Using the equipment available at the gym is a great way to make our workouts more efficient. And there’s plenty to choose from. Whatever our goal or preference, the gym is full of equipment designed to help us develop our fitness in all the right ways.
Cardio equipment like the treadmill, cross trainer, and bike are easy ways to get our blood flowing and our heart rate up. Then there are more weights machines than we can imagine to support our strength training. Especially for beginners, these gym machines are perfect for practising specific exercises with the correct form and support.
But lots of choices can make it difficult to know what to invest our time on. So, if we only had an hour at the gym, here are our 5 favourite pieces of gym equipment we’d go for.
The rowing machine
Love it or loathe it, the rowing machine is an all-rounder. It recruits over 80% of the body’s muscles to do the movement, and as well as getting your heart rate up for some serious energy burn, you’re testing your muscular endurance too.
The ability to increase and decrease the resistance on it means that you can change up the pace as and when you want. Testing those lungs with light resistance and fast speed, or working your muscles with a slower tempo and higher resistance style row.
The cable Crossover
The cables are so versatile. With a range of handles, heights, and weights to choose from, the exercises you can do here are not limited.
Allowing you to do a well-rounded pull workout that engages the upper body and the lower body too. Tricep extension, chest fly, pull throughs, lateral raises, overhead presses. The list goes on.
The leg press
The leg press is an easy and accessible way to develop some serious strength in your legs. Start light and build up the weight to really test your lower body strength, all whilst supporting your back. The range of movement doesn’t need to be limited either, like on other machines, because you can adjust the position of the seat to let you get really low into that leg bend on the way down.
You might not recruit as many muscles as you do with the traditional squat, but the leg press is perfect for focusing on the glutes, hamstrings, and quads.
The chest press
If you’re starting out with weight lifting or even just looking for a good chest day warm-up, the chest press is a perfect place to start.
It isolates the pectorals much more than the bench press, but this can be a good thing to help you test your strength here and practice the movement of the press without risking any injury.
Treadmill
This might not count as a gym machine, but they are so good that we’ve got to include them anyway. The battle ropes are the underdog of the gym floor. The free weights are great. The gym machines are amazing. But the humble battle ropes are the perfect way to finish off any workout.
Engaging lots of different muscles across the whole body, testing your physical and mental endurance, and giving your cardiovascular fitness some attention. The battle ropes are one to try if you’ve not used them before. Add them in as part of your circuit training, HIIT workout or even your warm-up.
At Hussle, however, we don’t have favourites. We think all the machines across the gym floor are created equal. So if you love the weights machines or prefer to stick to the cardio equipment, it’s all part of your Hussle.