Weight training for women can proceed in 3 different ways when training with weights is your goal, you can train using machines, free weights or a combination of the two to help achieve overall health for women.
I’ll be honest with you I prefer the latter (dumbbells and barbells) for most exercises.
The demand on your body is greater with free weights and nevertheless allow your limbs and joints to move within their natural motion . Machines make your body move in a motion dictated by the make and designing of the equipment .
Most muscle strains and joint injuries comeas a result of using machines that put unnatural stresses on the human body by locking you into a far too rigid position.
In the past when I have noticed prople injured during training , it’s generally come about when using machines (and inappropriate form) instead of dumbbells and barbells.
Barbells and dumbbells will give you the freedom to isolate individual muscles and exercise in a variety of ways.
When you use free weights it doesn’t matter what your height, weight , length of your limbs (arms and legs ) you can still get a complete work out.
Quite a few machines today are of great quality and design , and you are provided the ability to make adjustments to the machines for your particular physical proportions. Now that I have said that, quite a few machines still seem to be designed with the average person in mind, if your not average you do stand a higher risk of injury.
I’m not wholly against training with machines I do use them in my training, lat pull downs, leg extensions and various other exercises. I believe that you should be using free weights 60 to 70% of the time in your training.
Machines will keep the resistance working along one plane only, this will result in the muscle group your training using less muscle while performing the exercise. The idea is to use as much of the muscle group at the same time to create maximal growth.
The muscle does react differently to the different types of resistance created by using free weights or machines. When a muscle is being hit from various angles and directions constantly as with free weights the resistance will be different and more positive then using machines which are always along a foreseeable line.
Sometimes you will just have to make do with the equipment that is available to you. The main matter is, that you do workout .