Which one is better: self-fitness or gym fitness?

In fact, there is no absolute advantage or disadvantage. Which one you choose depends entirely on your current needs, available resources, and stage goals. If you insist on distinguishing between them, you may easily step into unnecessary pitfalls.

I have been doing fitness for five or six years, and there are a lot of friends around me who are good at practicing in both ways. I have a colleague who works in the back-end department at my former company. It takes 40 minutes to commute to the nearest gym. He gets home almost 9 a.m. every day. He has been practicing at home for two years with a pair of adjustable dumbbells and a folding yoga mat. Now he can do 15 standard pull-ups. His body fat is stable at 15% all year round. After training, he takes a shower and lays down directly. All the money he saves on annual gym memberships is spent on high-quality protein and supplements. He lives a very comfortable life in his childhood. If you have little free time, you are embarrassed to do moves in front of strangers when you first start practicing, or you just want to maintain a basic level of activity and lose belly fat, it is enough to practice at home or in a park near your home. You have complete autonomy in your own time, and you don’t have to deal with the ins and outs of gym sales. The cost of trial and error is extremely low.

Of course, the ceiling of my own training is also obvious. My colleague got stuck when he wanted to PR in the bench press last year. The heaviest dumbbell at home was 20kg. Not only did he have no place to put more weight, but he was also afraid of hitting his chest due to unstable force when practicing alone. In the end, he got a season membership in the gym downstairs. With the help of heavy barbells and occasional movement guidance from the boss around him, he improved his bench press score from 60kg to 85kg in three months. If you have a clear goal of gaining muscle or shaping your body, want to hit a heavy weight, or prepare for a competition, the gym’s full range of equipment, adjustable weight gradients, and the atmosphere of gathering like-minded people are truly incomparable to practicing on your own. I have seen many friends with poor self-control practice at home for half a month. After getting a fitness card, even if they don’t waste money, they can go there three or four times a week, and the speed of progress can be seen with the naked eye.

Don’t overestimate the two options. It’s easy to be lazy when practicing by yourself. There are a lot of people who can’t help but slump on the sofa and watch short videos for half an hour after two sets of training. There are a lot of troubles in the gym. You have to wait 20 minutes for a Smith stand during peak hours. It’s hard to say anything when someone is occupying the equipment to watch short videos. Occasionally, you will encounter personal trainers chasing you to complain about your wrong movements and selling classes like crazy, which makes people lose interest in practicing.

A while ago, my cousin made up her mind to lose weight, so she spent more than 2,000 to get an annual membership card. After going there three times, she found it troublesome to change clothes, and it was too late to get off work and she didn’t want to move. The card is still gathering dust in the drawer. It would be better to follow the video and do aerobics at home first, and then consider whether to go to the gym after getting used to the rhythm of exercise. To put it bluntly, fitness in the final analysis is about persistence. Just choose the method that you feel most comfortable and least burdened with movement. There is no need to go to the gym just to look "professional", and there is no need to feel that practicing at home is shorter than going to the gym. The best choice is the one that allows you to keep moving.