Home gym & fitness pitfalls
Home Gym
You must, must, must buy a half-rack or full-rack squat rack — it can save your life when you reach failure. Failing a bench press or squat can really kill you. Some framed squat racks come with a cable station, which allows for great exercises like weighted crunches and face pulls; highly recommended.
Consequences of failing a bench press without safety bars:
Consequences of failing a squat without safety bars:
Gym pitfalls
Doing the wrong things — the more you do them, the greater the damage. Some physical injuries are irreversible.
A seemingly simple movement can have many points to watch. If you refuse to learn, you may end up injuring your body; it might be better not to train at all.
Before training, I strongly recommend finding a sports rehabilitation therapist on Meituan to assess your posture. Some release and corrective movements cannot be done alone. Have the therapist do an assessment and teach you the rehab moves. In Shenzhen the fee is about 300.
Training shortcut:
Within half an hour after training, consume fast carbs at 1 g per kg of body weight to suppress cortisol-driven muscle breakdown.
Don’t get injured — I accumulated more than half a year off due to injuries:
You must, must, must do a proper warm-up.
You must, must, must correct your posture before starting to train.
You must, must, must release your muscles after training and get a fascial knife treatment monthly, otherwise your posture will suffer and your joints will hurt.
You must, must, must train symmetrically. Don’t only squat and skip deadlifts or your knees will hurt (Romanian deadlifts recommended; conventional deadlifts are not great for beginners); don’t only train biceps and skip triceps or your elbows will hurt; don’t only train chest and skip back or your shoulders will have problems.
Warm-up: I’m lazy and can’t handle too many warm-up movements.
[Concise & efficient — practical bench day warm-up activation routine, only 3 core movements.] https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1VZ421M7hu
[Recommend a low-cost alternative to small-weight barbell plates] https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1aF411D7kG
Knee sleeves are really useful; if I skip them once my knees definitely hurt.
On Bilibili follow Kai Sheng Wang — the old coach has plenty of experience.
Read 'Foundations of Strength Training'. On Bilibili and YouTube search for Marco Rebeedo (马可瑞比拖) for corresponding instructional videos. He teaches the "low-bar squat," meaning the bar rests behind the scapulae rather than on the trapezius. High-bar and low-bar squats have different torso angles at the bottom. Don’t skip the chapter just because the name "press" sounds ordinary — its cooler name is the "strength press." When you perform the strength press near failure, you’ll unconsciously push your lumbar spine forward; you must restrain this behavior.
There was a period when my squat progress slowed and squats felt harder. I later realized I had forgotten to "hip drive" — I wasn’t intentionally pushing my hips back. Once I became aware of that, my squats became noticeably more powerful.
Being *fully* focused is very important. For me, the sense of drive in squats isn’t as obvious as in biceps curls. When later reps in a set feel slower to rise, concentrating fully and forcefully driving the hips up makes the ascent noticeably faster.
I used to need a 10-minute rest to ensure the quality of the next set, but later discovered it was because I ate too many carbs between sets and blood was going to my stomach instead of my muscles.
Posture correction (humerus anterior shift, knee pain)Last updated