I had a quite thin body when I was a kid, and I always felt envious when I saw those muscular people. In addition to being more powerful, they always emit more attractive charm. So I have tried to doing fitness since high school. But for many years, the time to walk into the gym has been intermittent, and the real “effective” effort for me in the gym can be said to be almost zero. Even if it went smoothly and gradually, there was no destination for that equipment in vain. But I feel very fortunate that I finally made up my mind and successfully persevered in the end. This should be one of the great things I made recently.
I believe the moment to start fitness was after buying these types of equipment. At that time, I also left something on some social media: “I always think that fitness is a very ritualistic thing. I must choose a good day to start it. For example, on the first day of the year, the first day of the month, or at least the first day of the week. Before that day, a minimum of two sets of fitness clothes and a new pair of shoes should be prepared well. Then, I must own a long-term membership card once I first time come to the gym nearby. The entire process went down, I couldn’t help feeling that I had grown a strong pectoral muscle. ” I admit that I am a fairly ritualistic person.
At the same time, I also prepared a variety of fitness supplements and diets that are ‘very necessary and healthy’ to my mind. I suppose there must be some friends who are just starting to work out, just like me, who are keen to buy fitness supplements without any theoretical support. However, after learning from some popular fitness bloggers and my own feelings over the past few months, I have selected several supplements that I personally believe have significant effects in fitness, including pre-workout, BCAA, creatine, whey and casein. Of course, some pre-workout and BCAA also contain creatine. But on fitness rest days, I think creatine is also helpful for the body properly. When it comes to protein, I was always confused at the time and dosage of protein supplementation. Then I learned that protein powder is just an additional way to supplement your protein and doesn’t need to be treated specially. Now in my daily fitness, in most cases, I would drink whey after the workout, and drink casein every day before going to bed. As for the dosage used, I did not calculate it so accurately. I just basically consumed 70g to 140g of whey and 70g of casein per day. There is a saying that if you add excess protein daily, you will fart more often than usual. According to this funny ‘mechanism’, this amount is quite appropriate for me. As for my daily diet, I have a few requirements for myself. But while living in the studio near the uni, I was very fond of yellow fried eggs with shrimp, one avocado and two hashes, and served with 200ml American, 200ml orange juice and 500ml water. This was the only meal of my day. Almost no starch intake kept me full of energy in my afternoon study. For almost a month, I gained 3kg but lost fat from 18% to 17%. sounds not bad.
After finishing my master’s project, my studio also expired, so I moved to another city not far away. This life was even more singular, with almost nothing for fun except for the gym in almost three months. And I felt very happy that the best gym in the city was only around fifteen minutes away from where I lived. I was very impressed with the door of this gym. It is not necessary to take a card or other credentials. I just need to remember the password to enter and exit. What I want to say is that compared to domestic, the cost here is very low. And the experience in all aspects is far better than most commercial gyms in my country. There are no sales or fitness coaches to promote fitness classes, also no stranger eagers to give you some suggestions on your fitness. In my view, the reason is that people in the two countries have different attitudes towards fitness. The proportion of Britons who consider fitness as part of their daily lives is far greater than that of Chinese people today. Of course, this is just my such subjective feelings from the experience during this time.
Next, I would like to introduce what I had done in the gym those days.
At first, I would do some warm-ups, such as swinging the shoulders with both arms and the upper back using lightweight dumbbells. Then proceed directly to the workouts. I have been doing upper body exercises these months, so dumbbells are essential. The following are my common training methods for different muscle groups. Shoulder: Dumbbell side press, dumbbell front press; Biceps: Attached curl, Up oblique curl, Standing curl; Triceps: Attaching to the back arm flexion and extension; Pectoral muscles: downward slanting birds, downward slanting bench press (the reason why the downward slanting method is compared to lying down and upward slanting, downward slanting can effectively relieve shoulder discomfort due to excessive gravity).
Compared to dumbbells, this following one is more suitable for me to fully practice my upper body. I love it so much.
After workouts, I would run 1 mile on the elliptical machine.
The last step is stretching. I usually stretch my waist and legs. The whole practice costs me around 2 hours.
This was the picture I took when I last time went to the gym in the UK. It was still winter, and the weather was not as cold as usual. The sky is still so low, the sunset in the sky was pink-orange.
Next to the gym is a fine brewery. It was Friday, music and noise came from inside before it was dark. The sunset on Friday evening shows the signal for the party beginning.
This is a basketball court on the way home from the gym. It often rains here. And in the evening on a rare sunny day, more children are playing football here. I can remember when I just moved here, I met a handsome local boy on my way home and played basketball alone. I was very excited to join the game. After that, we had a few chances to play basketball together. At that time I really hoped that he could go to the gym with me. Glad to meet him.
Fitness can be said to be one of the very important things I have learned in the UK. It is a very effective way for me to release stress and build confidence. I think I’ll keep doing it no matter where I am.
Nic 