In this article I explain why one of the smallest parts of your gym holds the greatest potential to lifelong change with your health and physique. I’ll reveal to you what I spent a long time learning and afterwards you’ll probably never look at a gym or a health club membership quite the same way ever again.

Most gyms present you with treadmills, rowers, resistance machines and other large “exercise appliances”. If I asked you to close your eyes and visualise what a gym floor space looks like, then I know that is probably what comes to mind.

It’s not surprising then that gyms don't want to disappoint customers and risk losing a new membership sale and so they are more than happy to kit their spaces out to meet your expectations. This has certainly been my experience of gym memberships in the past.

Once you are at the gym you notice that in the corner is a little section that holds the free weights.

These are weights that are not attached to any kind of structure like most of the resistance machines you see. They are dumbbells of various sizes and weight and they are the barbells, which you can load with plates.

In my opinion this little corner space of the gym with its free weights represents the most effective way for men and women to get into the best shape of their lives and I’d like to explain why that is:

REAL LONG TERM PROGRESS

At Strength Revolution I coach people with barbell training and there is a VERY good reason for this. *Remember that the idea behind lifting weights is to get stronger over time.
Now on a resistance machine you can only increase the weight that you are lifting according to the next pin setting on the machine. I’ve seen machines that leap up 10 to 20lbs (5-10kilos) per setting and that is not terribly helpful if you’re not ready to make that much of a leap.

This can be a big reason why people plateau with their training and stick to the same weight for all future workouts. The problem with this is that staying at the same weight halts progress whether your goals are strength or physique. You can see now a big reason why people don't get the kind of results they would like despite regular trips to the gym. Here’s the thing, with barbells, we can fractionally increase the weight lifted to a much smaller increase. There are micro plates that can be added to a barbell that increase the weight by as little as 1lb (0.5kilos), just enough to keep your progress moving. Understanding this makes the difference between exercise and training.

BALANCE

The second secret is balance. When you pick up a loaded barbell or dumbbell and perform an exercise in most cases you are standing up. This means that if you are standing up, then you could fall down. By performing the exercise correctly without falling down you are training strength and improving balance alongside.

Have you noticed that strong people rarely fall down? This correlation is helpful in our active younger years but it becomes critical in our senior years where a fall represents a much bigger event. This is why resistance machines offer you less. Their design as fixed appliances takes away the element of falling down and thus the ability to train not falling. Balance (like power) comes as a by-product of strength.

TOTAL MUSCLE MASS TRAINED

This third key can never fully be realised until you move from resistance machines over to barbells. In most cases resistance machines have you seated and isolate one muscle group. On the surface this sounds like a good idea. You could target those stubborn calves of yours, then go on to work your hamstrings and then maybe some abs on the ab crunch machine. There are two problems with this:
Firstly your body rarely uses just one muscle to perform a movement. The next time you are sitting down try to stand up ONLY using your calf muscles.

So it doesn't make sense to isolate muscles like this in training, when the human body is a complete system that recruits many muscles simultaneously to perform gross human movement.

Secondly, the human body likes to be trained in big compound (multi joint) lifts that use large amounts of muscle mass. I’ve seen the best results since I started doing this for myself. It also benefits you to train this way because you have the potential to load more weight onto a barbell when you use more of your muscles. More weight lifted equals a greater potential to progress strength.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• The most useful (and sometimes smallest) part of your gym contains the best equipment–free weights.

• Training with free weights accesses the long term potential for strength gains and this style of training contributes to healthy aging. Its also the secret to building a tremendous physique.

• If you are new to training and looking for a gym to join seek a facility that has a large amount of free weights and ideally more than one barbell rack space.