Weight machines or hydraulic ones?

pudgeylou

I currently belong to a gym in the city I live in, and besides the free weights all of their machines are the weighted machines with the cables and pulleys. I just joined a second gym in the city I work in (sometimes I get tied up late at work and can't make it to my gym before they close so this one is closer) Anyway, it is a small gym and they have a very small selection of free weights and all of their machines are these electronic hydraulic machines with a digital readout that says resistance. You increase or decrease the resistance with these buttons on the handles of the machine.

My question is....Does the resistance number equate to pounds or is this something entirely different? How would I figure out what I should be using when any time I have used a machine it has been the cable/pulley weighted ones?

If you haven't guessed, I am pretty new at this.

McBully4

My gym has everything, all the bells and whistles. And I have never encountered anything like the hydraulic machines you are talking about. In either case free weights are better.

vtmoon

Hydraulic resistance is pretty much the same as machines with pulleys just utilizing oil instead of cables to get that resistance. They might be off by a little since they aren't being tested all the time, but they tend to be close enough to the number shown. When Hydraulic resistance machine fail you can easily tell, cause they totally stop moving or become very loose (aka light weight)

wellbert

Use the biological machine you were born with, and pick up the free weights.