The 3 Gym Machines You Should Quit Using Today

(Photo by sugarbureau on Flickr)

I’ve been mentioning machines in the gym a lot recently, and the main reason is because it’s been proven, time and time again, that free weights and compound exercises (like squats, deadlifts, pushups, and so on) are far better, faster, and more efficient tools to get you in shape.

But there are still lots of people using machines, and I want you guys to continue reading my site and taking what you need from it — we’re trying to be inclusive here, not to put up walls around fitness pursuits.

That being said, there are still some machines that are better left alone, not only for injury reasons but just because there are far better alternatives out there. Here are 3 of the most common ones.

No More Ab Crunch Machine

Most gyms have a machine that cost several thousand dollars that lets you do exactly one single ab crunch. It’s generally not a great machine. There are dozens of better abdominal exercises you could be doing that have nothing to do with that machine — leg lifts, cable pulls, various compound exercises on the ground, bicycles, whatever — and all of them are generally considered more efficient, safer, and in the end, easier than that machine.

So why do most gyms have this machine? Hard to say, really — sometimes when you’re outfitting your gym, you’ll get a great deal on a giant range of machines and you can’t always specify exactly which ones you don’t want, or, like a lot of machines, it’s just necessary to have an ab crunch machine to provide an entry point for people who are dead-set on doing absolutely zero unassisted exercises. The sooner you can graduate from this to any of the other hundreds of options, the better.

Save Your Shoulders For Free Weights

Ask any personal trainer about your shoulders — you often need to choose lighter weights than you’d think when starting out, as certain exercises work parts of our shoulders that just don’t get worked on a day-to-day basis like, say, our quads or glutes might (with that thing we all do called walking).

Shoulder press machines have, like every machine, a pretty limited range of motion, and for some reason, tend to be ones that many gym-goers accidentally over-do it with, injuring their underdeveloped shoulders due to a machine not set to the right height, weights being too high, or the closed track of the machine not allowing them to adjust their lift until it’s too late.

Stick with barbells, dumbbells, or body weight for shoulder presses, and leave the machines alone.

Forget the Adductor and Abductor Machines

It’s almost universally acknowledged among trainers that these machines are useless — they work a very specific part of your groin that is always far better served with a compound lift or squat of some kind.

As soon as you get used to more effective, efficient workouts, these machines can be safely ignored for good.

There’s also a bit of gym bias, generally from men, towards the fact that the adductor/abductor machines are “for women only.” While that might be the way a lot of people in the gym think (ignore that kind of thinking in general — fitness shouldn’t be gendered in such a way), the real fact is that everyone should be working their adductors and abductors — all men included — with smarter exercises.