Success with weight machines??

My husband prefers machines. I give him a hard time for it, but that's just to be a pain. He is seeing strength gains.

You WILL see strength gains if you challenge your muscles. Bodyweight, machines, freeweights, doesn't matter. It's whether or not the exercise you're doing is challenging your muscles.

That said, the reason *I* am so in favor of freeweights is that good form requires that you will be strengthening stabilizing muscles and will develop strength moving the object in a 3-D space, thus having more "real world" applications, since in the real world, you do manipulate weight through more than a curve required by a machine.

But yeah, you'll still see strength results if you are challenging your present strength level, no matter what you choose.

Weight machines are great for some things, and not so great for others. Yes, you can get stronger just using machines, but why would you want to? You'd have more success by incorporating some barbell or dumbbell work. If you just have access to machines, use them. It's better than nothing. But if you have access to both, why would you not use both?

I have a pair of dumbbells and a machine. The dumbbells I have are not heavy enough for certain exercises like bench press, so I stick with the machine. For the first 6-8 workouts I did, I made rapid strength gains on bench press and leg press. So, like others have said, you can definitely get stronger with them.

The difference between free weights and machines: Free weights force you to use muscles to stabilize the weight you are lifting/moving. Machine weights are on a guided plane that may or may not be comfortable for you to move in that fixed motion. Both can help build and grow muscle when used correctly, however, free weights are considered superior. I use both. I want to bench press, however, the rules where I lift state I must have someone spot me when benching. This is not feasible, therefore, I use incline chest press. I also use the hip flexor/abductor and leg press machines because I'm trying to build some isolated muscles around my legs. Everything else is free weight with dumbells or barbell and mostly complex exercises, with some isolation for weak areas that need strengthened.