Gym fitness teaching

The core logic of gym fitness teaching is never to copy a unified training plan and blindly hit heavy weights, but to first clarify the match between one's own physical condition and training goals, and to proceed step by step under the premise of correct movement patterns. 90% of novices have no effect or even get injured after practicing for 3 months, which essentially violates this underlying principle.

Last Wednesday, I was doing squats at the Shangjian I frequented. I had just added the weight to 120kg when I heard a clang in the strength area next to me. A young man who had just entered college threw the barbell and turned pale while holding on to his waist. He only did jumping jacks for 2 minutes in the warm-up, and then he dared to squat 100kg. By the third squat, his upper body was almost parallel to the ground. If the coach next to him hadn't quickly helped me with his quick eyes, the lumbar spondylosis would have been minor.

Many people are confused when they first enter the gym: should they follow the isolation route of bodybuilding-style training, or should they learn to do the three major weightlifting exercises? In fact, there is no conflict between the two at all, and there is no distinction between them. If your goal is to look good in clothes and develop obvious shoulder and vest lines, you can use compound movements (squats, deadlifts, bench presses, pull-ups) to lay the foundation in the early stage, and then add isolation training to target weak areas in the later stage. ； But if you have postural problems such as rounded shoulders, high and low shoulders, and buckled knees, then pushing your chest hard and squatting heavy will only make the compensation problem more and more serious. Instead, you must first start with rehabilitation training such as posterior shoulder bundle activation and arch adjustment to correct the force generation pattern before adding weight.

I once took care of a young girl who just graduated. She came in and said she wanted to slim down her thighs. She went to the spinning room every day. After a month of pedaling, her knees hurt and she had to go up and down stairs. Her legs became 1cm thicker. Later, when she was evaluated, she was found to have congenital foot varus. When pedaling, she relies solely on her quadriceps to compensate, and her buttocks are not involved at all. When adjusting the plan, I first asked her to stop the spinning bike. Before each exercise, she did 10 minutes of arch activation and single-leg glute bridge to find a sense of strength, and then combined with the low-weight Bulgarian split squat, her leg circumference dropped by 2cm in half a month, and the knee pain problem was gone.

At this point, someone must have asked, should I hire a private tutor? To be honest, there is no standard answer to this question. I know a lot of masters who have been practicing for five or six years. When they first started, they had to read sports anatomy books on their own. When practicing, they would pick out their movements in front of the mirror and find partners to videotape each other for adjustments. Their level was much higher than that of many sales-oriented personal trainers. ； But if you can’t even figure out the difference between dumbbells and kettlebells, and the pain is not in the target muscles but in the joints the next day after training, or you have basic problems such as lumbar protrusion or old knee injuries, find a reliable personal trainer with a certificate (at least a national professional, preferably with international certifications such as ACE and NSCA) to take 8 to 10 classes to help you adjust your movement patterns. It will be much less pitfalls than if you practice blindly for half a year, and it will actually save you money for subsequent orthopedic visits. By the way, the kind that pulls you for a physical test and then tells you that your body fat rate is 20% over the standard and your muscle mass is seriously insufficient, and advises you to buy a 30-session package to lose 20 pounds, and then just turn around and walk away. That is a salesperson, not a coach. The first sentence of a truly knowledgeable person will definitely be to ask you whether you have any old injuries, whether you have exercise habits, and what goals you ultimately want to achieve.

Oh, yes, there is another point that many people struggle with. How long should we rest between sets? Some people on the Internet say 30 seconds, and some say 3 minutes. They are very noisy. In fact, there is no unified standard. If you are practicing muscle endurance or doing supersets, rest for 30 seconds to 1 minute is enough. ； If you are doing heavy deadlifts or squats, you can rest for 5 minutes and no one will tell you if you breathe well and your muscle strength has recovered. When I was training to deadlift for 140kg PR, there was a 4-minute interval between sets. A young man next to me who had just applied for a card came over and asked me if I was lazy from training because I was tired. I showed him my previous training video of pulling 140kg, and he walked away silently. It was quite interesting.

As for warm-up, don’t just get on the treadmill and run for 20 minutes as soon as you enter the gym. Especially in the winter when the gym is not heated enough, it’s okay to run for 5 minutes to let your core temperature rise. If it’s hot in summer, you can just do dynamic stretching and target muscle activation. For example, before doing back exercises, do 2 sets of elastic band surface pulls and high pull-down warm-up sets. It’s much more effective than running for 10 minutes, and it doesn’t waste energy.

To put it bluntly, there really aren’t that many fancy rules when it comes to fitness in the gym, and there’s no need for comparison. You’re here to train your own body, not to compete with who can lift more weight or buy more personal training classes. After practicing, I feel comfortable all over, the target muscles feel sore and swollen, and I can see myself walking in the direction I want every now and then, which is better than anything else. If you are really unsure about the movements, don't be afraid to ask. The older guys in the gym who are good at training are usually willing to help, which is better than trying to figure it out on your own.