Gym fitness planning

For 90% of ordinary people who go to the gym, the most practical fitness plan is not the amazing five-workout-a-week split posted on the Internet, nor does it have to be a two-hour training time. Instead, it is to first anchor the three core variables of "your goals, the fixed time you can squeeze out every week, and the current exercise foundation." Start with a low-threshold plan that you can adhere to, and gradually adjust the intensity and training mode. It is 100 times more effective than copying the plan of a professional player from the beginning.

I went through this trap two years ago when I first applied for a fitness card. I saved a photo album full of internet celebrity fitness plans, and made up a five-week training schedule. I did a round of chest, shoulder, back, legs, and arms. My legs were shaking when I walked down the stairs on the third day. I had a fever and lay down on the fourth day. The annual card had accumulated dust for half a year. When I went back, the front desk almost didn’t recognize me.

Regarding the issue of training differentiation, the fitness circle has actually been arguing for almost ten years without reaching a unified conclusion. Old-school enthusiasts recognize the differentiated logic of "single part deep stimulation + 72 hours of rest" and believe that training one part once thoroughly, and then training again next time until it is fully recovered, is the most efficient way to build muscle. ； However, recent exercise physiology research also shows that novices’ muscle recruitment abilities are inherently weak, and one training session can only stimulate the target muscles to a limited extent. Instead, stimulating the same part twice a week will increase muscle gain by about 30% faster than training once a week. Both statements are supported by experimental data. There is nothing right or wrong. They are just suitable for different groups of people.

If you have just entered the gym and can't even feel the power of the fixed equipment, you can only get out of it 2-3 days a week at most. There is really no need to force yourself to be active. Several friends of mine who have persisted for two or three years started going there twice a week and practiced three compound movements each time: squats, bench presses, and high pull-downs. Each movement was done in 4 groups, with a weight of 8-12RM in each group. They rested for 1 and a half minutes between groups, and then ran for 20 minutes after the exercise. In three months, they lost 5 points of body fat, and their strength also increased a lot. They are much more efficient than those who go to the gym every day and take out their mobile phones to take photos for half an hour after two exercises.

Last week, I met a young man in the strength area. He came up and bench-pressed with a 100kg barbell. As soon as he pushed his second shoulder, there was a sound, and he sat on the ground in pain. Later, the coach called 120 and carried him away. To put it bluntly, he saved 10 minutes of warm-up and lost half a year of training time, which is not worth it. Many people are anxious to put on weights as soon as they enter the gym, thinking that warm-up is a waste of time. In fact, dynamic stretching + light weight group to find a sense of strength is the most critical step to avoid injury. No matter how tight your time is, don't skimp on these 10 minutes.

If you have more time and can spare 4 days a week, you can switch to splitting up the upper and lower limbs. Practice the pushing and pulling movements of the upper limbs on one day, and the squatting and hip hinge movements of the lower limbs on the other day. Take a rest day and then cycle. This can ensure that each part can be stimulated twice a week without making yourself too tired. As for the five-point split and push-pull leg split posted online, they are really more suitable for advanced enthusiasts who can go more than 5 times a week and have more than a year of training foundation. Novices who blindly follow it will most likely either fail to practice well or get injured during the training.

Speaking of this, someone must have asked, should novices hire private tutors? This is also one of the most controversial topics in the fitness community. Some people think that all personal trainers are just cutting leeks, and they dare to come and teach movements after passing the certification test in a week. ； Some people also think that novices must hire personal trainers, otherwise they will definitely get injured if they practice blindly. In fact, it depends on your personal situation: if you have enough budget and can find a coach who holds ACE, NSCA or a serious national professional certificate, and will not chase you to sell classes and supplements as soon as you get started, spending some money to learn movement patterns in the first 1-2 months will be much more cost-effective than going to the hospital for an MRI after practicing blindly. ； It doesn’t matter if you have a limited budget. There are a lot of free professional teaching contents online. Uncle Jeff’s action breakdowns and introductory tutorials from many domestic professional athletes. Practice by yourself. Every time you practice, make a short video to compare the standard movements. After two or three months of practice, the movements will not be much different. There is no need to squeeze the budget and hire a personal trainer.

By the way, don't limit your fitness plan to the one hour in the gym. After training, go home, eat and drink, and stay up until two or three o'clock. No matter how standard you practice, it's useless. You don’t need to think of boiled chicken breasts and broccoli when you hear about diet control. Ordinary people really don’t need to be so harsh. They can already surpass 80% of people by gathering together one punch of staple food, one palm of protein, two punches of green leafy vegetables, two less cups of milk tea, and two less midnight snacks for each meal. If you stay up until 2 o'clock the day before and go to bed, don't force yourself to go to the gym to hit weights the next day. I tried it once last year. I stayed up late and changed my plan until 3 o'clock. The next day, I tried to do deadlifts and almost broke my waist. I took a rest for almost half a month to recover. It was not worth the gain.

To put it bluntly, there is no standard answer to fitness planning, nor is there any "most perfect" answer. The one that you can stick to and that doesn't make you cringe at the thought of going to the gym is the one that's best for you. I have seen people who applied for an annual card worth 20,000 yuan and only went there three times, and I have also seen office workers who only went twice a week and their waistcoat lines have improved after practicing for a year. The core is never how professional a plan you use, but how long you can continue to do it. After all, fitness is something that adds points to your life. Don’t make it a task that must be completed. On the contrary, it will go further.