Trainer warns: home fitness can be dangerous

Together with the expert of “Championship”, fitness and healthy lifestyle specialist Andrei Semeshov, we find out what is wrong with fanaticism in home fitness and how to avoid overload.

According to my observations, the fashion for home fitness is really becoming a mass phenomenon. On the one hand, from every iron – new complexes of home workouts. On the other hand – the realization that when, if not now, in self-isolation, it’s time to turn your face to sports.

There are viral videos on the Internet, as people in the course of training at home carelessly or in excitement break light bulbs with dumbbells, tear off radiators or pull doors off their hinges. It looks funny, until the footage of real injuries begins. The same dumbbells or kettlebells fall on their heads, homemade barbells, breaking off, hitting the chest. Here I personally as a person who 15 years ago dropped on himself a dumbbell weighing 20 kg, becomes not fun.

Sport, or rather physical training – it is important and necessary for everyone. But we should not forget that we consciously put our body in a vulnerable position, forcing it to work beyond the usual patterns. Therefore, in no case should we neglect the basic principles. Even when it comes to seemingly harmless home workouts. Otherwise, you can break something foolishly. And if there is a camera on, then get into the heroes of the next viral video in social networks.

Rule one. Common sense

Today without the usual entourage – barbells, dumbbells and exercise equipment – all professional athletes and just athletes with a long history. Believe me, self-isolation is especially difficult for them, because over the years of training the body has become accustomed to systematic near-limit loads. It really becomes a “withdrawal” when there is no opportunity to squat with weight, press the platform and so on.

To somehow take away this “itch”, many people begin to fantasize, invent different outlandish options. Guys do bench press, using instead of a projectile girlfriend or wife. Sporty girls pump their buttocks, performing Romanian standing pull with a sofa. Both compete in different challenges. For example, take off or put on a T-shirt, standing on their hands and leaning on the wall with their toes. A mop and water canisters, hooked on both ends on the principle of “the bigger the better”, become barbells. There are many examples. It looks cool, everyone likes and comments. Unfortunately, some users of the network try to copy….

Why? In advertising they usually write: “Stunts performed by professional stuntmen, do not try to repeat them”. Videos with such “trainings”, I think, should also be forcibly provided with appropriate titles. The girl from “Instagram”, cheerfully pulling the couch, has been strengthening the muscles needed for this purpose for ten years, first with dumbbells, and then with bigger equipment. And she knows for sure that she will hold this sofa and it will not break her.

Attempts of the follower, who has never put anything heavier than hand luggage on the luggage belt at the airport, to turn the sleeping place into a weightlifting apparatus with a high probability will end either with a torn lumbar or toe injuries. In mild cases – broken fingernails.

Therefore, rule one – no “game” and attempts to copy exotic exercises after professional athletes and fitness bloggers.

Rule two. Adequacy

If we are just starting sports at home or in a fitness center, it is very important not to burn out at the start. It is not necessary to fit in plankochellenzhdi or push-ups every day for a hundred and fifty times.

You should start gradually, with simple and understandable to you exercises. For example, familiar from school physical education classes: the same push-ups, plank, press, squats, but without formal settings in minutes or repetitions. Work in your own mode, at first – until you feel a slight fatigue. Let it seem to you subjectively not serious. In reality, if the previous time you did push-ups at school or in the army, then trying to load your body to the full will be a bad idea.

Beautiful buttocks and powerful biceps will eventually appear in those beginners who will be smoothly drawn into the training, without afterburner. On this distance victory is guaranteed by measuredness and regularity.

It is a good symptom if the morning after training there is some fatigue, discomfort in the body, but in no case painful sensations. No pain, no gain (literally – “no pain, no gain”) – this is not about torn muscles, but rather about psychology, when the pros for the sake of record results deny themselves the right to a normal life. A schedule that consists of two workouts a day, eating by the hour and sleeping nine hours a day is not in harmony with going to the movies, sitting in restaurants and going to kebabs. It’s their conscious choice. Why should we paint our lives in two colors – training and rest? Our palette simply must be much more diverse.

Rule three. Progression

Only after observing the first two rules, it makes sense to move on to the next one. Namely to the gradual progression of the load. Indeed, in order for your muscles to grow and strengthen, they need to be “surprised”. If today you coped with squats in three approaches for 15 repetitions, then in the next one you can try to storm a new personal record. Options: increase reps to 20 or use additional weights so that the same 15 reps are given with a little more effort.

Of course, constant linear growth is impossible. For understanding: professional powerlifters are happy to gain 5-10 kg per year! However, at the initial and even intermediate level of training, the progress will be much more impressive. Nevertheless, periodically (say, once a month and a half) you should definitely take a step back, reducing the volume, i.e. the number of repetitions, or intensity – the weight of weights. Or both.

Accordingly, when choosing training programs and even specific exercises, do not lose sight of your main goal – why you are doing it. If you want to tone your muscles, emphasize where necessary and hide where not necessary, then squats on an unstable support on one leg with a mop and water bottles are not, to put it mildly, the shortest and most effective way to the goal. The same can be said about all sorts of push-ups on three fingers of one hand.

Separately, I will note that for those who want to lose weight, start the path to the figure of dreams should begin with the kitchen and revision of the refrigerator. Although regular fitness training is also highly desirable.