Episode 46: 10 Machines to Use In the Gym
Welcome to The Coaching Corner Podcast with Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains!
In this episode, Jayd dives into the benefits of using resistance training machines in the gym — and why they can be a game-changer for building strength and muscle. Whether you're a beginner or an experienced lifter, machines offer stability, safety, and consistent resistance to help you train smarter and more effectively.
💡 What You’ll Learn:
Why resistance training machines are ideal for muscle building and injury prevention
How to adjust machines to fit your body for maximum comfort and effectiveness
Key machines to target each muscle group, including:
Leg Press – Build powerful legs with controlled range of motion
Hack Squat – Improve quad and glute strength
Leg Extension & Curl – Isolate the quads and hamstrings
Chest Press – Develop upper body pushing strength
Lat Pull Down – Strengthen your back and improve posture
Seated Row – Build back thickness and strength
Shoulder Press – Boost shoulder strength and stability
Pec Deck – Target chest isolation for muscle definition
Hip Abduction/Adduction – Strengthen hip stabilizers
Cable Machine – Versatility for total body training
🏋️ Pro Tip: Adjust the machine settings to fit your body and control the range of motion to maximize gains and reduce injury risk.
🔗 Resources & Links:
🎯 Tune in next week for more expert tips to help you crush your fitness goals!
Downloadable Training Plans:
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Jayd (00:00):
Whenever you're using a cable machine, you have a lot of control over how much resistance you're giving yourself, and it's a consistent level of resistance through the entire range of motion. So if you are just trying to master the technique of the exercise, you can take the weight down pretty low, and also if you are more advanced, you can take the weight up pretty safely using this machine. Hey there. Welcome to the Coaching Corner podcast. I'm Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains. I've created this podcast to help you make progress on your fitness journey regardless of whether you are trying to burn fat, build muscle, eat better, or just live a more healthy life. I've been working as a fitness instructor for over 10 years and in each episode I share some of the wisdom that I've accumulated over the time that I've spent with my clients.
(00:56)
If you would like some more information on me or any of the services that I offer, make sure to check out my website, which is Jaydigains.com, J-A-Y-D-I-G-A-N s.com. I have a membership site where I post recipes, meal plans, training plans, training tips and fat loss tips every single week. And I also go live on my Twitch channel, Twitch tv slash Jaydigains a couple times a week as well. In today's episode, I'm going to be sharing with you some of my favorite pieces of equipment to train with in the gym to build muscle and build strength resistance training Machines are a great tool to use in the gym for a number of reasons. One is that they provide stability and safety and consistent resistance, and this is especially good for people who are just starting out in their fitness journey and aren't quite ready or feel maybe a little bit intimidated by free weights.
(01:50)
Machines are a great place to start, but they're not just for beginners because they offer that consistent resistance. This can be a really great tool for helping you to maximize your gains if you're trying to build muscle, even as an intermediate and advanced exerciser. They're a great tool for helping you to work on specific muscle groups in isolation, which can be great for rehabbing an injured part of your body, but also if you are trying to build muscle, especially if you're trying to compete on a stage, machines can be really helpful for helping you develop your physique. Before we move forward, make sure to hit that like button if you're watching me on YouTube and subscribe to the channel so that you always get notified when I drop a new video. If you're listening to this podcast, make sure that you subscribe to the podcast to always get the latest episode delivered right to your device. Without further ado, let's hop into the episode and talk about some of my favorite machines to work with in the gym.
(02:51)
So number one at the top of the list, one of my favorite machines to work with for resistance training is the leg press machine. Leg press machines come a lot of different sizes, shapes and styles. You have some leg press machines where the weight will be below you and you'll sit in a chair that moves some leg press. Machines will have a platform that moves and the chair stays stationary. My favorite variation of the leg press machine though is the one where you sit in a stationary chair on the bottom and the weight is actually above you. The platform moves and you can attach a lot of weight to this style platform because it loads just like a barbell or Olympic barbell with plates. This is a really great tool for helping you to develop leg strength. The specific muscles that are targeted with the leg press are the quadriceps or quads in the front of your thighs as well as your hamstrings in the back of your thighs and your glutes muscles in your bottom.
