The first principles you should pay attention to when exercising at home

The first principle that you should pay attention to when doing home fitness is that all training decisions should be based on your current physical condition and refuse to copy any standardized training plan.

I just helped a friend deal with a training injury a while ago. She is a typical sedentary person in the office. She sits in front of the computer for 8 hours a day. She can hear cracks in her shoulders and neck when she turns her head. She noticed someone saying that shuttlecock exercise is very efficient in burning fat. She saved the edited version and jumped for 30 minutes. The next day, her knees hurt so much that she couldn't go downstairs. She went to the hospital to check for patellofemoral joint disorder. To put it bluntly, she has fallen into the trap of "mechanically applying" - what the blogger did not mention is that the premise is that she exercises more than three times a week and the muscles around her knees are strong enough. Her knees are sore even after walking for a long time, so she can just start high-intensity bouncing movements without any problems.

In fact, there have always been two different voices in the fitness circle. One group thinks that novices don’t understand anything. They should first follow a mature plan for 3 months to develop a habit.； The other group insists that all training must be functionally assessed first, and the content must be arranged according to personal conditions. In a gym scene with a coach present, the former statement is actually not a big problem. After all, the coach can help you adjust your movements at any time, and will reduce the intensity when he sees that you are not in the right state. But in a home scene, it is completely untrue - when you are facing the mobile phone screen, your movements are so deformed that your waist collapses into a C, and the blogger in the camera will not jump out and tell you to stop.

I have been through bigger pits before. When Yangkang was just two weeks old, I felt that I had almost recovered. I dug out the home body weight training chart I saved last year and started practicing. After completing 15 burpees, my heart rate stabilized at 110 that night when I was lying down. It took three days to slow down before it became normal. Later, I chatted with friends who do exercise rehabilitation and found out that after being infected with COVID-19, even if you feel no symptoms, your cardiopulmonary function and muscle endurance will generally drop by 20%-40%. This decline is different for everyone. There is no unified recovery timetable, so you can only try slowly by yourself. You see, even if it is a plan that I personally tested and worked before, if my physical condition changes, problems will still occur with the hard copy.

Many people say that I am not a professional and cannot do functional assessment. What should I do? There is really no need to learn the complicated FMS functional movement screening. You can just spend 5 minutes shaking it before moving: will your shoulders and neck become stiff when you turn your head? When you squat until your thighs are parallel to the ground, will your knees get sore and buckle involuntarily? When you stand and bend over to touch your toes, do you feel pain in your waist first instead of a pulling sensation in the back of your legs? These tiny little feelings are your body’s customized assessment report for you, which is more accurate than any internet celebrity program with 100,000+ likes. If your knees hurt when squatting, don’t force yourself to do too many sets of squats. Start by stretching and bending your legs in a seated position to strengthen your quadriceps. Wait until the muscles around your knees are stable enough before practicing squats. There’s no shame in moving slower. It’s better than recovering from an injury for three months.

Some people have criticized me before, saying that I just move around and sweat and don't play games. Are I so particular? That being said, but isn’t it true that most of us do home fitness just to be more comfortable, to reduce back pain caused by sitting for a long time, and to have better energy? If the pain after moving is so severe that you can't even go down the stairs, or you even develop chronic diseases such as lumbar muscle strain or synovitis, then you might as well lie down and use your phone. The original purpose is to improve the quality of life, and it should not become a burden.

Now before I practice at home, I always shake my arms and legs for three to five minutes. Today, I have stiff shoulders and necks, so I do a few more sets of YTWL flyes. Yesterday, I stayed up late and was in poor condition, so I put a yoga mat on a yoga mat and did abdominal breathing and foam rolling for 10 minutes to relax. I didn't waste time slowly building up some lines, and I haven't had any training injuries in the past two years. To put it bluntly, fitness is a process of dialogue with one's own body. It is not about submitting homework in school. There is no need to follow other people's standard answers, right?