Ask a Trainer
Two elite 24 Hour Fitness Trainers tackle your most burning in-the-gym questions.
Are medicine balls and resistance bands better than just using free weights?
-- Greg, Chandler, Ariz.
Not necessarily—they both have good qualities.
It depends on the person. If you have someone who’s not in good condition, for example, who may not be able to lift weights, starting out with a light resistance band might be a lot better.
I see weights and medicine balls and resistance bands as interchangeable—a lot of the activities you do with free weights, you can do with the ball and the bands. It’s nice to have a change, even going from a chest press with a free weight to a chest press with a medicine ball is going to change the activity completely, and that’s a good thing—when you do the same workout over and over again, your body won’t make the gains.
Using a medicine ball does give you the opportunity to do something different. There are different size balls, they usually range from 4 to 12 pounds. They can be great to use in conjunction with weights—for instance, you do a shoulder press, and then a medicine ball press, then back to the shoulder press. And there’s a reason they’ve been around forever. I’m 44, my dad was a football coach, and I can remember the leather medicine ball, pushing it around when I was 3 or 4. Now, of course, they’re rubber and made in China.
Meet the Experts
Two trainers, both with impeccable credentials but very different styles.
Brandy Bachmeyer, 28, a former Olympic weightlifter, is a rare amalgam of brains, brawn, and perkiness. Sort of like a cross between MacGyver and a local TV weatherperson. In a good way. An elite trainer at San Ramon Supersport Club in California, Brandy regularly puts in 12-hour days, sometimes joining them as they train for half-marathons—even surveying the contents of their sub-Zeros.
Scott Nunes, a trainer at the 24 Hour Fitness in Escondido, California knows firsthand that getting fit doesn’t just happen. “I used to be a bona fide couch potato,” Nunes avows. When Nunes was in his mid 20s, he had back surgery, developed arthritis, and found himself weighing in at 260 pounds: “When my one-and-a-half-year-old son raced me to the top of the stairs and beat me, I started doing pushups and sit ups that day,” he recalls. Nunes, 37, got in great shape, which helped him raise his son, who’s now 14.
COMBINED WISDOM Are they better than weights? Not necessarily. But they’re a great way to switch up your workout. Play ball!
