Multiple types of equipment are designed to give your muscles resistance. Constant resistance equipment is in contrast to variable resistance equipment, where the resistance changes throughout the movement.
Free Weights
Multiple pieces of free-weight equipment offer constant resistance, such as barbells, dumbbells and ankle weights. When doing bench presses with a barbell or chest presses with dumbbells for example, the weight is pushed up and down above your chest in a steady motion. No matter what location of the weight, it stays the same. Ankle weights get strapped to the lower legs and used for exercises such as bicycle crunches, leg lifts and walking, and the resistance stays constant.
Medicine Balls
Although medicine balls are free weights, they are also coined as functional training equipment. Regardless of what you call them, they offer constant resistance when they are held with exercises. Take a Russian twist for example. This exercise is performed by sitting on the floor, leaning backward and twisting your torso from side to side while holding the ball in front of you. The resistance remains constant throughout.
Leg Press
The leg press machine develops the muscles of the butt and thighs---known anatomically as the gluteus maximus, quadriceps and hamstrings. The leg press exercise involves sitting on a seat and moving a weighted plate up and down in a steady fashion. Once you push the plate up to the starting position and flip the safety latches over, the weight stays constant.
Leg Extension
The leg extension machine isolates the quadriceps on the front of the thighs. The leg extension exercise is executed by sitting in a seat and pushing a padded lever arm in the air by bending your knees. The weight remains constant as you push up and slowly lower the arm back down. The only time this would change is if you let the lever arm come to a complete rest at the bottom of the movement, but this is not recommended because that will take the resistance off your muscles.
Cable Machine
Cable machines have two weight stacks, multiple handles, attachments and a pulley system with heavy cables. Exercises on the machine offer constant resistance the minute you start an exercise. Take the upright row for example. A straight bar gets attached to a low setting and you stand facing the weight stack. After reaching down, grabbing the bar and standing up, there is resistance that remains constant throughout the exercise.
Lat Pulldown
The lat pulldown machine works the latissimus dorsi muscles in the mid to upper back. The lat pulldown exercise is performed by sitting in a chair, grabbing a wide or narrow bar and pulling it down to your chest. During the pulling down and raising motions of this exercise, the resistance does not change.
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