The difference between fitness and athletes

The core difference has never been the superficial indicators such as training weight and exercise duration, but the complete opposition of the underlying goals - all fitness activities must ultimately serve the quality of your daily life, while the training of professional athletes is essentially to use controllable body wear and tear to hit the limits of human competitive ability.

Last week, I met a young man in the gym. He deadlifted 140kg. He took a video and posted it on WeChat. Someone commented on the bottom, "You can join the provincial team at this level." He responded with a laughing and crying expression: "If someone on the provincial team had pulled 140kg, they would have been punished by the coach. Besides, I have to go to work tomorrow after pulling. After lifting, I have to practice core training and explosion. I don't even dare to drink milk tea at night." ”This is actually to the point. Many people think that practicing hard means being an athlete. This is not the case. The logic of settling accounts between the two is completely different.

I stayed at a sports academy for a while a few years ago. It was next to the training hall of the weightlifting team. A 16-year-old boy squatted 200kg as if for fun, but his waist was always tied with a thick waistband. It hurt every day. The team doctor had to give him three injections a week to relieve his pain. I asked him why he was still practicing when it hurt like this, but he didn't even raise his head: "It's okay if it hurts now, as long as I can get results." ”For an ordinary fitness person, if he suffers from back pain after three days of training, his first reaction will definitely be "Did I do the wrong movement?" Should we stop training and make adjustments? ”, no one would sacrifice their waist health for half a lifetime just to squat 20kg more.

Speaking of this, some people may object, aren't those who compete in bodybuilding competitions also come from a fitness background? Isn’t this just like athletes? In fact, this has always been a controversial point in the fitness circle: one group believes that as long as it is for the purpose of impacting competition results, whether it is bodybuilding, powerlifting or road running leagues, it has essentially entered into the training logic of athletes and is not considered ordinary fitness. ； The other group believes that as long as you don't join a professional team and don't rely on this to make a living, you are considered a fitness enthusiast. Both opinions are reasonable, but the core depends on what you are practicing for.

To give you the most intuitive example, you must have friends who run marathons. They run at a half-marathon pace of 5 minutes every day. After the run, you go to meet up with friends for skewers and cold beer. On weekends, you can take your kids to the zoo for an afternoon. But if you look at the daily life of professional marathon runners: winter training starts with running 30 kilometers a day, it is common for toenails to fall off completely. They don’t even dare to catch a cold for fear of disrupting the training cycle that has been prepared for several months. Everything they eat is calculated according to the ratio of the team. Even when going out to eat hot pot with friends, they have to report in advance for fear of accidentally ingesting banned ingredients or excessive fat that will affect their body fat percentage.

To put it bluntly, the difference between the two is like an ordinary family car and a professional rally car: ordinary people drive for transportation and self-driving tours. What they pursue is safety, fuel economy, and comfortable sitting. At most, they can change the car stickers and wheel hubs to look better, and even a small scratch will be distressed for a long time.； Professional racing drivers' cars are built to the extreme. Even if the cylinder blows out or the brake pads are worn out midway, it won't matter, as long as they can cross the finish line and take first place. No one is superior to the other, they just have completely different uses.

There was a user who came to me for planning before. He used to quit sprinting for the provincial team. After retiring, he started working out according to the team's routine. After half a month of training, his knees became swollen. I cut his training volume by two-thirds and added rehabilitation training twice a week, and then he slowly recovered. He himself laughed: "I used to practice to outperform my opponents, but now I practice to climb stairs without losing breath when I get old. The goals are different, but the methods cannot be the same." ”

Nowadays, many fitness bloggers like to share the training plans of professional athletes for ordinary people to use. There is also a fierce quarrel on the Internet: some people say that the professionals are the best, and they will improve quickly if they follow the training.； Some people also say that pure exercise is harmful to people. Ordinary fitness practitioners do not have team doctors or rehabilitation therapists, and they do not need to rush for results. They just wait for injuries. In fact, this matter is not so black and white. If you have enough time, can ensure that you sleep 8 hours a day, and eat enough protein according to your body weight, using the differentiated training method of a professional team can indeed speed up your training. ； But if you work 996 every day, go home to coax your child to do homework after practice, and insist on training at an athlete's pace, you are simply making trouble for yourself.

In fact, there is really no need to compare the two together. If you just like to rush for results and want to stand on the podium and win medals, then it’s absolutely fine to rely on the training logic of athletes. ； If you just want to sweat after get off work, be able to hold up your shoulders when wearing a T-shirt, and climb five floors without panting, then just practice slowly and at your own pace. There is no need to compete with professional teams for weight or time. The road is different, and the end point is naturally different. Being comfortable and able to achieve your goals is better than anything else.