What is the Best All-Machine Workout?
Using home fitness equipment to get in your full body workout is a great way to target specific muscle groups like hamstrings or triceps. As an expert at working out, here’s a guide to an all-machine workout that will give your whole body the workout it needs:
Upper Body Machine Exercises
When doing strength exercises on home fitness equipment, it’s recommended that you target large muscle groups before smaller muscles groups, and multiple joints before single joints to avoid injury:
- Chest presses are safer to perform than bench presses since there is no barbell above your body. This exercise targets your pectoral muscles.
- Rowing exercises not only your upper body, but lower and cardio for a true full body workout. Rowing requires you to use muscles in your upper back, hips, arms, and legs.
- Overhead presses can be done seated or standing and targets the muscles in your shoulder. It even has the additional benefit of giving your triceps a workout too.
- Lower back extensions build and promote lower back and core strength, which can manage and prevent back pain and injuries.
Lower Body Machine Exercises
Don’t neglect your lower body. Keeping your lower body strong will help your balance and prevent injuries to joints like the knee and hip:
- Leg presses work out your glutes in addition to your hamstrings and quads.
- Calf presses use a leg press machine and target your calves. Here, you will be pressing the machine up with the balls of your feet and requires more repetitions since the calf muscle is dense.
- Lying leg curls target your hamstrings. Remember to keep your back flat to the machine to avoid injury and maximize your workout, as you only want to use your hamstrings to pull the bar up.
- Leg extensions work out all four of your quad muscles and is considered a good warm up exercise.
Cardio Machine Exercises
While there is some debate if beginning cardio is effective, it’s generally accepted to do what works best for you based on your fitness goals. You can do about 10 to 15 minutes of cardio at the beginning of your all machine workout to warm up and at the end to cool down.
- Treadmills are a great way to get in your daily dose of cardio. You can even incorporate a little extra strength training while exercising like carrying weights.
- Stationary bikes work out the legs while increasing your heart rate and are good machines for interval training.
- Ellipticals are typically only used for cardio, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t get a great cardio workout from it. Consider an elliptical with moving handlebars and adjustable settings so you can increase the resistance when you need it, keeping your workout fresh.
Remember to Rest & Mix it Up
Remember to take rest days to get the most benefit from your all-machine workout. Targeting specific muscle group on different days also allows the muscles you worked out previously to rest and repair themselves. Also avoid overtraining, as it can harm your health and make your workouts less effective—especially if you’re doing the same routine day in and day out.