Elderly fitness expert Wang Deshun

The iconic figure in the elderly fitness group, Wang Deshun, has been popular for 10 years and is still mentioned repeatedly. The core reason has never been the "exhilaration" of him being able to walk shirtless on the catwalk at the age of 79, but his decades of practical experience, proving that "fitting age-appropriate fitness" is much more important than "blind pursuit of training intensity". At the same time, he has also debunked the public stereotype of "elderly people must be weak".

You must have an impression of that famous scene: On the T stage of China International Fashion Week in 2015, 79-year-old Wang Deshun wore a gray goatee, shirtless, with neat muscle lines, and walked with wind. When he came off the stage, the audience shouted "Grandpa is handsome". After that, he was labeled as an "elderly fitness expert". At the age of 87 this year, he can still show off his tricks and surf in short videos, and the comment area always quarrels with each other.

One group is the true "follower group". Many middle-aged and elderly people save his fitness clips in photo albums and follow him to do 10 minutes of stretching every day. There are also retired uncles and aunts who specialize in learning his core training methods. They say, "People can move when they are almost 90, so what can't I do when I'm 60?"”； The other group is the "questioning group". Many sports bloggers and doctors have mentioned that Wang Deshun was a drama actor when he was young, and later practiced speed skating and pantomime. His physical fitness is better than that of ordinary old people, and he also has professional coaches. If ordinary people blindly learn from him to lift dumbbells and practice split horses, they may suffer from waist protrusion and knee wear. It is purely a fool's errand.

To be honest, if you really read his previous interviews, you will know that his fitness logic is particularly suitable for ordinary elderly people - he entered the gym for the first time at the age of 50. At the beginning, he could not even lift a 10-pound dumbbell. He had hardly touched any heavy weights in the first three years. He spent 20 minutes every day to move his shoulders and legs. Knees and hips, the three joints most prone to problems, slowly increased the squatting against the wall from 10 seconds to 2 minutes, and the plank from 15 seconds to 1 minute. Until now, he does not train for more than an hour at a time, and he takes the initiative to take two days off a week to visit the flower and bird market or play chess with old friends. He himself has said, "I don't work out to build muscles for others to see, but to keep up with my movements when performing pantomimes and not to cause trouble to my children when I get older." Oh, by the way, he is not an ascetic. Privately, he loves to eat the sauced pork elbows made by his wife. When he is happy, he will drink a few sips of Erguotou. When he is tired from training, he will lie on the sofa and watch old movies all afternoon. He is not at all the fairy character uploaded on the Internet who "trains for 3 hours a day and does not eat oil for decades."

I used to be a volunteer in a community sports science class for the elderly, and I met 72-year-old Uncle Zhang. He had a lumbar protrusion and had difficulty getting out of bed. After watching Wang Deshun’s interview, I wanted to give it a try. I first practiced transversus abdominis activation with a rehabilitation practitioner, and then he practiced transversus abdominis activation every day. After doing 5 sets of 10 dead insect poses for half a year, he can now carry 10 kilograms of vegetables up to the 6th floor without breathing. He said, "I don't expect to develop muscles and walk on the catwalk. I just want to be able to take care of myself and accompany my grandson to the park to fly a kite on weekends." You see, in fact, most of the old people who like Wang Deshun have no intention of recreating his life, they just see another way of living in him.

Of course, the warnings from professional doctors are correct. Professor Lin from the Department of Sports Rehabilitation of Beijing Sport University has said before in Kopori that there is no unified template for fitness for the elderly. If you have severe hypertension, degenerative knee joint disease or heart disease, let alone lifting dumbbells, you must control the speed even when walking quickly. Wang Deshun's model can only be used as a reference, and it must not be used as a standard answer. After all, everyone’s physical condition is different, so copying homework will definitely cause problems.

A few days ago, in the gym downstairs of my home, I met a 68-year-old Uncle Li, who was slowly doing shoulder exercises with 2 kilograms of dumbbells. During his break, he watched Wang Deshun's short videos. He smiled and said to the old guy next to him, "Learn a lot from Old Wang Tou. If you live two more years, you can also wait to see my grandson go to college." You see, there are so many lofty meanings. To put it bluntly, the most impressive thing about Wang Deshun is never his muscles, but that he made many old people discover, oh, it turns out that I can live so stretched when I get old.