The Smith Machine is a piece of equipment that is frequently featured in fitness magazines as a part of exercise routines.  For some reason “fitness experts” recommend that people use this machine to perform exercises that can be done more efficiently, effectively and safer with free-weights.

The Smith Machine is one of the bigger pieces of equipment that you’re likely to see in a gym.  This machine consists of an Olympic, 7-foot bar that is horizontally fixed on rods and housed in a massive steel frame, and at first glance looks like a squat rack.  However, while the squat rack is a useful piece of equipment, the Smith Machine is a waste of space.

Body builders and other fitness types use the Smith Machine to perform exercises such as the squat, lunge, military press (usually seated), bench press and upright row, despite the fact that the standing and/or barbell and dumbbell variations of these exercises are superior in every way.  Ostensibly, these magazines feature Smith Machine exercises based on the flawed premise that the Smith allows people to exercise using a more controlled path of the bar.  This is nonsense and illustrates how little many “fitness experts” understand about how the body works.

First of all, by nature all machine-based exercises are inferior to their free-weight counterparts for the simple reasons that machines provide all the balance and stability for people, and that the design of the machine results in everybody working in the same movement pattern along a fixed axis.

The Smith Machine – because you are forced to perform exercises along a fixed axis - represents all of the worst aspects of machine-based training because the exercises that it is used for never should be done in this manner.  Proponents of the Smith will tell you that people need help with their balance and therefore need to work in this machine; this position ignores the obvious.  The only way to improve balance is to work on balance and not to ignore it – and working on a machine is ignoring this need.

As I mentioned earlier, the other advertised “benefit” of Smith-based exercises is that of being able to use a more controlled path of the bar.  What this means is a mystery.  However, if I were guessing I’d say that this means that the machine is doing a lot of the work that the person should ultimately be doing.

Using squats as an example, because the bar is connected to a frame on a fixed axis a person can lean into the machine in order to maintain balance while gaining leverage to produce movement.  And on top of this, the Smith forces people to move in a manner that’s inconsistent with how the body moves in space.

Body weight squats are superior to Smith Machine squats.

One of the other mistakes people make when touting the Smith Machine is to make the claim that it is somehow safer.  I’ve seen and heard countless examples of people using the Smith for squats under the guise that this method protects the back and knees, when nothing can be further from the truth.  Squatting – or performing any other exercise in the Smith – places unnatural stresses on the joints precisely because the machine forces everyone to move in exactly the same plane of movement without regard for the differences in people’s dimensions, AND move in way that’s inconsistent with how the body moves in space.

When you squat, or military press or upright row or lunge you don’t move in a fixed, straight line.  The movement pattern of all these exercises, when done properly, features a slight arc or curve to it.  When you’re forced to move along the lines of any machine you are putting unnatural stresses on your joints, connective tissues and muscles.

No exercise worth doing is worth doing on any machine, but particularly a Smith Machine.  So if you don’t know what the Smith is, that’s a good thing, and if you’ve been roped into using one, quit the habit right away.

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