to get the blood flowing and that is perfectly fine too but I like to engage the muscles.

2. Do weight workouts faster – Sure we need a break between working our individual muscles but a great way to workout in less time, get more done, and get your heart working, is to do exercises back to back. There are two methods to do this circuit training and supersetting and you can really mix these up between workouts. I personally work all my muscles in each workout three times a week.

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3. Cooldown and abs – I like to do my stretching after the workout and do a few sets of abs

Then I am done. The biggest part of the time of my workout is spent doing the actual weights and the best way to save time while doing the weights is either those supersets or the circuit training so I will explain how I do those here. Just to let you know I do both of these forms of exercise actively, I will do one for a few weeks and then switch to the other for a few weeks just because mixing it up with your muscles is so important to keeping interested and making gains continue without plateaus eating up your time.

Circuit Training To Workout in Less Time

Circuit training simply means that you are doing one long set or sets to work all your muscles. As you go between exercise you do not take a break and by the end of the set of sets you are exhausted and it probably takes 8-10 minutes to go through each one of these circuits. This is the first and most common method of how to workout in less time.

I like to start with my legs, chest, back, shoulders, biceps, and triceps, in that order. There reason for this is that as you get more tired and winded it is harder to work your big muscles like legs or back or chest near the end. Also after doing back your biceps are a bit tired and after doing shoulders or chest your triceps are tired so I leave those until the end.

Here is a sample circuit training set

Leg press, leg curls, bench press, seated rows, shoulder press, alternating curls, tricep pushdowns.

All of these exercises would be sets of 1o or so and almost until exhaustion (make sure you have the weight that you can’t do another rep after the set) and make sure you are doing each rep at a decently slow rate. You want to get the workout done fast but each set should be done slowly. There is very little break between exercises and after your set you will really want to take a few minutes before the next long set and get a good long drink of water as well.

Do two or three of these sets. for your workout.

Supersets To Workout in Less Time

How to Workout in Less Time

How to Workout in Less Time

Supersets are another way to get more done quickly. I will do two exercises back to back and then move to two other exercises. the idea is that I am exhausting the muscle group much quicker and by the end the muscles do really hurt. This is similar in time to circuit training but much more focussed for each set of two muscle groups.

Here is a sample superset workout

I will start with chest and back in this example and I don’t usually do legs in my supersets as they are tough enough on their own. I will so bench press and seated rows only for these two exercises and try and really kill it. I do a set of bench press with a fairly heavy weight for 8 or 10 reps and then as soon as I get finished I will move to the seated rows and do the same, after that set I go back to the bench, raise the weight by 20 pounds and do maybe 7-9 reps as I am more tired but my chest really has not recovered so I am not as strong yet. Then I go to the seated rows and just the same add 20 pounds and get as many reps as I can.

Those are the first two parts of the bigger set. Now that I am winded I will go back to the bench with the same weight on still and get as many reps as I can. At this point my chest is really tired and I can shoot for about 5 or 6 reps at most and then strip off the 20 pounds that I had added earlier and get another 3 or 4 reps out. My chest is burning and I am done with that. I then limp over to the seated row and do the same with a few reps, stripping some weight, and then getting a few more reps in.

I then take a break and do the same thing with a rotation of shoulder press, tricep pushdowns. Take a break and then do a mini circuit of abs and biceps.

Doing the Supersets like this is very taxing and I am always really sore the next day but if I try doing to many workouts like this I start really losing my motivation. It is really hard to do effectively for a long time.

As you can see from these examples there are a few ways to really change things up in your workout and in the end I am still able to work my whole body in one workout without spending too much time at the gym and really making the most of the time.

By trying circuit training or superset style workouts like this is the secret of how to workout in less time and really make you work for it. Try it out and tell us what you think of these methods below


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Weight Loss Exercise

Consistent weight loss and health



Consistency is the key to weight loss. I was reading through an article today and thinking about exactly what it is that really stops people that are looking at a real solution to weight loss. I believe that the key to healthy weight loss really is consistency and not trying to lose lots of weight in a week.

Consistent weight loss and health

Consistent weight loss and health

Consistency for Weight Loss

Consistent meals – One of the most important things that you can do with your health in general is to keep a nice even keel with respect to your blood sugar. When you eat a donut and coffee for breakfast and then nothing until lunch then you will get a big blood sugar spike and then a drop soon after and be just dragging your way until lunch. If you eat consistently small but evenly spaced meals every couple of hours during the day then you will not have this blood sugar problem.

Consistent meal sizes – If you make sure that you eat 200 – 400 calorie meals then this will go hand in hand with the point above. Having even sized meals will mean that you are not bloated after one meal and then hungry after the next. Of course there may be a problem with dinner being a little bigger and an evening meal being a little smaller but overall this consistent eating will make you feel much better and your weight losses will be more consistent.

Consistent exercise – I know some people that will exercise a lot on the weekend but get nearly no exercise during the week. This is really quite dangerous. If your body is not being exercised at least somewhat on a daily basis then these big events on the weekends can be damaging to your muscles and also lead to more injuries because of the stress you are putting the muscles through. Much better to have a quick workout in the morning and evening and then still push it on the weekend, then to takes four or five days off in a stretch and not get any exercise until Saturday.

Consistent rest – I have hit on this a few times in the past and rest is important to your well being as well as the healing of your muscles after exercise. Stretch daily, sleep well most nights and if you need it a hot tub, heating pad, or massage can do wonders to get rid of those little aches and pains that may not be going away quickly and holding yopu back a bit from going all out when you want to.

Remember that consistency is the key. Weight loss is something that often people want to see those big losing weeks but it really is much more healthy and possible to be consistent. Losing two or three pounds a week is much better then losing six pounds one week and losing nothing the next couple weeks.As we get ready for Christmas and then make new years resolutions later this month we are always looking at pushing ourselves or pulling back so try to think about this and make sure that you keep your consistency