What is included in the novice fitness introductory training course?

The core content of a reliable novice fitness introductory course is never the flashy five-week training schedule posted online. Instead, it is basic content with "little technical content". The core goal is to help novices avoid 80% of the entry pitfalls and increase the efficiency of subsequent training by at least 2 times.

When you go to class for the first time, you most likely won’t touch barbells or dumbbells. The instructor will most likely take you to do a simple posture and basic strength assessment first. There are also different opinions in the industry. One group thinks that there is no need to do too detailed assessment when you are just getting started. On the contrary, it is easy to create anxiety for novices that “I have everything wrong with me”, and even be rejected by others. Good institutions buy premium rehabilitation classes, while the other group believes that small problems such as high and low shoulders, anterior pelvic tilt, and knee buckling can be checked in advance, and then the movements can be adjusted accordingly to avoid compensatory injuries. Most formal institutions now simply go through them and will not magnify small problems infinitely, which can be considered a balance between the two ideas. I picked up a programmer student last week who had severely rounded shoulders and forward protrusion after sitting in an office for 6 years. I didn’t take him to do any strength exercises in the first class, so I spent 40 minutes teaching him how to lower his shoulders and adjust his daily sitting and standing posture. When he went back to work that day, he said that his shoulders were not as sore as usual and he couldn’t lift them up. He was originally worried that fitness would take up time, but now he takes the initiative to make appointments for classes, and his attendance rate is much higher than that of students in the same period.

Only when these basic cognitions are smoothed will we enter the formal movement learning stage. We will not start with the fine differentiation of chest, back, and day. Basically, we will focus on the basic movement modes of squatting, pushing, pulling, and hinges. There are also different training ideas in this area. Some coaches think that it is safer for novices to use fixed equipment at the beginning, and the movement trajectory is fixed and it is not easy to make mistakes. Some coaches think that practicing with free weights on empty bars can better find proprioception. In fact, there is no absolute right or wrong. Girls who are particularly weak cannot even lift empty bars. Start with fixed equipment such as Smith frame and leg press. It is no problem to find a sense of strength and then switch to free weights. There is no need to stick to a certain training method.

In addition to the training content, a reliable introductory course will also incorporate the easily overlooked content such as diet and recovery into the details of training. They will not give you a recipe that is so strict that you cannot do it at the beginning, and they will not fool you into buying a bunch of protein powder and nitrogen pumps when you first get started. , most of them are mentioned casually after practicing stretching. For example, after practicing legs today, don’t stay up until one or two o’clock at night. Eat more eggs and drink a glass of milk to supplement protein. Novices should avoid setting the standard too high at the beginning. If they can’t persist, they will feel frustrated.

Don't tell me, many novices don't care about these basic contents at the beginning, always thinking about building the waistline and abdominal muscles quickly, and then follow the online bloggers to do high-intensity fat-burning training for more than ten or twenty minutes. After practicing two or three times, they will get injured or become tired and just give up. Instead, it is better to follow the introductory class to lay a solid foundation and make progress much faster.