Common Health & Fitness Jargon/Terms

A little more relaxed with this week’s blog. Now and again i’ll use a number of the below terms and my client will ask me what I am going on about! So I thought I’d list a number of the most common health & fitness terms I come across and give my understanding of them. Some terms are a bit more serious than others and if there any more you would like clarified then by all means please comment below or contact me directly. See how many of the below you aware of:

-Calorie – Often associated with very negative connotations e.g “bad” “fat” “weight gain” In a nutshell calorie/calories are units of energy that your body requires for fuel

-Hypertrophy: More commonly used in the body building environment. Wikipedia defines this as “Muscle hypertrophy involves an increase in size of skeletal muscle through a growth in size of its component cells”. To help achieve this, when applied to a weight training program individuals would look to stay within 3-6 sets of exercises performing anywhere between 8-12 reps

-Functional training: This term has been used more and more of recent times. Functional training relates to performing movements that will benefit or improve your every day movements and tasks

-Core: Over time I have generally found people’s understanding of body’s core relates to the abdominals or abdominal workouts. I could go into a lot of detail relating to different layers and all of the individual muscles but I fear I would lose you after the first sentence. Referring to Wikipedia again, this sums up the core very well in that ” In common parlance, the core of the body is broadly considered to be the torso. Functional movements are highly dependent on this part of the body, and lack of core muscular development can result in a predisposition to injury.[1] The major muscles of the core reside in the area of the belly and the mid and lower back (not the shoulders), and peripherally include[clarification needed] the hips, the shoulders and the neck.” Below this paragraph Wikipedia also lists the muscles, which is worth a read

-1RM: This abbreviation stands for 1 Repitition Max. Used in weightlifting to establish the maximum weight an individual can lift for a particular movement e.g Bench Press 

-Cheat Meal: This term is loosely used in the health & fitness industry and there ultimately is not one real defined meaning for it. My understanding is that a cheat meal is something that you wouldn’t normally eat as part of your everyday plan and would usually consist of a high carb junk food based choice. Cheat meal approaches to dieting are commonly used 1-2 times a week depending on your diet plan 

-PB/PR: Abbreviation for Personal Best/Personal Record relating to achieving a best time, weight lifted or score improved when training.

-WOD: Used in the CrossFit scene and stands for Workout Of The Day. The daily WOD can be anything from a short high intense circuit through to a max lift or an endurance based workout

-Gains: Used a reference to the results you would see during or after a session

-Swole: That pump feeling in your muscles you would get after a big weight training sessions. E.g “Hi mate, your quads are looking swole after that leg session today!”

-Beastmode: I use this term quite often to describe clients when they have a great session! Again there is no defined meaning of this term however I see Beastmode as performing to your optimum during a training session!

-Guns: Apart from the obvious meaning of a variation of firearm, the term guns is used in the fitness industry to describe one’s arms size. E.g ” Wow, jack your guns look huge!”

-Blowing/Gassed: That feeling when you’re struggling to catch your breath and can’t continue after periods of intense training.

Again feel free to comment below with any terms you use regularly or any you’re currently unsure of and would like explained.