Second misconception
Many people think that they themselves know what exercises they need to do. Well, if you have more than one year of bodybuilding behind you, then you know what you need. But if you have just embarked on the path of a healthy lifestyle, you cannot do without the services of a trainer. The trainer will not only create a personal program for you, but will also monitor the technique of performing the exercise, which is probably the most important thing.
I will give an example from personal experience. In 1990, I decided that I should become more beautiful and go in for sports. Having watched enough of the Western films that appeared in those years, I decided to buy an exercise bike. I found our domestic Pulse simulator on sale and began to actively ride it. As a result of doing it wrong, I ended up pumping up my lower leg instead of my thigh! But I found out about this when I joined the gym two years later.
Therefore, working out the execution technique with a trainer is an important part of the training. Then you can do these exercises on your own.
Photo: Depositphotos
Home workouts or gym workouts? All the pros and cons.
First of all, I would like you to ask yourself – what is the purpose of your training process? Based on this, we will continue our reasoning.
If you don’t have a goal or it’s vague (I would like to lose a little weight), then it’s rubbish. Let's admit to ourselves that when we don't know where we are going, we don't know what the result will be or whether there will be one at all. I wrote about how to set goals for yourself here. Let’s say you are determined to lose weight and have a beautiful, toned body, to be in a shape that is easy to maintain all year round, while you have dates in your head, there are quantities in which you will measure your progress (for example, kilograms) - then you have there is a goal. To the question - is it possible to achieve this goal by studying at home, I will answer - yes, of course it is possible. But at what cost? Let's figure it out.
Working out at home has only one advantage - you don't have to leave the house. Otherwise, home exercises are much inferior to the gym. You will say - well, of course, there is no need to spend money on an expensive subscription, and what’s more, I will save so much time while I get to the gym and back! But no. If your goal is the same as we discussed above, then you will need sports equipment at home. Just for fun, look at how much a set of collapsible dumbbells, a fitball, a bodybar costs - that's half of the annual subscription. How will you do cardio in winter? Run on ice? Not everyone will be able to run on the street in the summer - it’s cramped, stray dogs, dirty air... Buying the most inexpensive cardio equipment costs at least another 15 thousand rubles. One and a half annual subscriptions are already out.
As for wasting time, I’ll tell you from my own experience. I spent several years trying to work out at home, trying to organize this process, trying to get myself involved in sports within 4 walls. But this never happened. So wasting time on the road to the gym is nothing compared to years of ineffective home workouts.
So, now let's talk about the disadvantages of home workouts and why we most often abandon these workouts.
Home workouts are many times worse in effectiveness than workouts in the gym. At home we are not ready to work hard. We put on old sneakers, the T-shirt we slept in, shorts that we haven’t worn for 10 years and, stepping over the cat, we lazily clear the floor. We are relaxed, we have a TV series playing in the background, and a phone call can distract us from the training for a long time. At home, we are most often not alone and can be embarrassed by our family, we can disturb someone. A home workout may never start, even if you planned it - you can easily get carried away with something else, promising yourself to postpone the lesson until tomorrow.
- At the gym you are surrounded by like-minded people. You came to work until the end, otherwise why did you come at all? You are wearing beautiful workout clothes, they are comfortable, and you feel the general mood - the general energy of work. You don’t give up halfway and always finish the approach because that guy over there is looking at you. A workout at the gym usually occurs on a schedule (let's say you work out with a trainer or go with a friend), it is more difficult to cancel or reschedule. The gym is perceived as a second “job” that is difficult to skip without remorse.
- In the gym, you can “spy” on how experienced athletes do this or that exercise. Be sure that you do not know everything, but only a small part. The gym teaches you new things.
- The gym offers socializing opportunities. Even if you are an unsociable person, you will probably talk to someone in the locker room and perhaps find someone who will insure you, or just someone whose progress you will watch with interest.
- The gym has a huge selection of exercise equipment and equipment . Maybe instead of cluttering the apartment, sports. equipment, just go to the gym? We understand that the same equipment and exercises will drive us crazy with their monotony, and our muscles respond more readily to varied training. It’s much easier to go to another machine and do the exercise a little differently this time than to try to come up with a new version at home.