(03:44)
Now one of the perks of doing leg press over say a barbell squat is that it's pretty safe on your back. Some people struggle with using the barbell on their back because they have limitations and actual weight bearing exercises and how much their spine can load, so you don't necessarily have to hold all of that weight on your back while you're standing. It's generally pretty safe in comparison to balancing a barbell on your back and like I said, you can load a lot of weight onto it, so if you're in a position where it's not really feasible for you to work with a barbell for whatever reason, whether you have an injury or you're just not really keen on putting a lot of weight on your back, a leg press is a good substitute for that. The nice thing about the leg press is that you are not limited by your upper body strength and your ability to hold a certain amount of weight on your back or in your hands.
(04:38)
If you were going to do a front squat, the way that you would have to worry about if you were holding weight, whether it's dumbbells or barbells, because all of the weight is just being held by the platform itself. I also like using the leg press as an accessory for my power lifting clients on days that they do squats or deadlifts. This is a great finishing exercise to help them to squeeze out some more reps in that range of motion of the squat without necessarily having to hold the barbell. And it also puts your body in a kind of slightly different position from what it would be under the barbell while you're squatting, so it gives you a slightly different stimulus. So that is definitely number one on top of my list of favorite resistance training machines in the gym. Now number two, following closely, the leg press is the hack squat machine, and not all gyms have a hack squat machine, but if your gym does have one, I highly recommend using it.
(05:36)
The usefulness of this machine is very similar to that of the leg press. The main difference though between the leg press and the hack squat is where the weight is loaded. The hack squat usually loads the weight on your shoulders using some kind of a platform with some padding across your shoulders. You are usually also going to perform these from a standing position, but the angle is going to be quite different from the way that you would normally squat if you were holding weight in your hands or holding a barbell across your shoulders. The hack squat allows for a much deeper range of motion, which allows you to get much deeper into the quadriceps than you probably are able to do with a leg press or even doing a regular back squat. Now, if you really don't like to have weight across your shoulders and that's why you're not doing back squats, then the hack squat is probably not the best move for you, but if you want to use it as an accessory to burn out your quads and hit your squat from a different range of motion and get a slightly different stimulus, this is a really great tool.
(06:39)
Now, number three. Next up. Another favorite machine that I really love to work when it's available is the leg extension and the leg curl machine. You might actually see these two movements on the same machine and some gyms actually have them separated out into separate machines, so you have one that's leg extension, one that's leg curl. The benefit of this type of machine is that it really allows you to fully isolate the muscles in the front and the back of your thighs, namely your quadriceps and your hamstrings. So if you're really trying to build muscle there in your thighs, you cannot skip doing leg extensions and leg curls. I like using these as an accessory for my powerlifters and strength training clients, and I also of course like to use it for my clients who are really particularly focused on building muscle and getting really nice sculpted legs.
(07:28)
If you are rehabbing like you have a back injury and you're not able to fully squat, but you still want to work your legs, this is also a really good tool to use because you're not going to be putting any weight on the spine while you train your legs, unlike if you were to do a weighted exercise or the hack squat. Now moving up from the lower body to the upper body. Some of my favorite pieces of equipment to use for building strength in your arms, your chest, in your core are things like the chest press machine. I really love this machine for especially working with beginners who are not yet in a place where they have the coordination or maybe even the mobility to perform safely doing dumbbell chest presses or even the barbell bench press For these people, the chest press machine is a must have.
(08:20)
One of the things that I love about it is that it keeps a really consistent range of motion, a consistent amount of resistance, and you can really bump down the resistance as much as you need to practice the range of motion. Now, it's also really great for intermediate and advanced exercisers as well, especially if they're really trying to target and isolation their chest and their triceps. Performing with the dumbbells or the barbell with a bench requires a lot of stability work for your lower body and in your core, but if you're just trying to grow your chest, your shoulders, and your triceps, you can save a lot of the energy that would go towards your stabilizing muscles in your core and in your lower body and put all of your effort into fatiguing the chest, the shoulders, and the triceps. So it's an awesome machine for hitting the chest and isolation even for intermediate and advanced exercises.
