Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 240: Machines That Are *BETTER* Than Free Weights

Episode Date: November 23, 2022

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I take it on the days I train as well as the days I do not because Recharge also contains L-carnitine, which can help with promoting muscle recovery and decreasing soreness, as well as some ingredients to help with creatine utilization. And of course, my favorite supplements for my ancillary micronutrient health are Legion's Multivitamin and Legion's Greens Powder. Not only do these two products contain a ton of high-quality vitamins and minerals, they also contain unique adaptogens like KSM-66 ashwagandha and reishi mushroom, which I like to take each and every day to promote my health. If you want to cover all your bases with a high quality protein, creatine, post-workout,

or the ancillary micronutrient health stuff like greens, powders, and multivitamin, I encourage you to go over to legionathletics.com and check out using the promo code DANNY. That'll save you 20% on your first order and you'll rack up points that you can use the same way as cash every time you use the code and you'll also be supporting the show. Welcome in everybody to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. In today's episode, we are going to be going over some of my favorite non-free weight movements, talking about machines, whether they be plate loaded or selectorized. Those are the ones that you adjust the pin on. We'll be talking about cable movements. And I'm doing this because I

am a huge proponent of resistance training and specifically free weight training. I've trained clients for years using a combination of free weights, machines, cables, barbells, dumbbells, free weights, machines, cables, barbells, dumbbells, kettlebells, you name it. And I think every single tool in your toolbox has value. And my goal with this episode is to expand your repertoire, to give you more arrows in your quiver, to encourage you to include more machine training in your workouts. I know how awesome free weights are. I know that the requirement of intermuscular coordination and intramuscular coordination to create stability, get muscles working together in concert, to work against a somewhat variable load is amazing. There is no substitute for free weight training. That's not what I'm saying. But if you're a bodybuilder, you're interested in

muscle growth, you want to optimize for output, you maybe have joint sensitivity or pain. Machines can be a wonderful tool to help you get more out of your training. So much so sometimes that I think there are machine movements that are better, equal, or at least versatile enough to replace their free weight counterpart. And what I want to do is encourage you to use these machines specifically, these devices specifically, so as to enhance the quality of your training in the long run. Not replace free weight counterparts that hit the same movement, but perhaps encourage you to include these every once in a while. And this is something that I do a lot with our online clients at Core Coaching Method in our app training communities. We're

constantly cycling exercises through so as to keep people from going insane, but also so as to really reap the benefits of how machines work, how cables work, how free weights work, picking which exercises we apply really a ton of progression to and get heavy on, whereas selecting ones that might be better for catching a pump. So we're going to go through a list of exercises that you can do with machines and cables that I think are amazing and should definitely be added to your program. The first exercise on this list is the cable chest fly using a dual arm cable machine. So these are the machines that come with two arms that can basically be oriented in three-dimensional space moving in and out on an

x and y axis. You can adjust both arms independently, but for this exercise, we're looking at setting them up in an abducted position where the arms are out and away from the base of the machine. And your arms are going to do the same. You're going to pull the cables together so as to bring your chest muscles into the most shortened position. A lot of times, this is done using a pec deck, which is a machine with kind of fixed arms that's designed specifically for this movement. It's not as versatile as a dual cable, or it's done on a bench with dumbbells. This is, of course, known as a dumbbell cable fly. Now, both of these movements are good. Both the dumbbell cable fly and the machine pec fly are good. I would say that the dumbbell fly is probably below average, not going to hurt you.

Suboptimal for loading the pec for a variety of reasons, the primary of which is that it's extremely hard at the bottom and almost negligible amount of resistance at the top in the shortened position. The pec deck's cool, but it can be a little bit funky in terms of getting the optimal position and arm path because it's so fixed. And this is why the cable pec fly on a dual cable kind of separates itself as being a really great tool for training that kind of isolated function of bringing the arm to the midline, that humerus coming across. We call that, it's also going to medially rotate the humerus, but we're going to bring the arm to the midline. Okay. We're going to translate the arm to the front of the body. We're going to do

both at the same time, finishing with our arms almost touching and really contract our pecs. And the reason I love this is because when you do this with a cable, you have a resistance profile that's very consistent, meaning you don't have a huge drop off at the bottom and almost no weight at the top the way you do when you do it with a dumbbell. So the first exercise on the list is the cable chest fly. And I love this exercise for anybody who wants to develop a better looking chest, who wants to develop muscle in their chest, who wants to increase their strength on pressing movements. So this is a great accessory movement for that. I really like this movement for anybody who might be sensitive to a lot of pressing, but they still want to challenge their chest in a way that maybe you would like to use less weight. So great exercise all around, very versatile. And of the

