Elderly fitness celebrity Wang Shunde

What suits you is ten thousand times more important than practicing hard.

I met him once at the National Senior Fitness Exchange Conference held in Tianjin last fall. The 78-year-old man wore a blue hurdle vest that was so washed that the collar pilled, old Beijing cloth shoes that cost 10 yuan a pair, and came on stage carrying an enamel jar with "The Glory of Labor" printed on it. The first thing he did when he came on stage was not to show off his biceps, but to take out a crumpled brown paper notebook with a frayed cover, which was densely packed with the physical data of the old man who had been practicing fitness with him for more than ten years: 67-year-old Brother Zhang had essential hypertension for 3 years, and after practicing for 8 months, his diastolic blood pressure dropped from 96 to 84; 61-year-old Aunt Li had degenerative knee disease and had to rest for 5 minutes before walking 100 meters, but now she can climb half a winding mountain by herself.

There were different voices in the audience. On one side, sports medicine experts said that Wang Shunde was a special case. He had a foundation of strength when he was young and worked as a fitter, and his bone density was 30% higher than that of people of the same age. Ordinary people would easily get injured if he practiced strength training with him. On the other side, elderly fitness enthusiasts put him on a pedestal, saying that as long as they follow his training, they can develop waistline at the age of 70, and that all types of hypertension and diabetes can be cured.

Wang Shunde waved his hands to both of these statements. He said that when he first started working out, he was fooling around. In the early 1980s, he followed the young men in the factory to practice deadlifting. He directly climbed on the 80-pound barbell without warming up, and lay down for a full half a month. It was only then that he realized that the body bones of the elderly are different from those of young people, and they cannot move up to press the weight. The old man and woman he is now coaching will not even touch the empty barbell at first. They start by lifting a 500ml mineral water bottle filled with water and squat against the wall for 30 seconds. Once the movements are standardized, they will increase the amount. It is considered good to be able to lift a 2.5kg small dumbbell in half a year.

I have met many retired elders before, and their understanding of fitness is either "the bones are brittle when you are old, and you will easily get injured if you move too much, so just take a walk every day", or they were deceived by the elderly fitness bloggers in the short videos and danced for an hour every day. In the end, the meniscus was worn out and they couldn't even go downstairs. The existence of Wang Shunde actually gives everyone an intermediate option: there is no need to pursue muscle lines or sports performance when exercising for the elderly, and there is no need to be dissatisfied with strength training. To put it bluntly, it is "training while protecting the parts of the body." Don't compete with young people for exercise. If you can practice to the point where you can go shopping for groceries and climb stairs without gasping, and you don't need to bother your children to accompany you to the hospital, you will be considered a winner.

What impressed me most was that after the exchange meeting, he was surrounded by several old men who came from Hebei to see him at the door. There was a 65-year-old man who said that he practiced squats according to online videos. After practicing for half a month, his knees hurt. Wang Shunde asked the man to do a squat on the spot. He saw that the man’s knees were over his toes and he was squatting very deep. When he went there, he gently pushed his knees back and said, "You're not doing fitness, you're ruining your body. At our age, just squat until your thighs are 30 degrees to the ground. You don't have to squat all the way. Doing 10 reps every day is better than doing 100 in vain." After saying this, he handed the person a handwritten list of movement points. The words were crooked, and each precaution was highlighted with a red pen.

An MCN organization came to him before and said that it would package him as "China's number one fitness person for the elderly" and sell courses through endorsements, earning seven figures a year, but he immediately scolded him and left. He said that if he wanted to make money, he would have done it when he was young. He did not want to embarrass this person when he was 70 or 80 years old. "There is no fitness method that can rejuvenate one's youth. My muscles have been trained for more than 40 years. Ordinary people follow me to train, and they don't want to become like me. They just want to be comfortable and live a few more years to enjoy peace and happiness. That is better than anything else."

Now he appears at the fitness corner of Hedong Park in Tianjin at 6 o'clock every morning, accompanied by twenty or thirty regular old guys. No one shoots videos or shouts slogans. The dumbbells in each hand have different weights. He takes a break from practice. After the practice, he gathers together to drink tea and talk about the recent blood pressure and blood sugar. His worn notebook is still adding new names, and the blank page at the back is already filled with the key points that he will tell everyone next time "How to avoid flashing the neck during shoulder exercises for the elderly."