RESISTANCE RENAISSANCE

Time has not been kind to resistance machines. Once the cornerstone of commercial gyms, the clank and whir of pin-loaded weight stacks and pulley-wired cable stations provided the backing track to workouts up and down the country. But the likes of the lat pull-down, leg press, cable station and Smith machine have fallen out of favour, as more ‘functional’ forms of fitness have taken over.

While machines provide resistance through a fixed plane of motion, free weights are now the weapon of choice in CrossFit boxes and studios around the globe. The pandemic has only compounded machines’ fate, leaving these unfashionable contraptions to gather dust while bodyweight training in living rooms has become de rigueur of the day.

But there’s hope yet… a quick scroll of Instagram shows resistance machines still have their place. Observe the stacked weights room of most high-performance centres, such as