fly movements or of the movements that one would do for the chest that are flies, dumbbells, peck deck, and cable, I think this one reigns supreme by far. Sticking with the cables, I think this one reigns supreme by far. Sticking with the cables, we're going to talk about the cable lateral raise, Y raise, and front raise. And I really like dumbbell laterals, dumbbell Ys, and dumbbell front raises. We program them a lot. I think they're great. And I would say these two are more evenly matched than the dumbbell fly and the cable fly. But I really like cable wise, cable laterals and cable fronts for the same reason. You have a resistance profile that's a little bit more consistent. There's so few exercises you can really do to challenge and develop the shoulders. Like when it comes to legs, you've got squats, you've got lunges, you've got hinges, you've

got hack squats, you've got leg presses. You know, they're all variations of squatting and hinging essentially, but there's tons to choose from in the compound department. When it comes to shoulders, it's like overhead pressing, which isn't super comfortable for everybody due to range of motion and various limitations. You've got upright rows, which can be very challenging depending on your mobility and how comfortable you are doing that. And then you have the races, you've got rear delts, medial delts, front delts. And so you've got raises throughout those planes, you know, all the way from the front of the body, all the way out to the side and back of the body

that essentially train those deltoid heads. And then of course you have shrugging and face pulls, which can work some of the upper back posterior elements of the shoulder, but you're limited in how many movements we have for these muscles due to their architecture and due to the unique way we have to load them. So assuming, you know, you're like, huh, well, I know that raises are very effective and very comfortable for most people. What if I had more of a library in terms of the types of raises I'm doing? And you guys would be shocked at how many clients we bring on and work with that have never done a cable lateral raise before or a cable front raise before. And I think these movements are amazing for simply expanding the number of shoulder exercises you

have to choose from. Like I said, I don't think that these two comparatively, the dumbbell raise and the cable raise are as far apart in terms of their efficacy as the dumbbell chest fly and the cable chest fly. I do believe that the dumbbell and cable chest fly are substantially farther apart with the chest fly on the cable being better. But these are a great way to either adjust the resistance profile so that it feels more consistent, try something new, expand a little bit on what it is that you can incorporate and do routine. And these exercises are really, really, really easy to do. If you can't get the dumbbells you need, maybe you can find a cable machine

and just try replacing your dumbbell raises with these. Give it a try once or twice. I think that you'll enjoy them. What's going on, guys? Taking a break from this episode to tell you a little bit about my coaching company, Core Coaching Method. More specifically, our app-based training. We partnered with Train Heroic to bring app-based training to you using the best technology and best user interface possible. You can join either my Home Heroes team, or you can train from home with bands and dumbbells, or Elite Physique, which is a female bodybuilding-focused program where you can train at the gym with equipments designed specifically to help you develop strength, as well as the glutes, hamstrings, quads, and back.

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ask for substitutions. It's a really cool training community and you can try it completely free for seven days. Just click the link in the podcast description below. Can't wait to see you in the core coaching collective, my app-based training community. Back to the show. Hey guys, taking a break from the action to tell you about one of our favorite new sponsors, Underdog Fantasy. If you're like me, you love sports. Sports was actually how I got into fitness in the first place. And one of my favorite things to do when I'm not working out or working with my clients is watch and engage in

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Danny, and they will match your first deposit up to a100. You'll have a blast playing underdog all season long. Back to the action. The next one, another cable movement, is the overhead cable tricep extension. You can do this with a rope. You can do this with the dual cable as well. But what I like this exercise for is hitting that long head of the tricep where the shoulder is usually going to be in a position that the elbows are overhead. And when the elbows go up and overhead, what tends to happen is that long head of the tricep, which actually attaches to the shoulder blade, it attaches to your scapula. It gets put into a position where it can be loaded a little more efficiently. And oftentimes what people will do is they will try to hit this muscle using a dumbbell overhead extension,

