A 1-minute, Monday-Friday email, to help busy professionals move more, eat better, and think clearer.
Mano Minute (3/11): Free weights vs. machines. Here is my honest take 🏋️
|
Mano Minute (3/11): Free weights vs. machines. Here is my honest take 🏋️ There is a gym snobbery I want to address. A lot of people treat machines like they are for beginners. Like real lifters only use free weights. Planet Fitness gets mocked constantly because it is mostly machines. I disagree with this entirely. Machines are excellent. Not just for beginners, but for everyone. Here is why. Machines protect your form. They guide your movement through a fixed range of motion, which means you can load more weight without worrying about technique breaking down. You also do not need a spotter. And switching weights takes seconds. For someone newer to the gym, machines build confidence and teach your muscles the movement patterns before adding the instability of free weights. That is a smart progression, not a weakness. Free weights are also important. They require more stabilization, recruit more muscle groups at once, and translate well to real world movement. Deadlifts, squats, dumbbell rows. These are irreplaceable. But the idea that one is superior to the other is wrong. In my own training, I aim for at least one or two machine exercises every session. I use both. They serve different purposes and they work well together. The best gym approach is not free weights only or machines only. It is understanding what each does well and using both. TIP: If you have been avoiding machines because they feel like a beginner tool, try adding one to your next session intentionally. You might be surprised how much you feel it. |
Mano Minute
A 1-minute, Monday-Friday email, to help busy professionals move more, eat better, and think clearer.
Mano Minute (3/20): The 12 years no one talks about ⏳ The average lifespan in the United States is 76.1 years. The average healthspan is 63.7 years. That is a 12 year gap. Healthspan is the number of years you live in good health, free from chronic disease, disability, and significant decline. Lifespan is just how long you are alive. Most conversations about longevity focus on living longer. But the more important question is how you are living during those years. That 12 year difference...
Mano Minute (3/19): Your brain can only handle four habits at a time 🔄 We try to change too many things at once. New diet, new workout plan, better sleep schedule, daily journaling, less screen time. All at the same time. And by week three, most of it falls apart. Here is why. The human brain cannot sustainably stick to more than about five new habits at a time. And even five is pushing it. The more decisions you have to make each day about new behaviors, the faster your willpower runs out....
Mano Minute (3/18): What happens while you sleep 🧠 For a long time, I thought sleep was just one thing. You close your eyes, you rest, you wake up. Turns out, there is a lot more going on. Your brain cycles through distinct stages throughout the night. The two main categories are NREM and REM. NREM stands for Non Rapid Eye Movement sleep. This is where your body does its physical repair work. Tissue rebuilding, immune system strengthening, and growth hormone release all happen here. NREM...