Workout Without Weights

So, I really got into working out when I was 18 or so. I knew nothing whatsoever about working out… I just knew that I wanted to add some muscle. I wanted to have a variety of exercises to do, so I bought a fairly cheap all-in-one workout station that would allow me to do my chest workout, back workout, arm workout, and at the same time, workout at home.

So, did I add some size and muscle with this machine? Of course… but machines are the absolute worst if you’re looking to get some real world strength. If you’re a newbie to the whole working out thing, do NOT only use machines, and I would highly recommend also not wasting your money on some expensive machine. If you’re looking to workout with weights, using freeweights (dumbbells, barbells, etc) is much better than using machines.

Do bodybuilders use machines? Yes… but they use it as a supplement to other free weight exercises. What is actually good about machines is that they isolate and target very specific muscles… so they may add some good definition… but it’s not useful real world strength. When using a machine all of the stabilization is done completely (almost) for you… this is not good… and you’re also set to use one very specific plane of motion.

Finally, if you are gonna get a machine, do NOT buy a bowflex or some bullshit like that. They just take you further away from what a real workout should be.

Ok, went on a bit of a tangent there… enough about workout machines. Stay tuned for what I tried next.

Hey guys, and welcome to my blog!

My name’s Steve, and I created this blog to talk about working out and how to workout without weights… how I think it’s a far superior alternative to typical gym membership, and where you can find some great “workout without weights” exercises.

How’d I get into this stuff? Well I used to be big on the gym. I wasn’t a gym rat, but I went regularly to keep in shape and to try to sculpt out my body to how I wanted it to look. My results were ok… but one thing I absolutely hated were the tedious workouts I’d do. My chest workout would consist of some bench press and butterflies… well what’s that essentially? Pushing a weight up and down… over and over… up and down, up and down. Chest workout… bicep workout… back workout… my whole workout routine… all the same tedious stuff… I hated it.

I soon started to lose motivation to go to the gym because I’d just dread the tedious workouts. Moreover I started to learn about fitness started to question all this boring crap I was doing? How good was my chest workout and my bicep workout for me really? Sure I was building muscle, but was it USEFUL muscle? The more I learned, the more I knew there was a better way to workout.

You see when you do a chest workout like bench press, you’re isolating some very specific muscles to lift that bar up and down… you’re not using many of your stabilizing muscles, and you’re not using many different muscle groups at the same time… you’re isolating your chest and some arm muscles. What you’re doing essentially is creating a giant slab of muscle which doesn’t translate very well to real world applications. In real life you DO use many stabilizing muscle when lifting or moving things… you do use different muscle groups together… it’s not just up and down up and down along one plane of motion.

Alrighty guys… that doesit for my first blog post. Hope you enjoyed it and got something useful out of it. Stay tuned and let me tell you where you can get some great workout exercises without weights AND workout at home without weights… AND build real world strength… not giant slabs of useless (well not completely useless) muscle.