which is okay, and a skull crusher, which is okay. I prefer to do skull crushers with dumbbells than I do the easy bar, but both of these movements can be tricky if you have elbow pain. So as somebody who's dealt with chronic elbow pain on and off for the better part of my entire training career due to hypermobility and loading too much, too many heavy bench presses into hyper elbow extension. I dealt with some elbow sensitivity early on, and it was very challenging for me to train my triceps if I did not have a consistent resistance profile. Meaning if I had a movement like a skull crusher that was really, really hard at the bottom and put my elbow into position where there's a lot of stretch on that tendon, I'd be very

uncomfortable. And so I did a lot of traditional rope extensions for triceps, which challenged the triceps quite a bit with an even resistance profile. But once I switched to doing some overhead ones as well, I found my elbows got a little stronger in that exposed position. They felt a little more comfortable than some of the other ones. And so this is one that I actually think is a good beginner option. If you ultimately want to do skull crushers or dumbbell overhead extensions for any reason, you can try starting here and it will really, really make a big, big difference. I like this one a lot. And I just think as far as tricep exercises go, it's definitely worth throwing into the mix because it can be really comfortable

and it can be really good at hitting that long head of the tricep. Okay. This one is a machine. It's usually selectorized, but occasionally you'll find a plate loaded model, but I tend to prefer selectorized because that's going to involve cables, going to allow for a more consistent resistance profile. If you do it plate loaded, there tends to be huge drop-offs in where it's hard and where it's easy. And this is the leg extension. And the reason this is a great exercise for the quadriceps is it tends to be the best way to hit the quadriceps in the shortened position. There's also some really good data to support that doing isometric holds in the leg extension can be beneficial for patellar tendinopathy. So if you have knee pain,

a lot of people say avoid this machine, but sometimes just holding the shortened position where the muscle is contracted with lightweight, building up isometric strength can be really, really valuable. This is obviously a great tool for bodybuilding. Any exercise that allows you to hit a muscle in its shortened position hard tends to be really good for getting a pump and really good for feeling the sensation and developing a mind muscle connection. So this is a really powerful tool for that. But, you know, we've got squats, we've got lunges, and some people just don't have the capacity to do those because of a lack of stability, because of a lack of, you know, perhaps integrity around the knee. Maybe they need to build up some strength first.

And while the leg extension might not be optimal, depending on what's causing your knee pain, it can be a very excellent exercise for developing strong quads and getting a nasty pump in the shortened position. Another thing a lot of people like to do for leg day is to get a really, really big leg pump. And most of the quad exercises people for leg day is to get a really, really big leg pump. And most of the quad exercises people choose from, like squatting, lunging, and leg pressing, and hack squatting, can be really challenging to do at high reps without incurring massive amounts of cumulative or overall fatigue. Now, the leg extension, on the other hand, doesn't seem to cause or present as large of a problem

with this because it's a little bit easier. It's a little bit simpler. It's an isolation exercise. It's a single joint exercise. So this can be a phenomenal exercise for different people. And it's been really, really bastardized as being more dangerous than I think it is. So again, you can try isometrics. You can try using it to get a huge, huge pump. You can do drop sets with it. And it is truly the best exercise for training the legs on the quad specifically in their shortened position. Okay. The next movement on this list, another machine, this one is almost always best plate loaded. There are multiple variations of this. And it is the leg press. There are horizontal leg presses where you're pressing the leg press on a very horizontal plane. There are entirely vertical leg presses where your back is flat

and your feet are perpendicular to the floor and it's coming up and down. And then there are angled leg presses where sometimes you're pressing up and away from the body on a diagonal. And of these options, I do prefer diagonal and horizontal over vertical. I don't so much like the leg presses where you're flat on a pad and lowering the weight directly down from over, like on top of you perpendicularly, because typically at the bottom, you are going to have some lumbar flexion that occurs when doing that. And that can present some potential danger and injurious potential at higher reps and at higher weights. But I do find leg presses to be quite safe. One thing you might note if you have high blood pressure is that it's oftentimes a

good idea to be careful about leg press intensity because the leg press does put you in a position where you can really see big spikes in blood pressure. But what I like about the leg press does put you in a position where you can really see big spikes in blood pressure. But what I like about the leg press is it's stable, unlike a squat. It is a two-legged hip extension, knee extension pattern, but it is knee extension dominant. So you are going to get a lot of quads when doing the leg press. You can adjust your foot position more or less to bias the glutes or to bias the quads. I used to believe that you could bias the hamstrings by moving your feet up relatively high on the platform.

