The difference between male fitness and muscle gain

For men, fitness is a general term for all behaviors that use exercise as a means to adjust and strengthen physical condition, covering many goals such as muscle gain, fat loss, physical improvement, functional recovery, and emotional relief. Muscle gain is only one of the many branch goals of fitness. The two have a clear relationship between inclusion and inclusion, and there are essential differences in the underlying logic, execution path, and evaluation standards.

If you just go to a commercial gym near your home on a weekday evening, you can tell the difference at a glance - the middle-aged man who wears an old washed white quick-drying suit and runs steadily on the treadmill for 40 minutes, the employee of a major Internet company who goes to take a shower after 20 minutes of core training, and the young man who squats until his temples burst into veins and holds half a protein bar on the wall after training. They all come to work out, but only the last one, whose current core goal is to gain muscle.

Oh, by the way, there are actually two schools of thought in the industry regarding "what counts as fitness." One school advocates that "as long as you can move, it's not in vain." Walking around the neighborhood twice after get off work, playing basketball with friends on weekends, or even doing 10 minutes of shoulder and neck stretching at home following a short video are all considered fitness.； The other group is relatively strict and believes that serious fitness must have a fixed training frequency and clear stage goals. There is nothing wrong with both views. Essentially, everyone has different expectations for fitness. After all, what most people want when they first start working out is really very simple: Either they have been diagnosed with fatty liver and want to lose weight, or they have protruded waist from sitting for a long time and the doctor asked them to do core exercises, or they have been under a lot of stress recently and sweating is better than lying at home and scrolling through their mobile phones. There are no quantitative assessment standards at all. If you feel comfortable and can achieve the small goals you want, then your fitness training is not in vain.

But building muscle is another story entirely. Its core logic is to create micro-damage in muscle fibers through resistance training, coupled with calorie surplus, adequate protein supplementation and rest, so that muscle fibers become stronger after repair. To put it bluntly, it is a "technical job" with clear KPIs, and the error tolerance rate is much lower than that of ordinary fitness. Two years ago, I took care of a junior student who had just graduated. He had been running 5 kilometers every day and night for half a year. He said that he had been working out. Later, he wanted to wear formal clothes to support his shoulder lines, so he specifically turned to muscle building. In the first month, he almost persuaded him to quit. First, I asked him to stop the habit of running every day. However, he consumed too much and couldn't save calories, so he was forced to count his meals: eat at least 1.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight every day. If he didn't eat enough in one meal, he had to supplement with whey protein. He also had to ensure a calorie surplus of about 300 calories. He ate boiled chicken breast every meal until he felt like vomiting. Training cannot be done blindly. You have to walk in a circular motion of the chest, shoulders, back, legs and arms. You must rest for at least 72 hours before training the same part again. The weight must also be stuck in the 8-12RM range. The rest between groups must be controlled within 90 seconds by holding the watch, which will almost compromise the effect.

Speaking of which, it must be said that there is no unified "standard answer" in the muscle-building circle. Most of the natural fitness groups adhere to the classic logic of differentiated training and controlling RM intervals. There are also minimalist groups who think that two heavy compound movements (bench press, deadlift, squat) twice a week are enough, and there is no need to engage in such complicated differentiation. As for the use of drug-assisted exercises Technologists are not encouraged in the circle but they do exist. The logic of training and diet is far different from natural fitness. No matter which path you choose, the final evaluation criteria are hard: how much your arm circumference has increased, how much the three major weights have increased, how much weight you have gained while maintaining a stable body fat rate. You can fool others, but you cannot fool the ruler and barbell.

Many novices always confuse the two when they first start exercising. They say "I want to exercise and gain muscle." When asked, they actually want to lose a beer belly. There is no need to follow the path of building muscle. First control the diet and do aerobics three times a week. The results will be quick and you will not feel frustrated easily.； Some people originally want to rely on exercise to relieve stress, but they insist on forcing themselves to follow the muscle-building plan and practice weight groups until they get tired of seeing the gym. Instead, they put the cart before the horse.

To put it bluntly, fitness is like going to the supermarket on the way home from get off work. If you want to buy a bottle of water, just buy a bottle of water. If you want to pick some fruit, just pick some fruit. Do whatever makes you feel comfortable.； Building muscle is like making a chiffon cake according to the recipe. You have to get stuck on how much flour to add, how much sugar to add, and how long to bake it, and it may not even rise at all. Be clear about what you want and don't confuse your goals. It is much more useful than following the trend blindly.