Thus, I am completely in favor of training in the gym. However, we all have those days when we don’t want to go anywhere, well, either we’re sick, or the weather is such that you see through the window how passers-by are torn off by the wind and carried away in an unknown direction, like Ellie and Tatoshka’s house in that fairy tale . In these cases, you can practice at home, but only as an exception . For an EFFECTIVE home workout, we need to turn on our brains and imagination and think through a plan in advance . Let's say today you were supposed to have leg day at the gym, then you should think about which exercises you can do at home and which cannot be replaced with anything. Personally, I can hardly imagine how to replace the platform press at home... But if you want, you can do a good killer lower training at home. I do squats with dumbbells, sumo squats, deadlifts with dumbbells, leg swings (of course, this is not a crossover with weights, but you can still hammer the buttock if you want), lunges with dumbbells, calf raises (calf raises), pumping abs and do a plank - this is a pretty energy-intensive workout for the bottom. You will “punch” the buttocks just like the hamstrings and quadriceps.
Training your upper body at home is not difficult; all you need is a set of collapsible dumbbells. It is, of course, advisable to also have a bench with the ability to tilt or at least a fitball. Various dumbbell lifts, rows and presses, push-ups, planks, and crunches can be done within 4 walls.
The most important thing is to turn off your phone and TV. Anything that distracts should be removed from your attention. Put on normal workout clothes and sneakers, get ready, bring a water bottle into the room. If you need music, please, but not TV or cinema.
Don't forget to warm up! If you don't have a cardio machine, then a good old jump rope will always come to the rescue. You need to try to focus as much as possible on the process and, if possible, pretend that you are in the gym and not at home, then your efficiency will increase significantly. Cooling down (stretching) is also important. Try to include it in your training process whenever possible. This will make the muscles more beautiful and speed up recovery.
I don’t really understand people who (having a goal and regularly working hard in the gym) don’t value their work - they skip training for no reason, eat until they’re sick, and then “work it off” and so on day after day... It looks like one step forward and two back. I would like to ask such people: “Don’t you really value your own labor costs? Where is the logic? Do you even want anything, or are you just pretending?” Try to minimize indulgences for yourself, and finally, respect yourself and your own work. Don't go to the gym, so try at home! But again, I remain of the opinion that if your goal is a beautiful, toned body and a shape that is easy to maintain throughout the year, then a gym membership is a must.
Do you train at home? Regularly or occasionally? What do these workouts look like and what are the effects?
Third misconception
There is an opinion that you need to go to the gym every day. This is wrong. More precisely, not quite like that. It all depends on the goals you set for yourself. If only health and a beautiful figure are important to you, then the best option would be 2-3 times a week. If you are going to become a professional, then, of course, you need more intense training.
Most of my clients work out 2 times a week. And we see the result. More frequent training can lead to overtraining. And this is very bad. It will take a very long time for my muscles to recover.
Of course, you can exercise five days a week, as I do as the director of a fitness center. But here it is important to understand that it is necessary to take medications that help the body recover quickly and work on different muscle groups every day.
The main rule here is don’t rush! We need to systematically work on ourselves. It's systemic. Choose the days you will go to the gym and try to stick to that schedule.
BEFORE rocking became mainstream
The simplest case is if you had your own opinion about pumping up muscles even before the gym became mainstream. If you, like me, have always thought that bodybuilding is at least strange, just as strange is everything that inflates metrosexuality, then the question of whether to lift or not would be quite simple for you.
If you haven’t had time to form your opinion about pulling a piece of iron in pursuit of beautiful forms, then, having found yourself in today’s fit and mr-muscular flow of information, which is formed not only from TV, YouTube and social networks, but also from your acquaintances and friends , who probably also succumbed to quality panic, it will not be easy for you to see the true state of affairs.
Pumping up muscles is like a second job.
Why do you go to the gym? To pump up muscles? Ahh, you want to be like Schwartz, or at least like Statham. Commendable. But they are professional actors. And you? Why do you need this? “For beauty,” you say. And you’ll be right, because it’s much cooler to be a foreman than a frail nerd without a chest and shoulders.
But what if banal horizontal bars and push-ups are enough so that you are not ashamed to look at yourself in the mirror? What if the gym and the idea of pumping up muscles is overrated?
After all, what’s stopping you from buying yourself a pair of dumbbells and working out at home to strengthen and strengthen your bones, without bothering with nutrition and weight training? The key question here is what do you want more: mass (big, “beautiful” muscles) or functionality (the life-changing capabilities of your muscles).
The gym is not the only way to get in shape.
Many ordinary people naively believe that the only way to have a normal figure is to join a gym. But where there are hardware, there is an appropriate diet - from 5-6 large portions of food per day. And not just food, but “healthy and tasty” dishes - all sorts of dry chicken breasts, cottage cheese with 0% fat, eggs, vegetables. Add to this sports nutrition in the form of protein and some creatine for courage. And be sure to regulate your sleep schedule, because muscles grow when you sleep, that is, it is advisable to sleep at least eight hours a day. Now multiply all this by six months to a year. Ready? Great.