(09:18)
Now, my number five favorite piece of gym equipment is the lat pull down machine. The lat pull down machine is a great option for exercises of all levels. One, it's great for building up your upper body strength and your back strength. Doing this exercise is also great for helping you to fix poor posture because as you're performing a pull down, you have to practice keeping your chest forward and up and pulling your shoulders down while the weight is in motion. Now, if your goal is to eventually be able to perform a pull up, the lap pull down machine is a great way for you to train towards that goal because you can modify how much resistance you're using and get it to the point where you're able to actually pull down close to the amount of your own body weight. And once you reach that point, you can start to phase into doing assisted pull-ups or non assisted pull-ups.
(10:12)
The other thing that I really like about this machine is that there are a lot of different varieties of pull downs that you can perform depending on what muscle group or movement pattern you specifically want to develop. I often have my clients practice wide grip pull downs because this helps them to develop their external rotation in their shoulders, which is something that most people struggle with, especially if you work in front of a computer all day. But if you're trying to grow your lats and grow your biceps, doing a more narrow grip pull down or a parallel grip pull down or even a reverse grip pull down is a great move for really extending the lattisimus doci muscles or the lats and getting a deep contraction there as well. Now related to the pull down machine is another favorite machine of mine, which is the seated row machine.
(11:03)
I love this machine for helping you to train your lats and also master the movement of the row. Rows are one of the fundamental foundational movement patterns to master in the gym for safe body alignment and to help keep you injury free. Many people struggle, however, if they go right to trying to perform this exercise with the weights. Using the seated cable machine is a great way for you to kind of work on mastering the form of where your elbows need to be positioned and where your shoulders need to be positioned as you perform this exercise. Pulling the weight back from a seated position is a much more intuitive way of performing this exercise, which later on will translate over to performing the exercise with weights either from standing or a bench. And of course, whenever you're using a cable machine, you have a lot of control over how much resistance you're giving yourself and it's a consistent level of resistance through the entire range of motion.
(12:04)
So if you are just trying to master the technique of the exercise, you can take the weight down pretty low, and also if you are more advanced, you can take the weight up pretty safely using this machine. Now next up, number seven. Another machine that I really like is the shoulder press machine. This machine is really great for helping you to develop the muscles in your shoulders, namely your deltoids, but also your other shoulder muscles like your external shoulder cuff, rotator muscles like the supraspinatus infraspinatus terrace, minor terrace major, and because you're also doing some elbow extension inflection, this can also hit your triceps as well. Now, the reason why I like this machine versus using dumbbells or a barbell for performing shoulder presses is that it's generally pretty safe and provides a pretty consistent range of motion. The shoulder press can be a really tricky exercise to master with the weights, especially using free weights.
(12:59)
There's a lot of movement that can happen. There's a lot of balancing and coordination that's required for doing this exercise correctly and safely using weights. But when you're using the machine, you have this consistent and stable range of motion that will allow you to learn the movement with very minimal risk of injury. It's also beneficial for intermediate and advanced exercises because it provides a consistent amount of tension through the entire range of motion, which is the main weakness of doing weighted exercises. When we're doing weighted exercises, the amount of resistance or the amount of tension that you're able to put on the muscles actually changes at different points through the range of motion of the exercise. But when you're working with a machine, it's going to give you the same level of resistance through the entire range of motion, so you're going to get maximal gains from using a machine and be able to fatigue the muscles more in order to stimulate muscle growth and strength gains.
(14:00)
Now, number eight, another machine that I really like is the pec deck or the chest fly machine. Now, if you are trying to grow your pecs, this is a must use piece of equipment in the gym. It is really hard to fully isolate the pecs muscles when you are doing an exercise like the barbell bench press because like I said before, there's so much stabilizing that has to happen using your core in your lower body and also the triceps get a lot of work and they're going to limit the amount of weight that you can actually lift when you're using a weight in the chest press exercise. But when you are using the pec deck, you're able to really isolate the PECS through the entire range of motion with this exercise. This machine also allows you to maximally stretch out the pec muscles during the eccentric phase of the exercise in a generally pretty safe way when you're using weights.
