Article: “Why barbells are better than machines”

In my continuing quest to look like Adonis – or Fabio. Yuk Yuk Yuk. This is a good article, off the website Starting Strength – takes ten minutes to read.

Let’s just clear it up right here: barbell training is the best way to train for strength. Bar none. Nothing else even comes close to the effectiveness of barbell squats, presses, deadlifts, and the Olympic lifts for the development of strength, power, and muscular size. The reason barbells are so very valuable is that they are the most ergonomically-friendly load-handling tool in existence – they allow very heavy weights to be gripped in the hands and moved directly over the center of the foot. Their extremely adjustable nature allows small increases in stress to be applied to the whole body over the full range of motion of all your major leverage systems

Here's the end of the article –

Building strength means that you have increased your ability to produce force, which requires the use of progressively heavier weights. The use of machines is an inefficient way to accomplish this, since the ability to progress is limited by the inherent nature of isolation exercise; additionally, the absence of a balance variable limits the ability of the exercise to build “functional” strength that can be applied in normal human physical circumstances.

Strength is very important, and barbell training is the best way to build it.