My Six-Month Fitness Review: Making Fitness Part of a System

"Most diseases of old age don't strike suddenly. They are the result of decades of accumulation. The way you live today is paying for your health twenty years from now."

By February, I'd been going to the gym for half a year. In those six months, I didn't turn into a broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted hunk, but I've gained a stronger body than before and a lot of knowledge. I've sorted it into a few lessons.

01 The Purpose of Working Out

The purpose of working out, meaning why you do it, is something to be clear on before you walk into a gym.

I first walked into the gym to lose fat. I needed strength training to increase my muscle metabolism and so cut fat.

Later, the fat loss started to work and I got more skilled at various lifts. Working out to lose fat gradually became a thing of the past, because building muscle is a long process, and once I set up a sensible, healthy eating and training system, fat loss was no longer a goal to chase for life.

So now, working out is no longer my tool for cutting fat. It's become part of my life system, and that system is what supports a healthy, energetic life.

02 Weight Isn't the Most Important Thing

When I started out, my bench was 20 kg, the empty bar pinning me. Later in training I consciously chased more weight and volume.

But then I realized I don't need to always think about pushing heavier weights. What I need to do is complete 8 to 12 reps with better form at a given weight.

Good form is the key. Push, pull and squat training is essentially training the target muscle groups, and when I keep trying heavier weights, my form, which wasn't great to begin with, inevitably breaks down further, like my wrists compensating or my body unstable on the bench. Under heavy attempts, broken form is almost inevitable.

I believe that for ordinary people, good form should come first, because good form stimulates the trained muscles best. On top of good form, then chase more reps. For example, I think doing 12 reps at 60 kg beats a single rep at 100 kg.

For ordinary people, working out is an investment in muscle, because after thirty, people start to lose muscle. And if the goal is to train muscle, you should add weight on top of good form and good rep counts.

03 Muscle Isn't the Most Important Thing

Working out, resistance training, strength training. This kind of training, using equipment to stimulate muscle, is usually called anaerobic training.

But while training, you can't only focus on anaerobic work and ignore cardio.

When I first started, I used to think I should ride my bike less in the future, since too much cardio loses muscle.

Looking back, I feel like my muscles were controlling my brain.

I said earlier that working out is part of my life system, and that system supports my healthy, energetic life. So if you put "working out" in the category of health, it becomes one factor.

Human health is made up of a great many indicators and factors, and the muscle mass and strength that working out brings is just one of them.

Beyond that, many other factors affect health, like VO2 max (I wrote a post on it not long ago) or balance. These are closely tied to the body but easy for many people to overlook.

Once we understand that a healthy life can't rest on muscle strength alone, we see why ignoring cardio to focus on anaerobic work is neither wise nor scientific.

A person's body is like a wooden barrel. How much it can do is decided by the shortest stave.

Take the iliotibial band syndrome that's been bothering me lately. It's caused by my glute medius being too weak, while my aerobic fitness and quad strength are both strong. That strength can't make up for the weakness of my glute medius.

So train yourself as completely as you can, rather than blindly chasing success in just one area.

I really admire people who can finish a triathlon. They're true all-round warriors.

04 Learn How to Avoid Injury

As I mentioned above, I've been struggling with iliotibial band syndrome lately.

And the reason I got it is that I hiked Mount Emei without knowing my own limits well enough, which led to the injury and then iliotibial band syndrome.

That's an example of an injury that happened to me. I'll tell you from experience: once you're hurt, it affects a lot of things.

First, I can't ride happily. A few days ago the weather was nice, and I excitedly went riding on the Tianfu Greenway with a friend. After forty kilometers, my IT band syndrome flared up.

Even though my other muscles felt nothing, and my average heart rate was only 130, I couldn't ride one more kilometer. That again proved that how much your body can do is decided by the shortest stave.

Second, it affects your mood and condition. After an injury, you can't train the way you used to, and the occasional pain and inconvenience make you worry, which hurts every other part of life.

So avoiding injury is something everyone must learn. Even if we can't prevent accidents 100%, paying attention to the details of training is enough to avoid most injuries.

05 Build a Healthy Life with a System

This is what this whole post has been saying: don't treat working out as one single thing to get done. Fold it into the system of your life.

Working out here doesn't just mean anaerobic training in the gym. It means training that covers many of the body's indicators, cardio and anaerobic both.

These indicators include but aren't limited to: VO2 max, Zone 2 training, muscle strength, grip strength, eccentric strength, pulling and pressing, muscle mass and dynamic balance.

Beyond that, diet management, emotion and stress management, and sleep management are especially important parts of the life system.

The system made up of these parts is your life system.

As long as the parts of your system are scientific and healthy, your system is good, what it supports can develop well, and you can have a healthy, energetic life.

06 Final Words

Because of iliotibial band syndrome, the plan I set last year to work out at least ten days a month failed.

But I took valuable lessons from it, and luckily, iliotibial band syndrome can be fully cured by training the glute medius. That's a comfort.

So I hope you stay free of injury as you train, and have a healthy, energetic life.