If you look at the setup of most commercial gyms today you’ll see row after row of funny looking machines. Each workout machine works a different muscle. One might work your biceps, another your calfs, and another one your lateral muscles. Most gym goers hop from machine to machine until they feel that they have worked all their body.
Maybe in the corner of the gym you’ll see a single hollow metal box with a barbell. This is called a “power rack” and is avoided my 90% of gym goers. Barbell exercises are mostly a lost art form as they are thought to be dangerous and reserved for professional body builders. But this is a fallacy brought to life by gym owners in the past 35 years. Most gyms don’t want you to do barbell exercises. It requires their personal trainers to have more training, the horror, and is considered a legal liability.
If the workout machines were just as good as doing barbell exercises, this wouldn’t be a problem. But they are not. The machines provide isolation exercises while barbell exercises are compound exercises. Working one muscle at a time has many downfalls. If you are only working a single muscle, you can’t move much weight. This is a problem because it is hard to progress in strength. If you are doing 30 pound bicep curls and the machine increases in 10 pound increments you’re suddenly doing 30% more weight when you more to the next level. This is near impossible. But if you’re doing 100 pound chest presses with a bar, and increase by 5 pounds your only increasing your weight by 5% that is distributed across multiple muscle groups. This allows one to make progress in their weights every time they visit the gym.