The difference between male fitness and muscle gain

The essence of these two concepts that most people confuse is the relationship between inclusion and being included - fitness is the collective name for all exercise behaviors with the purpose of improving physical fitness and physical condition, and muscle gain is just one branch of the many subdivided goals of fitness. The underlying logic, execution standards, and investment costs of the two are not even close to each other, and they cannot be equated at all.

Last week, I met a little boy who had just graduated from the gym. When he applied for the card, he patted his chest and said he wanted to "work out well." He did 5 kilometers of aerobics and a spinning bike every day. He lost 6 pounds after two weeks of training. He scratched his head and came to me to ask why his arm circumference hadn't increased at all. This is a typical confusion between the two things. All the training you do is to lose fat, and it is strange to be able to grow muscles.

To be honest, the boundaries of fitness are actually very broad. If you walk around the neighborhood twice after get off work, it can be considered fitness. On weekends, playing basketball with your buddies for an afternoon can be considered fitness. Even if you are fishing at work and doing 10 minutes of shoulder and neck relaxation training following a short video, it can also be considered fitness. There is no unified assessment standard, and you don’t need to compare your progress with anyone. If you feel comfortable after practicing, your shoulders are no longer sore, you don’t breathe when climbing stairs, and your blood lipids have dropped in recent physical examinations, that is effective fitness. You can do it however you want. If you want to drink milk tea today, you can lie down if you don’t want to practice this week. No one will say that you have practiced incorrectly. It’s no wonder that many people think that “the threshold for fitness is low”. It’s basically that as long as you are willing to move, you can exercise anytime and anywhere.

But muscle building is different. Its goal is too clear: to give sufficient stimulation to muscle fibers through resistance training, induce excessive recovery, and achieve growth in muscle cross-sectional area. There are hard targets stuck. You have been practicing for three months, but your arm circumference has not increased by 1cm, and your bench press weight has not increased by 10kg. Even if you say nothing, it is not an effective muscle gain. Of course, there are different opinions here. Many veterans in the natural fitness circle who have been practicing for more than ten years will say that for men over 35 years old, testosterone levels decline at a rate of 1%-2% every year. Being able to stabilize existing muscle mass and not lose it is actually considered "muscle gain" in another sense. I also agree with this view. After all, individual foundations are too different. It is unfair to ask a 40-year-old middle-aged man by the standards of a 20-year-old boy.

Many people still have a misunderstanding: they think that if you practice until you are tired, you have practiced well. If you are sore the next day after exercising, you will definitely grow muscles. This is simply overthinking. The execution logic of fitness is too flexible. If you want to lose fat, do more aerobic diet. If you want to improve your rounded shoulders and hunchback, do more back exercises and stretch your chest muscles. Even if you are in a bad mood today, go to the gym for half an hour to sweat and vent, which is considered as completing your goal. However, the execution logic of muscle gain is much more demanding. The core is progressive overload. This week, you can bench press 50kg for 3 sets of 8 reps. Next week, either try to increase it to 55kg for the same set, or 50kg for 3 sets of 10 reps. If the muscles are not given continuous new stimulation, they will not grow in vain. There’s also diet and sleep. It’s not a big deal if you’re craving for a cup of milk tea or a hotpot during fitness. During the muscle-building period, you have to measure and calculate at least 1.6g of protein per kilogram of body weight per day. You also have to ensure an appropriate calorie surplus and get enough sleep for 7-9 hours a day. Without any one of them, no matter how hard you train, it will be in vain. As for training methods, there is no standard answer. Bodybuilders prefer isolation training, polishing the lines of each muscle group separately, while powerlifters rely on three major weight increases to grow the muscles of the whole body. Both routes have their own advantages and disadvantages. No one is better than the other. It depends on whether you want a plump body or greater strength.

The difference in input costs is even more realistic. If you just want to keep fit, you can practice well without spending a penny. You can do bodyweight squats and push-ups at home, run two laps in the park downstairs, or spend dozens of dollars a month to play badminton with your golf friends, and you can achieve good results. But if you want to build muscle, you must first have a place where you can add weight freely, right? Either get a fitness card or buy barbells and dumbbells at home. The equipment alone is an expense. There are also dietary costs. You have to eat so much protein every day, such as eggs, milk, chicken breasts, fish and shrimps. Even if you drink the most cost-effective protein powder, your monthly food expenses will be at least one-third more than usual. The biggest obstacle is actually the time cost. You have to devote at least 4-6 hours of dedicated training every week, and you have to ensure sleep. For 996 workers, this threshold is really not low. I used to have a programmer friend who had saved a lot of muscle-building tutorials and practiced for half a year without doing anything. Later I found out that he got home from get off work at 11 o'clock every day. After practicing and washing up, it was almost 1 o'clock. He had to get up to go to work after sleeping for 5 hours. His muscles had no time to recover. Later, he adjusted to getting up early every day to train for 40 minutes and making sure to go to bed before 11 pm. His arm circumference increased by 1.5cm in two months, and the effect was better than the previous half year.

In fact, there is really no need to worry about whether you are working out or building muscle. If you just want to move to make your body better and less likely to get sick, then you don't need to be bound by the rules of muscle building. Just do whatever is comfortable for you. If you really want to have muscles with obvious lines, then be prepared to fight for a long time. Don’t run away after two weeks of training without any results. After all, for ordinary men who exercise naturally, gaining 3-5 pounds of pure muscle in a year is already a ceiling level. By the way, don’t blindly compare your progress with those bloggers with ridiculously large muscles on the Internet. Many of the good figures you envy may be the blessing of technology. For ordinary people to exercise, it is enough to make progress compared with yourself.