Carlee In essence, the two are involved and included - fitness is the general term for all sports activities with the purpose of improving physical fitness, improving sports performance, and adjusting physical condition. Muscle gain is only one of the many goals of fitness. It is highly directional. Training and diet plans are designed specifically for skeletal muscle growth.
It’s quite interesting to say that I just made an appointment with my golf friend Akai who often goes to the gym to play pick-up basketball last week. He goes to the gym four times a week and plays badminton for an hour after struggling for half an hour twice. He also rides a 50-kilometer mountain bike on the greenway on weekends. When I asked him what he has been practicing recently, he said he just works out. Just keep your body fat from floating around and climb stairs without getting out of breath. I have never calculated how much your bench press has increased or whether your arm circumference has grown. Just wear a T-shirt and hold yourself up is enough. This is actually the fitness state of most ordinary men. There are no clear subdivision goals. If you feel comfortable moving and are in good physical condition, you have reached the standard.
But if you really take muscle gain as your core goal, the whole situation will be completely different. I took care of a sophomore student last year. During the four months of preparing for the Provincial College Student Fitness Competition, he even recorded in his memo how much water he drank every day. Carbohydrates were calculated at 6 grams per kilogram of body weight, and protein was limited to 2.2 grams. On leg training days, he squatted until he held the wall to get out of the strength zone. When making skewers with friends, he had to calculate the proportion of protein and fat in the skewers in advance, and what to eat. When I was ready, I peeled off all the outer skin first, just to eat more clean protein and avoid excess fat. Later in the preparation for the competition, my body fat dropped to 7%, and my abdominal muscles really looked like they were carved out. Even drinking a bottle of Coke was counted in the day's carbohydrate quota. This kind of full-link planning around muscle growth and body fat control is a clear-cut muscle-building behavior.
It is precisely because the target intensities are so different that there are always people on the Internet arguing about the boundary between the two. One group of people says that as long as you go to the gym and practice strength, you are building muscle, while the other group says that those who do not do progressive overload and do not accurately control their diet are just practicing in vain, and cannot be regarded as serious muscle building. From the perspective of those of us who have been practicing for six or seven years, how can there be so many black and white boundaries? A newbie who just started knows nothing and practices blindly three times a week. In half a year, his arm circumference has increased by 2cm and his weight has increased by 6 pounds. Even if he has never heard of how much protein he should eat per kilogram, he has actually gained muscle. You can't deny his achievements just because he didn't follow the competition preparation standards.
To put it bluntly, it’s just like saving money. You usually save some pocket money when you get paid, and occasionally buy some financial products to earn some income. This is all called saving money. It doesn’t necessarily have to be towards the goal of buying a luxury car or a luxury house to be called saving money.； But if you really make up your mind to get a certain limited-edition sports car, you must make plans, calculate expenses, and monitor progress. It is definitely different from the relaxed state of just saving some money. To put it bluntly, the difference between fitness and muscle building is this. If you want to relax and move around a bit, choose normal fitness. If you want to improve muscle dimensions and body lines, follow the standards of muscle building. Just do whatever is comfortable for you. There is no need to look down on each other.
