Where are all the machines?
When people walk into Inclusive Fitness, they’re often surprised that there is so little exercise equipment. The mental picture that many of us have of a typical gym is a space filled with row upon row of weight and cardio machines, each with a very specific design and purpose.
Most people don’t know it, but weight machines were developed decades ago for two reasons: rehabilitation and intensive bodybuilding. Weight training machines can apply very low to very high resistance through a specific range of motion (ROM) – e.g., fully extending the arm or leg in a healthy movement. They also provide a defined course of travel – e.g., guiding the arms through a strict path of movement in the chest press.
This allows people who have injuries to develop strength safely and bodybuilders to focus on highly specific muscle groups with high intensity – even to “failure” (the point at which a muscle is no longer able to apply force) – which is essential to
hypertrophy (increased muscle size). Hypertrophy is, of course, the ultimate objective of bodybuilding. And even when used by elite athletes, resistance machines are almost always supplemental to free weights.
Weight training machines are great if your goal is either a) to recover from injury and develop a baseline of strength or b) to develop a muscular physique. If you – like me – are at least partially motivated by aesthetics and want to look fit, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that! If, on the other hand, your goal is functional fitness, then resistance machines have many drawbacks.
First, getting into/out of the machine is restrictive and can be uncomfortable, unsafe, and overwhelming for neurodiverse athletes. Contrary to popular belief, machines are not intuitive. Even a “chest press” is a learned movement with potential hazards if the athlete does not understand proper use.
Second, because many machines limit the course of travel the body can move through, the brain and muscles are not challenged to stabilize critical joints, like the shoulders, hips, and spine. The chest press machine, for example, does indeed work the chest muscles. Still, it does not introduce natural instability that the user must overcome when using body weight, free weights, bands, and cable machines.
Third, many machines also place the user in an unnatural position that would never be seen or used outside the gym. An excellent example of this is the seated leg press, one of the most popular low-body machines. If you analyze the body’s position using a typical leg press, it looks like someone doing a squat completely bent over, looking at the floor. That’s neither natural nor generalizable to real life.
Fourth, and related to the first issue, weight machines allow little to no opportunities to develop motor planning skills. The machine literally directs you through the movement pattern, so your brain and body do not need to work together to execute the movement through the range of motion. Potentially worse, because some machines place the body in an unnatural position or force one to move through a specific track, it’s even possible to learn improper movement patterns.
Fifth, free weights provide real-world proprioceptive feedback to athletes because of the natural instability they create. As a result, people who use free weights – whether pushing a heavy sled, carrying a sandbag, throwing and catching a weighted medicine ball, etc. – benefit from increased kinesthetic awareness and, again, improved motor planning.
As a result of these drawbacks, while the muscles may become stronger, the ability to use them practically outside of the gym is greatly diminished. For example, we have seen new IF athletes who have used weight machines elsewhere and moved impressive amounts of weight on a leg press machine but cannot perform a safe and stable squat through a full range of motion using just their own body weight. Their muscles may be “strong,” but for what purpose?
Focus on Functional Fitness
How many times in a week do we sit down and stand up or pick up heavy objects from the floor? Or place heavy objects overhead? Or need to get down on all fours to retrieve something and get back up again? It’s vital that we all are able to perform these types of natural movements in the real world with confidence and control. We need functional fitness. Resistance machines simply do not achieve this goal.
At Inclusive Fitness, we have a motto on one of our walls: “STRONG FOR A PURPOSE.” What’s that purpose? To improve the quality of life of our neurodivergent athletes through better long-term health outcomes, increased engagement, and higher productivity over the course of their lives. If by working with us our athletes are less likely to experience joint and other injuries, are more likely to participate in recreational and sports activities because they are strong, stable and confident, and are able to work at jobs that require them to be physically able, then we have achieved that purpose.
By the way, the exercises we do here, the equipment we use (and don’t use!), and the way we train our athletes are all based on best practices and a thorough understanding of leading strength and conditioning principles used by top-tier coaches around the world. They are carefully chosen to achieve these goals. We want everything we do here to translate to the real world, to generalize to activities of daily living, and make our already amazing athletes even more awesome than they already are.
So, we teach IF athletes to do hurdle steps, squats, overhead presses, push-ups, etc., through a full and natural range of motion and with good control over each part of the movement. This takes time and exceptional coaching skills. It also takes commitment and patience from our athletes and families. But it’s worth it because it makes all the difference in the real world.
The strongest, fittest, and most successful athletes do exactly the same thing. They focus on exercise programs that a) progressively challenge the mind and body to develop motor planning skills, b) improve joint and trunk stability by safely introducing instability, c) develop greater strength through gradual increases in resistance loads, d) and build stamina by adding sets and repetitions with fewer rest breaks over time to get the cardiovascular and muscular system accustomed to sustained activity. They do squats, overhead presses, sled pushes and drags, and heavy carries. They use bands, dumbbells, barbells, and body weight. They do exercises that help them move and compete in the real world.
That’s why we call the people we coach at Inclusive Fitness “athletes”… because they train like athletes! And over time, they begin to feel, move and even think like athletes.
That will prepare them for life in the real world. That’s what we mean by Strong For A Purpose!