I don't so much believe that now. Instead, I try to focus almost exclusively on keeping my feet in the center of the platform, somewhat close to bias the glutes, or a little bit wider and lower on the platform with my feet out to bias the quads. That is a kind of basic run of the mill. The lower your feet are on the platform, the more quads, the upper, higher up you go, the less quads. You can't get a ton of hamstring just by going to the top. If your feet are relatively close together, I find you can get quite a bit of glute, especially on those diagonal ones and especially on those horizontal ones. Now, I like the leg press because it's stable and can pull

yourself into the pad. You can create a lot of pelvic stability. You can do it single-legged, which a lot of people forget that you can do many leg presses unilaterally. So that's awesome. It's a great way to create pelvic stability and play around with unilateral training for novices. You can load it pretty, what I would describe as pretty virtually. There's cable versions, which aren't as usually good as plate loaded versions, but you're starting usually with a sled that weighs anywhere between 45 to 100 pounds that's on the machine. And then you can go up from there and it tends to be pretty accessible. Another thing I really love doing on leg presses that not too many people think about or talk about is calf raises. And I mean specifically calf raises that bias the gastrocnemius. So there's two muscles in the calf,

the soleus and the gastrocnemius. The soleus is trained best when doing a seated calf raise where the knees are bent. When the knees are bent, you'll use quite a bit more soleus. The standing calf raise, which is oftentimes done in a standing calf raise machine, biases the gastrocnemius or the calf muscle, the two-headed calf muscle. You need to have both pretty strong and pretty hypertrophied to have nice looking calves, by the way, but standing calf raises is going to develop the muscle that's more closer to the surface. So if you want to have calves that pop, maybe you're going to the beach really soon and you want to have good looking calves, I'd spend a little more time doing standing calf

raises or calf raises where your knees are extended, which you can do wonderfully on a leg press. You can do these on the horizontal, but they tend to work best on the diagonal. And what I love about this is I find that most standing half raises create a ton of compression upward on, on your like mid to lower trap cervical spine area, uh, upper thoracic spine, just cause you're stepping into them. And it's like putting on a pair of really heavy shoulder pads. When you do it on a leg press, you can just do that range of motion of dorsiflexion, getting that big stretch, getting that big contraction. And the weight isn't on your shoulders. It isn't on your back. It doesn't feel uncomfortable. You're substantially less likely to bounce up and down.

So love the leg press, love doing it unilaterally, love using it to bias quads and glutes, and even love it for standing calf raise variations or knee extended calf raise variations. Very, very good machine worth having in your repertoire. And again, another one, much like the leg extension that gets a bad wrap. A lot of people say it's bad for your knees. And I just do not find that to be true. I think it's a very, very safe and effective exercise. Sticking with the lower body exercises, let's talk about the hamstring curl machines, both the seated and the lying hamstring curl. I think these are really, really effective. Remember, the hamstrings have two primary functions, hip extension and knee flexion, just like the quads perform hip flexion and knee

extension. So these two muscles, the quads and the hamstrings are considered to essentially be antagonistic. They both do the exact opposite of one another, just like the biceps and triceps. So much so that the biceps femoris is a hamstring muscle, right? And the quadricep muscle acts almost exactly like the triceps in your arm to extend the knee in the same way it extends the elbow. But what's tricky about training the hamstrings is it's very easy to train hip extension with free weights, right? You can easily train Romanian deadlifts, dumbbell Romanian deadlifts, right? The phenomenal exercise that challenges the hamstrings in their length and position. But how do we train that knee flexion with free weights? Well, it's a little tricky. You can use apparatus like a lying or gliding hamstring curl. You can use a Swiss ball or exercise yoga ball,

though that's not a free weight. You could do a Nordic hamstring curl, which is quite challenging and very advanced. Many people just simply can't do these. We do occasionally program them in our programming groups or occasionally program them for online clients. But I would say that of all the exercises we program that we need to substitute or adjust, this is probably the number one one

that we have to adjust is the Nordic. So that's where these machines really come into play. They are the most efficient and effective way to train the knee flexion element of the hamstring. So you can do them lying on your stomach, which is harder in the shortened position, or you can do them seated, which is harder in the lengthened position. When you're seated, your hips are flexed. So the hamstring is really lengthened quite a bit because remember they're a hip extensor. So when you put the hip into flexion, the opposite, you're going to stretch them. When you put the hips into extension, you're going to shorten them. So when you're seated, you're going to really hit the hamstrings hardest as knee flexors in the lengthened position. And when you

