I was advocating strength training to a friend who is a believer in “efficient markets.”  He asked, “Did your barbell strength training fall out of favor because better methods replaced it?  Hasn’t the market spoken?  Aren’t today’s modern methods better than the simple barbell?”  Fair questions.

Gyms today are filled with machines that are supposed to make us “fit.”  These complex high-tech looking contraptions must be better than a simple barbell.  Right?  Wrong.  These machines were designed to prevent you from hurting yourself, not to maximize your strength.  In some cases they were designed to isolate a specific muscle for the purpose of bodybuilding or rehab.  These idiot-proof machines give gyms a way to scale.  They can fill a room with “the latest” in fitness equipment and sell thousands of memberships without having to bother with teaching anyone how to use them.  So the machines are optimized for the gym’s income statement, not your strength training.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is the other reason that strength training fell out of favor.  What?  Arnold was the epitome of fitness wasn’t he? It was actually his success and popularity as a bodybuilder that killed strength training.  Bodybuilding became so popular that it engulfed all forms of weight training.  Bodybuilding and strength training both involve lifting weights, however, this is where the similarity ends.  The objective of bodybuilding is to isolate a single muscle and overdevelop it so that it looks cool (or ridiculous depending on your perspective.)  This can lead to imbalances in the body, especially for amateur gym goers.  Ever see that guy with the huge biceps and the chicken legs?  The Olympic lifts in particular require that a huge portion of your muscles all work together very quickly.  Learning to do this well develops a strong, flexible, balanced and healthy body.  For the 99.9% of us who are not going to compete as bodybuilders, strength training will be a much more effective and beneficial.

A quick aside for women.  Most women do not do any strength training for fear of “bulking up.”  This is also Arnold’s fault.  Steroid enhanced, muscle isolating, bodybuilding will bulk you up.  Strength training will not.  Strength training will give you the much desired “toned” (insert body part here) that you want.  It is also beneficial in preventing osteoporosis.

The market, in this case, is not efficient.  It did not select the optimal fitness method.  Machines replaced barbells because they made gyms more money and quest for huge biceps replaced the pursuit of healthy balanced strength.