But there is one problem. When you stop going to the gym or at least working out at home with dumbbells, your muscles will begin to lose weight and waste away.
The body is a wise thing. Everything that he doesn’t need and doesn’t use goes for recycling.
Going to the gym is an artificially created external stimulant for muscle growth, so if you want to keep them forever, you need to continue to stimulate and feed them. That is, you need to be prepared to multiply the diet described above for the rest of your life. It will be a wonderful life, consisting of nothing but training, constant consumption of the “right” foods and the fear of not eating (the muscles will burn!).
If you are still ready to make all these sacrifices in order to make your carcass big, like in the glossy bodybuilding magazines, I will shake your hand. So you really want this, just like Schwartz wanted. If you are thinking about the advisability of such sacrifices, then I am ready to pat you knowingly on the shoulder and offer you replacement bars, parallel bars and dumbbells, along with a more protein-focused diet, but without any problems.
How to determine if you need a gym
A very simple way: remember your youth and youth. If they included a sport that you enjoyed doing, then you can go to the gym. If it wasn’t there, then most likely there is no point in signing up for the gym, because it’s not your thing anyway. In my time, I have seen a huge number of people who have never played sports, but in the wake of fashion, they signed up for the gym, only to stop going to it after six months or a year.
If a person really wanted to train, then he did not wait for his thirtieth birthday or a new fashion. No, he was already training before it became mainstream. Therefore, if you have never played sports, but suddenly something stirs inside you, then it would be nice to filter this desire. Where did it come from?
Has your friend signed up for the gym? Has your girlfriend hinted that she likes guys with broad shoulders? Maybe you got stagnant at work, the autumn blues began to torment you, and you read somewhere that sports will help you cope with this matter? Yes, it will help. But not for you. Because it's not yours. You have succumbed to the influence of new trends - fit girls and their pumped-up friends. But over time, you will find that all this craving for iron is of no use to you, and even more so, proper sports nutrition for gaining weight will be unimportant for you.
Going to the gym is an artificially created external stimulant for muscle growth, so if you want to keep them forever, you need to continue to stimulate and feed them.
Maybe you like to play tennis? Or walk a lot. Or swim. What if a game (like basketball) is more interesting to you than triceps size? What if this cute functionality is like a balm to your heart, while you signed up for the gym only because of the call of fashion? After all, in fact, a pumped up body is like a new leather jacket. An element of fashion, aestheticism, but nothing more. So what if there were a ton of benefits to not going the bodybuilder route?
The fourth misconception
The coach is always right. As sad as it is to say, not all coaches are competent. The problem isn't even that the coach doesn't know what to do with you. And the fact is that he simply doesn’t care about you. Well, a newbie came to the gym. Well, let him do what he wants.
This is, of course, a serious problem for many clubs. There is only one way out - go to another club.
Photo: Depositphotos
Why you should go to the gym
16.06.2017
Regular visits to the gym will help keep your body in good shape and avoid many health problems.
There are plenty of reasons why you should visit the gym, but each person must decide for himself which ones are right for him. Most likely, you want to lose weight, improve your appearance, health, or you have a desire to constantly improve, both intellectually and physically. Many experts note that exercise is one of the most important needs of the body.
The human body is a complex mechanism that requires constant work on it, and if we take into account the modern way of life, the picture is not the most rosy. We work to give all the necessary benefits to our body, but we forget about the priority work - working with the body.
The gym will help improve not only the body. Once you decide that your body deserves better, you won't be able to stop there. Start personal training and you'll make the most of your time in the gym.
By regularly visiting the gym, you will not only become more resilient and more confident, but you will also feel how your body has begun to counteract stress and depression.
Constant training is:
- Increased immunity;
- Reducing the risk of cardiovascular diseases;
- The ability to strengthen all muscle groups and develop them harmoniously;
- Extension of high-quality functionality of the musculoskeletal system;
- Prevention of obesity;
- The ability to achieve a state of emotional comfort.
Be sure to remember that visiting the gym for weight loss in combination with proper nutrition is the main condition for success.
If you visit the gym from time to time, then in this case you will constantly be in a state of starting a workout, the results achieved quickly roll back, and, starting from scratch each time, the body experiences significant stress.
Physical activity in the gym or just diet? It is best to combine them successfully
Achieving a constant weight at which you are comfortable, in which you do not risk your health and your mood, is possible only in one case - if you successfully combine these components. The gym for weight loss is the foundation, and diet is only a component of the system.
If you prefer to improve through diet alone, you will be disappointed, because there is nothing worse than a flabby, weak body, devoid of harmoniously developed muscles. Working out in the gym will not only give you muscle mass, but also proper cardio, which is most important for weight loss.
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