A Beginner's Guide to Gym Equipment

This is specifically for those of you who have not spent a lot of time in gyms. You feel the pressure. You’re ready to give it a try, but where do you start? What do you even want out of your gym? What makes one place the best gym in Las Cruces while another is just mediocre? There are long, deep answers to that question. To keep things light, we can focus on gym equipment. You don’t need to know every piece of equipment to judge a gym near you. Instead, you can view the overall presentation of equipment and get a good idea of how a place is run.

Quality Equipment

The point of joining a gym is to get access to high-quality equipment without having to buy it. There’s an idea that persists among newcomers to the gym. They assume that they don’t need bells and whistles on their equipment because they don’t know enough to use it yet. After all, you don’t buy the $100,000 Gibson guitar for your first lesson, right?

With exercise equipment, there’s an inversion to this truth. The certified bad asses are the ones who don’t need bells and whistles. When you have a strong knowledge of biomechanics, you can go find some heavy rocks and devise a great workout. If you don’t have that knowledge, quality equipment provides a great crutch to help your training while you learn.

Good machines do two things for you as a new lifter. They help you develop proper technique from the start, and they provide you with precision to get you started.

Think about a standard dumbbell. There are about a billion ways to try to lift it. How many of those are going to be effective? Not many. Instead, you can use a leg press that takes most direction of motion out of the exercise. All that is left is the right way to engage your muscles safely and effectively.

Precision adds to that. What if you are one of those legendary people who isn’t between 5’8” and 6’3”? You’ll find that most equipment doesn’t suit you, but high-precision equipment accommodates more adjustments and can be safe and comfortable for more people. Precision allows you to compensate for injuries, laser focus on specific muscle groups, and vary your workouts until you find what works for your body.

Equipment Variety

If varying workouts is good, then you probably want access to a range of equipment, right? Once again, the point of going to the gym is to have access to things that aren’t at home. This is about more than getting on the equipment you think you need. It’s about exploring all of the equipment you could possibly want. If one exercise makes you miserable or gets too boring, you can rotate to something engaging. That keeps you in the habit and on the wagon.

More than that, equipment variety allows you to grow. When you’re new to the gym, every day is an adventure. But when you keep going, you will learn a lot. As you learn, having access to more equipment keeps you developing. You want a gym that can accommodate your growth. Otherwise, you’ll be shopping around again in a matter of months.

Safety

Here’s the thing about safety. It’s not important. That’s such a taboo sentence, right? But if you think about it, you don’t need a seat belt to drive a car. It doesn’t help you work the pedals, the steering wheel, the shifter — none of it. You don’t need the seat belt at all.

Until you do.

Then, the seat belt suddenly becomes the most important feature of the whole vehicle. It is there precisely for when the unexpected happens, and the same can be said about safety features on gym equipment.

Dumb weights are called that because they have no special features. If you drop one on your foot, it’s going to hurt. Exercise machines, however, come with safety features that protect you, and it’s especially important for newcomers. If you haven’t really lifted much, you have no idea what your limits are. The only way to find out is to explore them, and when you do, you’re going to try to manage heavy weights while extremely tired. Clumsiness is inevitable. So, learn on the machine that catches the weights for you if you drop them. Use the bench press that catches the bar before it can pin you. Take advantage of automated safety so you can learn and grow your own way and at your own pace.

Quantity

Gyms have a fatal flaw (especially in a less-populated region like Las Cruces). They can get crowded.

There is precisely one reason so many of us struggle with fitness — especially when it comes to going to the gym. It takes time. We only have so much time in a week, and it’s hard to justify giving that time to the gym.

A gym with a lot of equipment doesn’t perfectly solve this problem, but it helps. The one thing none of us should tolerate is waiting in line to get a workout. That’s crazy. You’re only willing to wait so long for a meal or a cup of coffee; extend that impatience to your gym. Demand more, and look for a gym that has more than enough equipment to go around. You already pay a fee to go to the gym. They don’t need to tax your time too.

How Bionic Barbell Delivers

You might have already guessed, but Bionic Barbell is exceptional in all of the ways listed above. The core philosophy here is to provide great equipment to people who want to exercise. That applies to competition bodybuilders, people getting back into a workout routine after some time away, and first-timers who have never tried a gym before. We’re here to bring fitness to all of Las Cruces.