What is the effect of gym fitness?

The core conclusion is that "the upper limit is extremely high but the variance is extremely large." It does not mean that there will be an effect if you go there, nor is it a pure IQ tax. More than 90% of the final effect depends on how you use it, not the gym itself.

I have been going to the gym for almost 4 years and have seen too many polarizing examples. Lao Zhang from a shop in the same business district weighed 182 pounds and had moderate fatty liver disease when he came here last year. He first found a certified personal trainer and learned the movement framework for three months. He also read two sports nutrition booklets. He did 4 times of strength training + 2 times of elliptical machine every week. In half a year, he lost 12 points of body fat. The last time he had a physical examination, his fatty liver disease turned into mild. Do you think the gym is useless? He was the first to disagree.

But I have also seen a young girl who has gone to the store five times in total after applying for the card for two years. Every time she goes to the store, she takes a selfie in front of the mirror for half an hour, walks slowly on the treadmill for 10 minutes, and then goes downstairs to drink iced milk tea with her friends. At the end of the year, she says that the gym only collects IQ taxes. Do you think the gym is responsible for this? It’s also quite unfair.

There is a lot of controversy online now about the effectiveness of gyms, and there is actually nothing wrong with what both sides are saying. Most of the people who think it is useless are because they have stepped on pitfalls: either they just blindly put on the weight, and the movements are wrong and the waist and knees are injured, but it is not as safe as aerobics at home. ； Or I was fooled into buying dozens of classes by unreliable sales-oriented personal trainers. Every time I took a class, I just brought some fancy core activation and gadget training. I spent tens of thousands of money, but my circumference and weight did not change at all. Naturally, I felt that I had paid an IQ tax.

Those who think that the gym is more effective than home training probably have a thorough understanding of its irreplaceability. After all, it is difficult for ordinary people to prepare professional equipment such as full-weight dumbbells from 2.5kg to 40kg, free bench press racks, high pull-down machines, and Hack squat machines. If you want to achieve the goal of muscle gain and healthy weight loss through progressive overload, it is really difficult to break through the plateau with just household gadgets such as mineral water bottles and elastic bands. I had been training my chest blindly at home for half a year, but my upper bust was stuck at 96 and couldn't go up. I went to the gym and practiced bench pressing with fixed weights for two months, and it went straight to 101. This gap is really real.

To put it bluntly, the gym is just a high-end tool kit. It is no different from a full set of professional brushes and professional baking equipment you buy. It does not automatically unlock skills after buying it. If you just want to work up a sweat every day, dancing Pamela at home or running two laps downstairs are enough. There is no need to join in the excitement of the gym. ； If you have clear goals of gaining muscle, losing a lot of weight, and improving strength, are willing to concentrate on learning the movements, and can insist on going three or four times a week, then the training efficiency that the gym can give you is really unmatched by home exercise.