Rick’s Rants and Raves

This weekend I reviewed some of my workout logs for the last 7 months. I started with the YMCA Fitstart program, and have since been largely designing my own routine based on a number of books and web sites.

The biggest difference between then and now is that I’m not currently doing much with the weight machines, being convinced that free-weights are better for me to reach my goals. I still do a number of cable based exercises because they allow a freer range of motion. One exercise that I’ve been doing on and off for much of that time is the cable lat row. I’ve been progressing very well: 4 months ago I felt like I stalled at 90 lbs; now I’m able to do 140.

I noticed that the last time I did the machine bench press, my top weight for a set of 10 repetitions was 225 lbs. That was several months ago primarily because of my switch to free-weights. Last week I did dumbbell bench presses at 120 lbs total (60 in each hand), and that was about a much as I could handle without risking a bloody nose or a concussion. The contrast (225 versus 120) got me to thinking–had I lost strength, or was there that much difference between free-weight and machine weight?

So yesterday at the end of my workout (which didn’t include a bench press exercise) I got back on the bench press machine. I did sets of 5 repetitions increasing weight each time until I got to 250 lbs–the full stack of weights on the machine. My last set of dumb bell bench presses (a week ago) were sets of 5, and the max weight I could do then was 120 lbs.

Now I understand why some weight machines don’t have weight measurements on the plates, only plate numbers (e.g. 1,2,3…). The stack may weigh a certain amount, but the work done by the levers, pulleys, chains, etc is probably far less. I used to be irritated by the machines that didn’t have a weight, because I wanted to know real mass! I can’t brag “I turned it up to eleven on the leg extensions today!”

But at least now I can tell someone I can bench press 250! I just have to hope no one asks me to do it with a barbell.