So, here is the situation. You have someone who appears to be relatively new to weightlifting, who wants to lift heavy, but has no spotter, and is clearly wise enough to realize there is some risk involved. And based on the putative superiority of free weights, your original suggestion was this:



You then acknowledge that he can, in fact, work all the same muscles with machines. Since I'm not aware of anyone who thinks free weights are safer than machines, it makes your quick dismissal of machines, and suggestion of free weights, given the original poster's circumstances, a rather curious one, to be as polite as I'm likely ever going to be in the face of reasoning like this.