are lying down, you're going to hit the hamstrings hardest as knee flexors in the shortened position. And both of these exercises are really, really effective for adding a little bit of extra volume to your hamstring work that let's be honest, doesn't have to be hip extension biased and doesn't require you use a ton of weight. Because the tricky thing about RDLs, even if you try to get creative with it and cutesy with it by doing B stance options, which are great because it can allow you to kind of shift away from all the heavy loading required to have an effective stimulative set of an RDL, you're probably going to have to use a lot of weight to train them because they're quite strong. And the

more strong you get, the more weight you need to use to challenge a heavy hip extension biased movement like an RDL. So love those machines for that. Speaking of hip extension, let's talk about the Smith machine hip thrust. So perhaps the most hated on machine in the gym is the Smith machine. You're going to have a bar that's moving up and down on a fixed track, the Smith machine, you're going to have a bar that's moving up and down on a fixed track, usually vertically. Occasionally, you will have some slant, whether that be a slant in or a slant out, can really depend on how you set up. But let's just, for the sake of argument, assume that this Smith machine is moving perfectly vertical. I like doing my hip thrusts on the Smith machine because when you do them with a barbell, it's very hard to maintain a straight

bar path. And because the glutes are so strong, it's extremely, extremely easy to get three, four, five, six plates, seven plates on a hip thrust and finding the perfect center with that much weight on a free weight hip thrust and trying to maintain your spinal integrity and your bench positioning is a pain in the ass. Being able to outsource that stability to something like a hip thrust machine can be really, really valuable. So imagine all the cues are the same. We want vertical shins at the top. We want our chin tucked. We want to reach posterior pelvic tilt and maximize our hip extension at the top of the movement. On a free weight, I've got to make sure I'm holding that bar perfectly in my lap. I got to make sure I'm perfectly in the middle of

it. I got to put my clips on. I got to make sure that I'm controlling the eccentric. All of these things are easier when done on a Smith machine. So we've programmed a lot more Smith machine hip thrusting in the last two years than ever, because we just believe it's that much more effective or that much more valuable of a tool. Now, occasionally we will have clients do heavier barbell hip thrusts for that strength, for that stability, and a lot of women just love it. They love doing it on a freeway, feel a little more visceral. Men too. Nothing wrong with doing them. We have just found we really, really like them on the Smith machine. And the last machine option here, another chest one, surprisingly, is actually the converging chest presses. So these are often plate loaded. And when I say converging, they're chest presses

where the arms will at the end point be closer together than they were at the beginning. There are some that are straight out in front of you, which I don't love. There are some that don't move at all. I like ones that converge where the arms are going to move closer together because remember, the chest is going to pull the humerus towards each other in front of the body. So if you have those converging arm paths, those work really, really well. And so I love those plate loaded incline. Decline can be a little tricky, but I like converging chest presses. And you can emulate this with a cable just by wheeling a bench over and using that dual cable that you'd use for the fly. A few honorable mentions for this list.

I like chest supported rows, particularly plate loaded. I think those can be a really effective tool. And I do prefer them in most instances to barbell rows, barbell rows. I still quite like, I really like Pendlay rows for strength and power, but chest supported rows, even one arm dumbbell rows are preferable in my opinion for most clients. If they want to get a strong training stimulus out of their upper back while having minimal amount of fatigue to recover from the way you might when doing something like a barbell row. Another machine that I like is actually the assisted pull-up machine. Now you can use bands or you can just do a lat pull down,

but a lot of people would like to work towards their first pull-up. And many gyms do have an assisted pull-up machine that allows you to gradually use less weight to support you on your pull-ups. So that's a really, really good option that I like quite a bit. Another machine I like is the Preacher Curl. It's actually just a bench, but it holds your arms in front of the body in flexion, which allows you to really challenge your biceps quite a bit. And I really like doing preacher curls for bicep growth. So that's a list guys of some machine slash non-free weight movements that I quite like a lot for helping you kind of add some more arrows

to your quiver, so to speak, and expand what it is that you're doing in your training. I want to thank you all so much for tuning in. Encourage you to leave a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts and on Spotify, and I will catch you on the next one.