(14:57)
The amount of tension put on the muscles varies at different points in the exercise. In general, the longer the lever is that you're holding the weight out with the more tension you're going to put on the muscle. Now when it comes to doing a chest fly, if you're using weights, the weight is going to put more tension on the muscles at the very tail end of the eccentric phase of the exercise, and it's going to have more tension there than you will in the mid to last part of the concentric phase of that exercise. Now, in general, our muscles are actually weakest when they're most stretched out, and so at that point is if we're going to change up how much resistance we have, that would be the point where we probably need a little bit less and then we tend to need a little bit more tension as we get to the muscle being more contracted.
(15:50)
In general, the more contracted the muscle is, the more tension you can put on it, the more weight it can use. So this can be kind of dangerous if you are performing pec flies with the dumbbells because when you get to that last end of the eccentric phase of the exercise, if you're using too much weight, this can very quickly become too much resistance to the point where you may strain or tear your pecs or even your bicep tendon. So you can reduce your risk of injury by instead using the pec deck or the chest fly machine because you're going to be getting a consistent amount of resistance through the entire range of motion. And also when you get to the point where your arms are closing, you're going to not lose any of the resistance. You're going to be able to continue to challenge your muscles even at that tail end of the exercise.
(16:40)
So this machine is generally safer to use for flies versus using the dumbbells, and it's also going to give you more resistance, and that's not to say that the dumbbell peck flies don't have their use. I absolutely use them with my clients, but if there is APEC deck or a trust fly machine in the gym that I'm training my clients in, I'm definitely going to recommend that they use it. Number nine. Another favorite machine that I love when gyms have them, not all gyms do, but if a gym has them, I'm definitely going to be using the hip abduction slash adduction machine. Just like with the leg extension and leg curl machines, a lot of gyms will have this in the same machine. The same machine will be able to do both abduction and abduction, but some gyms also have them as separate machines. This machine allows you to train your hips specifically for the abduction where you're practicing opening your legs up from a seated position.
(17:36)
This allows you to train your gluteus medias and gluteus minimus muscles, which are very important, stabilizing muscles in your bottom. Also, if you want to build a nice butt performing abduction is absolutely essential, so this machine allows you to do that exercise with a pretty heavy amount of resistance. The ad deduction is giving you resistance on the way back in, so starting from your knees being apart in a seated position, you're going to get resistance closing your knees. Now this helps to target your adductor muscles, which are also very important, stabilizing muscles, and also very important to train if you want to develop nice sculpted thighs because the motion here for this piece of equipment is opening and closing the legs. Some gym goers will call this the good girl bad girl machine, call it whatever you want, but if it is available in your gym, I highly recommend using it.
(18:29)
And now number 10, my top piece of equipment, most favorite of them all is the cable machine or the cable crossover machine. The reason I love this piece of equipment is because you can essentially do nearly every single exercise that we've talked about today just with this one piece of equipment. So if you are building a home gym and you have it within your budget to get one of these cable machines, I super recommend it because you'll be able to do so, so much. I have a client who got a cable machine for themselves a couple of months ago, and I did the happiest of Happy Dances when he purchased it because I knew we were going to be able to do so much more exercises for his training. Now that he has this piece of equipment, if you want to do peck flies, you can do that with this piece of equipment.
(19:17)
If you want to do pull downs, you can do that with this piece of equipment, abduction, abduction. You can also do a lot of stabilizing exercises with this piece of equipment. Now, it usually comes with a bunch of different handles, so you can work your muscles in a variety of different ways, and it also allows you to adjust the point of tension from all the way up over your head to the floor, so you can give yourself a lot of variety of stimulus. Of course, just like with other machines, the thing that I love so much about the cable machine is that constant amount of tension that it provides through the entire range of motion for an exercise. There's some muscle groups that are really hard to target and train effectively just by using dumbbells or free weights like the rear dets, the cable crossover machine, and the ability to do exercises like the rear det crossover is just God gamer.
