So which one is better? Free weights, machines or bodyweight exercises?

Free weight exercises are considered the best workout techniques if your goal is to maximize muscle gain. Of course, you can use machines and do bodyweight exercises, but it’s better to concentrate more on free weight exercises. Your strategy should be to fuel up your muscle fibers as much as
possible and machines won’t be of much help here.

Effective muscle building requires certain muscles that fall in the category-stabilizer and synergist muscles. These muscles have a supportive function and help in giving a complex boost to the main muscle. To stimulate muscle fiber, you need to work these supporting muscles first. Free weight compound exercises
such as the bench press help to work out these stabilizer and synergistic muscles while doing the same bench press exercise on a machine has almost nothing to do with these supporting muscles.

Machines have certain rigidity in the sense they can work only in a particular range of movement and the weights they support are fixed. Machines lack the capacity to work on the muscles surrounding the main muscle you are working on.
Hence, your stabilizer muscles don’t get worked on and start becoming powerless. If these supporting muscles are feeble, there’s no chance for the main muscles to develop.

On the other hand, free weight exercises such as dumbbell press or squat exercises stress the stabilizer muscles. This is one reason why these exercises make you feel tired faster and weights seem tougher to lift than when you use the machine. However, this is the best way to gain muscle weight fast and know
the real estimate of your strength.

If you use machines in your program, they should be used to work isolated areas and only after all multi-jointed exercises have been completed.

So, it’s preferable to use muscles to work only on isolated areas, and that too after you’ve finished doing the exercises that work on multiple joints.

Freshers to weight training should ideally start your workout with a mixture of multi-jointed free weight, bodyweight and machine exercises. Your first goal should be to familiarize yourself with the working of each form, then go in for increasing the weights. After a few sessions you’ll find that bodyweight
exercises are inadequate to efficiently increase muscle growth and you’ll start taking up more free weight exercises.

What are multi-jointed exercises?

Synchronized stimulation of multiple muscles to boost the large muscle groups through compound movements are called multi jointed exercises. It’s ideal to keep these exercises as the base of your work out routine because they work on many different muscles at the same time.

Different muscle zones require different exercises. Let’s look at some exercises that best suit each muscle zone:

These exercises are very important and it’s essential that you complete these exercises before starting a more complex weight training program.

The advantage of these exercises is, they strain your skeletal and muscular system to the maximum level that can’t be achieved by any machine, thereby giving your body the best possible workout routine in a short span. Do as many exercises as you can without overstressing your body. Even experts advocate
these exercises for the successful muscle and strength gain they bring about.

Weight lifting

For best results in gaining muscle mass, use heavy weights for weight training. Heavy in this context means a weight that offers you resistance. Your weight is heavy if you are able to do only 8 – 12 reps before your body gives up. A light weight is when you are able to do 15 reps before you start feeling muscle fatigue. You need to lift heavy weights because more muscle fibers get worked on this way than when you use light weights. It’s as easy as this. Just remember, you need to provoke more muscles to generate more muscle
growth.

Overstressing your muscles is bad

Your body goes through a great deal of stress when you do heavy weight training. Give the body some time to heal itself by taking adequate rest and by spacing out your workouts. Training too frequently without adequate breaks leads to overstrain on muscles. Your body doesn’t get enough time to recuperate
and you wouldn’t have enough energy for your next work out. So, rest is very important. Resting adequately is as important as eating is.

It might be thrilling and challenging to keep working out, but it’s wise to know your limit and stay within these limits. Make sure you pace your workouts such that you are able to work out long term and reach your goals without any burnout. My weight training is limited to three times a week. If I do more than this, my body wouldn’t have enough time to recover and build new muscle. Most people think you’re gaining muscles by working out more. The truth is, muscles grow only when you’re resting. So make sure you get lots of rest for effective muscle gain.

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1. How to Build Muscle Mass Fast
2. How to Gain Muscle Weight Through Cardio Exercises | Gain Muscle Mass
3. Basic Weight Training Routines