fitness equipment

For the vast majority of ordinary fitness enthusiasts, the core value of fitness equipment is always "adaptive training goals + consistent with the logic of movement force generation". It has no direct correlation with price, Internet celebrity attributes, and the number of additional functions. There is absolutely no need to pay for unnecessary premiums.

A while ago, I went to a small shop to pick up skewers. When I opened the balcony door, I almost laughed out loud - half a row of down jackets were hung on a Smith rack worth more than 20,000 yuan, cat litter and unopened express boxes were piled on the adjustable dumbbell bench, and the lever of the high pull-down machine was wrapped around his wife's clothesline. He scratched his head and said that when he saw a fitness blogger saying that "home equipment can be used in one step to save trouble," he immediately placed the order. However, after practicing twice, he always felt that the movements were awkward and he thought it was troublesome to adjust the weight. So he still walked to the gym downstairs every day to practice bench pressing with the most basic Olympic bar. The pile at home has completely become a large storage rack.

It's interesting to say that people with different training systems have very different understanding of equipment. I know an old man who does provincial powerlifting. The total training area at home is only two square meters, including a standard Olympic bar, two pairs of barbell plates with a total weight of 180kg, and the squat rack was welded by a welder at the door of the community for 800 yuan. The protective bars are made of steel pipes that are screwed by oneself. With this configuration, his deadlift score increased by 40 kilograms last year. What he always said is, "As long as the equipment can hold you firmly to complete the movement, all the extra functions are just for lazy people to make excuses." But friends who do rehabilitation and functional training do not approve of this set at all. The last time I went to their studio, the walls were piled with kettlebells, soft medicine balls, wave speed balls, and elastic bands with different resistances. Even the dumbbells were soft bags with anti-slip patterns. People say that for middle-aged and elderly people with knee injuries, women recovering from postpartum, or people who have just recovered from surgery, free weights are easier to compensate for. These "fancy" small equipment can accurately stimulate deep stabilizer muscles that cannot be touched by ordinary barbells.

Speaking of which, I have to mention a topic that has been discussed endlessly in the past two years: Should novices use fixed track equipment or free weights first?

I have seen many bloggers slapping the table and criticizing fixed equipment as an "IQ tax", saying that it makes people rely on the support of the equipment, and the core will never be developed. There is also a group of people who say that novices who use free weights are just seeking death, and they will be injured in the waist and knees for half a month. In fact, there is really no need to be black and white. I used to work with a novice girl who had an old knee injury. It was definitely unrealistic to ask her to squat free barbells. I first asked her to sit on the leg press machine to find a sense of strength in the quadriceps. After practicing for two months, she transitioned to Bulgarian split squats. When she finally started free squats, she did not have the problems of buckling her knees in and bending her back that many people often make. But if you have been training for more than half a year and still practice squats with the Smith Bar every day, it is really unnecessary. The fixed trajectory blocks the force path for you, and the core and stabilizer muscles cannot be exercised at all. The strength you develop is "dead strength". Last time I met a brother who squatted 180 on the Smith Bar, and he was shaking when he squatted 120 on the free bar.

There is another pitfall that many people have stepped on: they always think that expensive, commercial equipment is good, while household equipment is defective. To be honest, I bought a 120-yuan resistance band a while ago. I keep it in my computer bag when I go on business trips. I can practice shoulder external rotation and seated rowing in the hotel room. The usage rate is much higher than the fixed equipment in the gym that costs tens of thousands. My colleague was even more amazing. He bought a pair of adjustable dumbbells and put them under his desk. During his lunch break, he used them to do two sets of curls and shoulder presses. In half a year, his arm circumference increased by 3cm, and he even saved money on a fitness card.

Last time I saw a retired man in the gym. He thought the dumbbells were too heavy, so he used two mineral water bottles filled with sand to do lateral raises. His shoulder line was better than many young men who had been registered for five years and bought a full set of household equipment. To put it bluntly, equipment is always an aid. If you can really concentrate on the movements and persist in training, the steps on the roadside can be used as box jumps, and the horizontal bar in the community can be used for back training. If you spend three days fishing and two days drying nets, even if you move the entire gym back home, those iron knots you spent a lot of money to buy will only serve as good-looking shelves in the end.