(20:09)
I love this machine so much and I am just crossing my fingers for the day that I can add one to my own personal home gym because I love it so much. Luckily, the gym that I train clients out of has several cable machines, so I get a chance to use them whenever I have an opportunity between my clients, but I definitely use it for my clients all the time. Now, let's talk about how to properly use machines in the gym for maximizing your gains and reducing your risk of injury. Before you use a piece of equipment, make sure to adjust the settings to make sure that it is right for your body. If there's a chair, look for a place where you can pull the pin out and move the chair up or down. Make sure that you adjust the pads as well. Most pieces of equipment have some kind of a pin system where you have to pull the pin out by pulling on a button and then allowing it to move, and then you stick the pin back in.
(21:02)
Just make sure though, before you actually use the piece of equipment that whatever you have adjusted is actually sturdy and settled. Give it a little jiggle before you actually sit down on the machine and use it because the last thing that you want is for it to kind of settle underneath you. Just like with any other form of resistance training, it's really important that you control the entire range of motion while you're performing an exercise. Avoid going too too fast and just kind of slinging your way through the exercises. You want to move at a controlled pace. In general, I like to recommend counting two seconds on the eccentric phase of the exercise and two seconds on the concentric phase. So if you're doing bicep curls, that would be like two seconds up, two seconds down. Now, if you are intermediate and advanced and you want to really maximize your gains, I would recommend moving at a rate of motion where you're going very, very slow on the ecentric range of the exercise.
(22:01)
So about four seconds on the extension and then pause for two seconds, and then one second on the contraction. Going slow on the eccentric phase of the exercise while the muscle is elongating is going to help to increase the time under tension for that muscle, and the eccentric phase tension is really where the muscle growth happens. Whichever speed you're going, make sure that you're moving at a nice controlled slowish pace. Also, don't hesitate to ask if you're not sure how to use a machine or if you're not sure how to adjust the settings on it. Most gym staff and normal gym goers are actually pretty friendly, especially those ones who look really intimidating. Some of the biggest guys in the gym are actually the nicest people. They're usually just kind of big teddy bears and they love to help. So if you are not sure how to adjust a piece of equipment, feel free to just ask somebody. Ask one of the staff members, especially if they're a trainer, if you see a trainer around, they'll know how to use that piece of equipment. But a lot of times the people that you see that are regulars that go there all the time, they're happy to explain or even spot you if you need a little bit of assistance while you're doing the exercise. So there you have it, 10 pieces of equipment that are really great for helping you to build muscle in the gym.
(23:24)
Now, if you are here on YouTube, make sure that you subscribe and stay subscribed because I pretty regularly post exercise tutorial videos here on my YouTube channel demonstrating how to perform different exercises, and in the coming weeks, I actually do have a lot of machine exercise tutorials that are coming your way. So stay subscribed and be on the lookout for those. And if you want a little bit more guidance, don't forget that. I also have downloadable workout plans available on my website, and several of the plans that I have up right now are actually for using in the gym with machines. There's beginner level and intermediate and advanced level programs. So make sure to check out my website, Jaydigains.com, J-A-Y-D-I-G-A-N s.com, and click on workout plans in the top menu. Also, you can sign up for one of my programs on the A BC Trainer Rise app.
(24:17)
Each program is six months long and includes a four week training program that refreshes every month. You'll get new workouts that include exercise tutorial videos so that you can learn how to perform different exercises and use different pieces of equipment in the gym. If you want to work with me directly, you can sign up for the one-on-one coaching variation of each program. To learn about this, just go to my website, Jaydigains.com or Jaydharrisonfitness.com. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out. If you're watching this on YouTube, you can leave a comment in the comments below. You can also join me while I'm live on my Twitch channel on Tuesdays and other days throughout the week. As I have time, just go to twitch.tv/jaydigains. Thank you so much again for joining me, and if you haven't already, make sure to subscribe to the show so that you always get notified when there's a new episode, new episodes drop on Mondays and Thursdays. Have a wonderful rest of your day. I will see you in the next episode. Take care.
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