Smith Machine vs Free Weights, for squats

[Kraken]

Years ago i had a trainer who taught me form, and he frequently said that a smith machine is inferior to free squatting since the machine does not recruit stabilizer muscles. Made sense and I have never used a smith machine. Well, I'm tired of paying Anytime $50 / month and there are very few other choices that are a short drive. Okay, there is one choice, planet fitness. Yuck, but they at least have smith machines. How big a difference will this make for a guy who is not a hard core bodybuilder, just trying to stay fit?

 

[SFGiants]

Years ago i had a trainer who taught me form, and he frequently said that a smith machine is inferior to free squatting since the machine does not recruit stabilizer muscles. Made sense and I have never used a smith machine. Well, I'm tired of paying Anytime $50 / month and there are very few other choices that are a short drive. Okay, there is one choice, planet fitness. Yuck, but they at least have smith machines. How big a difference will this make for a guy who is not a hard core bodybuilder, just trying to stay fit?

It will do just fine for you, just get your feet out in front of the bar. @TomJ has spoken about it before.

 

[CJ]

Years ago i had a trainer who taught me form, and he frequently said that a smith machine is inferior to free squatting since the machine does not recruit stabilizer muscles. Made sense and I have never used a smith machine. Well, I'm tired of paying Anytime $50 / month and there are very few other choices that are a short drive. Okay, there is one choice, planet fitness. Yuck, but they at least have smith machines. How big a difference will this make for a guy who is not a hard core bodybuilder, just trying to stay fit?

Both are fine exercises, just different tools. Try out the Smith, see if you like it.

One thing to note, when less stabilization is required, your body can produce more output. This goes for all exercises and their variations.

 

[TomJ]

Years ago i had a trainer who taught me form, and he frequently said that a smith machine is inferior to free squatting since the machine does not recruit stabilizer muscles. Made sense and I have never used a smith machine. Well, I'm tired of paying Anytime $50 / month and there are very few other choices that are a short drive. Okay, there is one choice, planet fitness. Yuck, but they at least have smith machines. How big a difference will this make for a guy who is not a hard core bodybuilder, just trying to stay fit?

You can absolutely get by with smith machines.

Your trainer is right, for a general fitness sense, free bar squatting is preferable in most instances as its better at recruiting stabilizing muscles in the low back, erectors, hips, ankles ect. maintaining strength in all these smaller support muscle groups are important for injury prevention and long term wellness.

all that being said, not having access to free bar squatting isnt the end of the world, and you can stay fit and healthy without it. Free bar squats arent the only movement that engages all those stabilizing muscles, hell its not even the best movement for it.

You can augment your training with walking lunges with some dumbbells for arguably a greater impact al mobility and stabilization.

 

[andy]

Both are fine exercises, just different tools. Try out the Smith, see if you like it.

One thing to note, when less stabilization is required, your body can produce more output. This goes for all exercises and their variations.

what CJ say's - it's the reason Im doing smith. as a free weight exercise u can still do walking lunges. If thats not enough add leg presses and the king of them all - Bulgarian single leg split squats ( I do mine in smith ,again )

 

[CJ]

Bulgarian single leg split squats ( I do mine in smith ,again )

These are soooo much better in the Smith machine!!!

 

[andy]

These are soooo much better in the Smith machine!!!

I absolutely love them man !! Legs are growing like never. shame I have to stop the bulk and get back on cutting tho. I was getting right into that juicy part where legs started to grow nicely on me but still kept the shape and muscle still splitting.

NPC decided to add a additional show in April - in my country for the first time ever.
U gotta do what u gotta do right

 

[CJ]

I absolutely love them man !! Legs are growing like never. shame I have to stop the bulk and get back on cutting tho. I was getting right into that juicy part where legs started to grow nicely on me but still kept the shape and muscle still splitting.

NPC decided to add a additional show in April - in my country for the first time ever.
U gotta do what u gotta do right

Hope you do well!!!

 

[andy]

Hope you do well!!!

thank u man. I'll try to find a time to update u guys.

 

[Reader591]

My .02 is machines allow you to hit the target muscle better. Free weights transfer a little better to real world, and like everyone has said, also works stabilizer muscles much harder.

There’s certainly a place for both. If you were to structure your workout including both, in most cases I would structure it to where free weights come first, and then machines come second. That way you are fresh when you need it the most, and the machines allow you to get “extra” work in on the desired muscle group when more fatigued. You have to worry less about form because the machine is stabilizing for you, and you can concentrate more on the target muscle group.

An easy example would be doing free weight squats before leg press.

Another would be db bench before doing a hammer strength machine chest press.

You can make cases for doing it the other way around too, but for most, most of the time, this is how I would structure it.

So IF you were to go to planet fitness, and want to keep working stabilizer muscles too, you can do some lung variation with dumbbells before doing a Bulgarian split squat on the smith machine.

You could also do phases of work, time periods where you work on free weight work only for say 8-12 weeks. Then phase into machine work for 8-12 weeks as an example.

 

[Kraken]

Excellent comments guys, thank you all! I toured the place today, and was pleasantly surprised. They have everything I would expect with the exception of power cages and a bar for pullups. I guess I'll sign up and save $39 per month. If I absolutely miss the cages I can always go back. I just need to adapt.

Oh, but they were passing out candy.... Still can't get my head around that!

 

[Reader591]

Excellent comments guys, thank you all! I toured the place today, and was pleasantly surprised. They have everything I would expect with the exception of power cages and a bar for pullups. I guess I'll sign up and save $39 per month. If I absolutely miss the cages I can always go back. I just need to adapt.

Oh, but they were passing out candy.... Still can't get my head around that!

Don’t forget your free pizza!