Las social networks have become a double-edged sword in many respects and the fitness It is one of them. The pressure for the aesthetics of the content or originality as a magnet for get views and ‘likes’ end up leading some digital creators in the sports field to put the viralization of their videos versus the actual effectiveness of the routines.
The pandemic, and the consequent confinement at home during the quarantine, led many users to avidly consume training videos on the internet to replicate them at home. Don’t fall into it boredom, or routine, were maxims at that time that have been installed in the subconscious of many consumers of social networks. The ‘influencers‘ in a clear attempt to stand out from the growing competition, they devised original and different workouts. As the weeks went by, the ideas were running out and each time the recommendations were stranger and in many cases nonsensical.
Three years later, the focus has ceased to be home training, but not originality. Videos of strange exercises in gyms with machines with a thousand accessories or rubber bands placed in supposed strategic places to make the movement “more effective” go viral every day. Is not always that way. Alvaro Guzmanpersonal trainer biomechanics specialist and better known on Instagram as @alvarotrainer, he dedicates himself daily to denying, scientific evidence in hand, some of these “masterful exercises”.
“One of the reasons why these types of videos are consumed is because there is a mistaken idea that If we always train the same way, the muscle will not evolve, and that is not correct”, explains the specialist. Guzmán refers to that well-known maxim of popular fitness wisdom that says that for muscle to grow you have to “surprise” it. This statement is true if understood correctly, but it can be misleading. “Surprising the muscle is not to change each day of exercise, but give you reasons to growGuzmán points out.
“The really effective training programs are those that progressively and steadily they evolve from point A and through gradual increases in repetitions, intensity or series, they take us to point B”, argues the biomechanics expert. The key, he assures him, is keep up the exercises for a while to allow us to learn the correct technique and to be able to improve in its execution, increase the loads, and correctly stimulate the muscle. “If you constantly change exercises you don’t surprise the muscle, you drive it crazy,” he jokes.
How should we train?
So, are those Instagram or Tik Tok exercises really effective if we do them for a while? It will clearly depend on exercise in question. Although in some cases, the variations they can provide extra tension or effort to the muscle, on other occasions, they can become harmful for being nothing more than a viralizable visual marketing content more than a training routine effective.
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“You have to analyze that movement and see if it makes sense before doing it and if you don’t have the necessary knowledge to do it, trust professionals,” Guzmán asserts. “To see the Formula 1 You’re not going to build yourself a car, are you? It surely wouldn’t work. Well, the same thing happens with training. Setting up your own routine or copying what you see on the networks has its risks and is surely not effective in achieving success. aim that you have raised ”, ditch.
“In the end you have to be practical. Has the exercise caught your attention and have you been looking at it because it is so striking? It is most likely nothing more than something ludicentertainment, but not really effective for biomechanical purposes”, reasons the expert. Ultimately, the coach defends, traditional exercises end up being the most recommended or, if not, safe, because their execution is usually easier to carry out. Although it is also true that if biomechanical precepts are taken into account, on some occasions, variations of traditional exercises can be much more effective to achieve more optimized results. Ultimately, biomechanics is, in short, the study of the human body and its movement and allows optimize exercises and training to achieve better results with the exercise adapted to each one, so that the exercises modified under these precepts do turn out to be a better training option.