When getting started with fitness, should a novice do aerobic or anaerobic exercise first?

In fact, there is no unified standard answer at all. It all depends on your core demands for getting started with fitness and your own sports foundation.

A while ago, I helped a friend take care of a little girl who just graduated. She is 160cm tall and weighs 130kg. Her only goal of fitness is to get off the scale quickly so that she can wear the small sling she bought for her graduation trip. She usually has milk tea delivered upstairs and has basically no exercise habit. I asked her not to touch the equipment for the first two weeks. Walk briskly around the park for 40 minutes after get off work every day, or go to the gym and ride the elliptical machine for half an hour. The intensity is adjusted to a level where you can breathe normally but still speak normally. You don’t have to eat too much. You need to establish an exercise habit first. She lost 2.8 pounds in the first week, and now she takes the initiative to make appointments to practice every day without anyone urging her.

Of course, there are also many veterans who have been in gyms for five or six years who don’t agree with this idea. There is a coach in the gym I often go to who has won a provincial competition award. He basically teaches newbies how to putt in the air in the first lesson. He always says that many young guys who are as thin as bamboo poles just run when they come up. The more they run, the harder they eat and the more they eat, the better. It is better to learn the basic movement patterns correctly first. The muscle mass has increased and the basal metabolism has been raised. In the future, whether it is to gain muscle or lose fat, it will be twice the result with half the effort. Last month, he brought a young man who is 178cm tall and only 110kg. After practicing for two weeks, his bench press and squat movements have stabilized. His food intake has increased by less than half a bowl, and his weight has increased by 2kg. He does not always feel tired like before.

In fact, these two views have been arguing for almost ten years. There is no contradiction at all in essence. It is just that they are suitable for different groups of people. If your body fat rate exceeds 30%, you usually have to rest for half a minute when climbing the third floor, and you can't breathe after walking two steps. There is really no need to hold on to lift the iron. Otherwise, you will be nauseous after squatting with two sets of legs. Your focus will be on breathing, your movements will be distorted, and you will be easily injured. It is better to start with brisk walking, low-intensity aerobics or even square dancing. First, you can improve your cardiorespiratory capacity, and you will not be afraid of difficulties. If you are not fat, but you just want to develop some lines, and your shoulders can be seen more curved in a T-shirt, and your butt can be raised more in jeans, then you don’t need to waste time running for two months, just start with fixed equipment, the results will be much faster. I once had a colleague who always felt that his butt was flat at 98 pounds.

Don't listen to the anxious posts on the Internet about losing muscle through aerobic exercise. As long as you eat enough protein at 1.2g per kilogram of body weight every day and do aerobic exercise no more than 5 times a week and no more than 1 hour each time, you won't lose much muscle at all. There is no need to stop eating due to choking. In the final analysis, the most important thing for beginners is not to worry about whether to do aerobic or anaerobic first. It is to first find an activity that you don't reject and start doing it. Don't set a devilish plan for yourself to practice six times a week. If you practice for two days and you can't get out of bed because of the pain, you will give up. That is the biggest loss.