Should newbies get started with fitness, should they do aerobic or anaerobic first?

There is no absolute standard answer to "do aerobic first/anaerobic first" when getting started with fitness for newbies. The most suitable order for you depends entirely on your current fitness goals, physical fitness foundation and available exercise time - even for the vast majority of ordinary newbies who exercise less than 3 hours a week, the impact of the order is not as big as if you insist on practicing one more time a week.

Last year I brought two completely different newcomers to the gym, just two extremes. A 210-pound programmer, with a body fat rate of 35%, aims to lose 40 pounds in half a year. At the beginning, he watched a short video and heard a blogger say, "It is more efficient to burn fat first anaerobically and then aerobically." Then he started practicing shoulder and back strength. After lifting the empty bar for 5 times, he squatted on the ground and breathed. After two exercises, he complained that his knees hurt and he didn't want to go anymore. Later, I asked him not to use any strength for the first two weeks, and to go to the gym to pedal on the elliptical machine for 40 minutes every day after get off work. The intensity was adjusted to the level where he could call his colleagues while pedaling. In two weeks, he lost 7 pounds and could not breathe when he climbed the fifth floor. Then he gradually increased his core and lower body strength for 15 minutes. In the third month, he could seriously do 40 minutes of strength and 20 minutes of elliptical training. He lost a total of 26 kilograms in three months, and his energy level was much better than before.

The other is a young girl who has just graduated. She is 163cm and 92 pounds. Her goal is to develop her buttocks and vest line. She practiced blindly for two months before, running 5 kilometers every day and then doing glute bridges for 10 minutes. Her hip circumference did not increase but dropped by 1cm, and her legs became stronger the more she ran. I asked her to cut her aerobics to once a week at most, and do 40 minutes of hip, leg and core strength training first. Unless her body fat increased, she didn’t need to do additional aerobics. After three months, her hip circumference increased by 3cm, her waistline also appeared, and her leg circumference became 1cm thinner.

If you have been in the gym for a long time, you will know that veteran players of different schools have completely different opinions on this issue. Most old-school bodybuilding enthusiasts believe that novices have little muscle mass and should first do aerobic for a long time. They will easily lose muscle and their basal metabolism will drop. It will become more and more difficult to lose fat in the later period. Practice the correct movement pattern first and build up a sense of muscle recruitment. Even if you want to lose fat, adding aerobic later will be much more efficient. ”This is really not a lie. I have been through this trap myself when I first started working out. When I weighed 180 pounds, I forced myself to follow the example of others, "Pump the iron first and then run." When I was lifting the iron, I didn't have the physical strength to paddle the whole way, and I lost muscle while running. I only lost 2 pounds after training for a month, and I injured my knee for less than half a month.

However, friends who do physical training completely disagree with this logic. They feel that the cardiopulmonary foundation of most ordinary people is so poor that they cannot support standard strength training: "If you do two sets of deadlifts, your eyes will turn black, and your movements will be so deformed that your waist will flash. How can you talk about muscle recruitment?" First do low-intensity aerobics for two weeks to improve your heart and lungs, and then when you practice strength, you can perform standard movements, which will make it less likely to be injured and will be more efficient. ”

I have checked related experiments on exercise physiology before, and the conclusion is actually quite interesting: for new fitness enthusiasts who exercise within 3 hours per week, the difference between the order of aerobic and anaerobic on the effects of muscle gain and fat loss is less than 5%, which is basically negligible. To put it bluntly, the "poor efficiency" caused by your entanglement in the order is not as real as playing on your mobile phone for 10 minutes less during training and drinking two cups of milk tea during normal times.

Of course, that doesn’t mean you don’t need to consider it at all. If you have clear special needs, you do have to choose the order a little bit: For example, if your body fat rate exceeds 30%, or you usually get out of breath when climbing the third floor, then don’t hesitate to start with low-intensity aerobics to improve your physical fitness and heart and lungs, and then touch on strength, otherwise you will really be easily injured.； If you are already thin and your goal is to gain muscle and dimension, you can even skip doing aerobics at first. Lay the foundation of strength training first. Once your muscle mass increases, you can add aerobics according to your body fat. ； If you just want to keep fit and don’t have any clear goals of gaining muscle or losing fat, then you can do whatever you want first. If you want to run first today, run first. If you want to lift weights first tomorrow, then lift weights first. Whatever makes you happy will be better than anything else.

I have seen too many people squatting in the comment area of ​​fitness apps for half a month, asking what to do first, but in the end the sneakers were not opened. Really, fitness is not that important. Just start moving first, which is more effective than any "optimal order".