Smith Machines

Now that I'm a frequent enough visitor to the gym, the time has come to revive my opinionated (opinionated? Me?) rant against my least-favorite exercise machine: The Smith Machine:

For some reason probably having to do with a combination of price and general wussiness, many gyms have these contraptions.  It looks good and doesn't scare (I guess) the newbies with the full-on ‘Iron Age’ simple squat rack:

Here's the problem with the Smith Machine (regardless of whatever your resident gym expert says about its safety): look closely and you'll see that the bar rides on a polished steel track and therein lies the rub.  That track locks the lifter into a narrowly defined range of vertical motion.  Needless to say, this is not natural and the flexed stress on the knees during a squat are exaggerated and can cause problems.

With a squat rack, the lifter is free to follow whatever arc their particular body type follows.  There is nothing inherently unsafe about a squat (otherwise we'd all have problems sitting down) so the ridiculous excuse about the Smith's safety those gym experts cite is near bullshit.

Some use the Smiths for other exercises as well, like the bench press.  In my gym, we have free-standing bench press stations, but for some reason, the same logic doesn't hold for the Smith Machine when used for bench presses.  Curious.

Regardless, stay away from these contraptions.