Fitness tips

Prioritize movements that adapt to your own skeletal structure. Training feedback is always more important than the established plan. Recovery is no less a priority than the training itself. All the remaining techniques are just extensions of these three core logics.

Damn, I have seen too many novices who have just applied for a fitness card, touch all the fixed equipment on the first day, and do a few sets of each equipment. After practicing, their whole body aches the next day, and they still feel that they have practiced well. In fact, most of the pain is compensated, so they suffer in vain. Let’s just talk about the most common bench press. Online tutorials all say that it should be done with a wide stance and the elbows should be open at 45 degrees. However, some people are born with raised acromions of type II or type III. If they press the wide stance twice, their shoulders will hurt so much that they can’t lift them up. If you go to the rehabilitation department to check, it’s acromion impingement. In fact, different schools have always said different things about this: the traditional bodybuilding system emphasizes that "absolute standard movements can accurately stimulate the target muscle group", but the rehabilitation circle and the power lifting circle now value "individual adaptation" - after all, your joints are born with what they look like, and fitting them to a standard template will not do any good except grinding the joints. I used to have a muscle friend who is 1.9 meters tall and whose arms are 6 centimeters longer than ordinary people. After practicing with the standard deadlift stance and grip for half a year, my waist hurt every time I pulled. Later, I tried to widen the stance by 5 centimeters and narrow the grip by 2 centimeters. The weight increased by 20 kilograms, but my waist was not affected at all. Do you think this is a skill? In fact, it’s just that I don’t adhere to other people’s standards.

Don't think that you can just practice blindly if you know the movements accurately. Many people have made a full page of training plans, hoping to be precise enough to rest for a few seconds in each group, but in the end they are injured all over the body. When it comes to this, I have to mention the Achilles heel that many people make: treating fitness plans as imperial edicts. Think about it, you worked overtime until three o'clock the day before, or you just had an argument with your partner, and your legs are weak when you enter the gym, but you insist on sprinting for a PR of 120 kg deadlift as planned. Isn't that just asking for trouble? This area also has different training logic: the CrossFit system does encourage athletes to break through the fatigue threshold and pursue extreme cardiorespiratory and strength performance. However, in the traditional strength and natural bodybuilding circles, the default has always been "when the condition is not good, reduce the load, and pushing hard will only lose exercise life." I have suffered this loss myself. Last winter I just got better from a cold, so I insisted on squatting as planned. As soon as I lifted the bar for the third set of 100 kilograms, I suddenly fell down. My knee was smashed, and my meniscus was bruised. It took me almost three months to dare to lift weights. It was really not worth the gain. Don’t underestimate feedback. Today when I was holding the club, I felt my wrists were sore, so I quickly put on a wrist brace to adjust my grip. ； After doing back exercises, only the trapezius muscles hurt, so I quickly changed my shoulder-sinking movements. These small and detailed feedbacks are much more useful than saving 100 training videos of great masters.

Many people's misunderstanding about fitness is still that "the more you practice, the more you will gain weight." They wish they could go to the gym seven days a week, but after practicing for more than half a year, their latitude has not improved, their endurance has not improved, and they suffer from insomnia and hair loss every day. The essence is that they do not understand the importance of recovery. This must be explained clearly: For people who are naturally fit, the window period for muscle synthesis is only 24-48 hours after training, and excessive recovery also depends on 7-9 hours of sleep and enough protein. Training the same muscle group 1-2 times a week is overwhelming. If you don’t sleep enough, no matter how much you practice, it will be useless. ； But if you are a player who uses technological products other than supplements, your recovery ability is several times that of ordinary people, and you can train the same muscle group three times a week without any problem. Don't blindly copy the "five exercises a week" and "six exercise plans" of those great masters. Their recovery ability is not at the same level as yours. The final loss for Dong Shi Xiaoqian is your own body. I have been practicing for almost six years now. What is stored in my phone is not the training highlights of great masters. It is the screen recording of each deadlift and bench press, as well as daily sleep and diet records. Before training, I check my state. If the state is good, I will lift the weight. If the state is not good, I will reduce the load and do some core training. Over this time, I have hardly suffered any serious injuries, and my latitude has steadily increased. It is much more efficient than when I first started working out.

In fact, after all is said and done, there is no one-size-fits-all technique for fitness? They are all obtained by practicing and trial and error again and again. Don't be superstitious about other people's standard answers. The feeling of your own body is the most reliable technique.