Know your fit­ness lingo

To nav­ig­ate the fit­ness world, it helps to have know­ledge of cer­tain terms and acronyms.

When it comes to strength train­ing, using your body­weight to per­form the exer­cise is adequate for begin­ners. — Pho­tos: 123rf.com 

On your act­ive recov­ery day, gentle stretch­ing is a good way to relax the body. 

 

 

 Little jumps that can raise your heart rate count as car­dio activ­ity.

GYM-GOERS and some per­sonal train­ers like to throw jar­gon and acronyms around, even if they may not fully under­stand what the terms mean.

A few months ago, I met a col­lege-going chap who had just star­ted lift­ing weights and I quer­ied him on his workout regime.

Most of his know­ledge was taken off the inter­net – he was work­ing out his arms and legs on altern­ate days six days a week, and look­ing tired, but good.

“I’m set­ting a PR every day,” he proudly told me.

PR? I was puzzled (I’m old school) and asked what that was because I only knew of PB (per­sonal best).

The PR that I’m famil­iar with is the abbre­vi­ation for pub­lic rela­tions – after all, as media prac­ti­tion­ers, we fre­quently deal with PR pro­fes­sion­als.

“Per­sonal record, aunty!” he said, smil­ing while won­der­ing which era I came from.

“Oh, that’s pos­sible to do on a daily basis, huh?” I com­men­ted, intrigued.

Try­ing to keep up with the young­ster, I then ques­tioned: “Are you doing super­sets or tris­ets?

“And don’t you suf­fer from DOMS, espe­cially if you’re lift­ing so fre­quently?”

He gave me a blank stare because the terms threw him off.

Never assume middle-aged souls with mini muscles don’t know much!

So, I patiently explained them to him.

This encounter is not quite reflect­ive of the gen­er­a­tional gap, but is bound to hap­pen to any­one as the fit­ness world has its own lingo and it’s tough to keep up with all the abbre­vi­ations and acronyms, espe­cially the newly-cre­ated ones.

And it can be daunt­ing for the begin­ner who enters the gym or has a con­ver­sa­tion about fit­ness.

Upon check­ing with my per­sonal trainer friends, I dis­covered that PR (the fit­ness acronym) is gym lingo that can be used for any kind of fit­ness activ­ity.

It is, however, nor­mally asso­ci­ated with the heav­iest weight you’ve lif­ted for a par­tic­u­lar exer­cise, or the max­imum num­ber of repe­ti­tions you per­formed using a cer­tain weight.

People usu­ally toss around this acronym when speak­ing about big lifts.

There are no hard and fast rules over using PR, but some people sub­sti­tute it for PB.

They also use it to refer to other isol­a­tion exer­cises such as biceps curls, jump height, sprints, or even the length of time it takes to run a cer­tain dis­tance.

Here are a few com­mon fit­ness terms you might want to know – and use – when neces­sary.

Car­dio

Car­dio, or car­di­ovas­cu­lar or aer­obic exer­cise, is any rhythmic activ­ity that makes your heart beat faster and increases your breath­ing.

This is as you would require more oxy­gen to keep up with the pace of move­ment.

Examples of car­dio activ­it­ies are run­ning, brisk walk­ing, cyc­ling, march­ing in place, etc.

Get­ting your heart pump­ing at a faster rate on a reg­u­lar basis keeps it in shape and healthy, thus redu­cing the risk of heart dis­ease.

The role of car­dio exer­cises is to help burn cal­or­ies so that you can shed weight.

Strength/res­ist­ance train­ing

This form of exer­cise is inten­ded to increase mus­cu­lar strength and endur­ance.

It involves exer­cising muscles using some form of res­ist­ance, i.e. weights, bands, or even your own body­weight work­ing against grav­ity.

To lose weight faster, com­bine your car­dio with strength train­ing, and watch how your body trans­forms.

Your bones can bene­fit from res­ist­ance train­ing too.

Stud­ies have shown that doing res­ist­ance train­ing con­sist­ently can main­tain or increase bone mass and dens­ity.

This is something most doc­tors are ask­ing their older patients to do as it also helps improve bal­ance and sta­bil­ity.

Hyper­trophy

This refers to an increase or growth in muscle size achieved through strength-train­ing exer­cises.

This style of train­ing is pop­u­lar within the body­build­ing com­munity, where there is often a focus on the growth of cer­tain muscles, e.g. thighs, calves, biceps or arms, to achieve an ideal physique.

Achiev­ing this hap­pens via mod­er­ate weight-lift­ing and mod­er­ate repe­ti­tions.

On the oppos­ite end, muscle atrophy is the decrease in size and wast­ing of muscle tis­sue.

Rep/set

Rep is the short form for repe­ti­tion, i.e. how many times you do the exer­cise.

One rep means one time, two reps mean two times, and so on.

The term “set” tells you how many times you are to repeat a par­tic­u­lar num­ber of repe­ti­tions of a given exer­cise.

For example, if you are doing squats, say­ing three sets of 15 reps means you’ll be doing 15 squats three times in total, with a rest (for an allot­ted time, per­haps 30 seconds or a minute) in between sets.

Super­sets/tris­ets/giant sets

Super­sets are doing two exer­cises back to back with no break.

Giant sets are doing four or more exer­cises back to back with no break.

Dur­ing these sets, you can either pair exer­cises that are non-com­pet­ing, i.e. oppos­ing muscle groups, or you can tar­get the same muscle.

For example, you may do one set of 12 reps of chest presses, fol­lowed by another set of 12 reps of push-ups.

This is a super­set exer­cising the same muscle group.

Or you may do one set of 12 reps of push-ups, fol­lowed by another set of 12 reps of squats, then another set of 12 reps of calf raises.

This is a triset exer­cising dif­fer­ent muscle groups.

DOMS

All of us exper­i­ence DOMS, or delayed onset muscle sore­ness, at some point from doing any activ­ity that is either new, done for a longer dur­a­tion, and/or at a harder intens­ity.

It’s caused by inflamed muscle and con­nect­ive tis­sues.

Symp­toms range from muscle ten­der­ness or sore­ness, to severe debil­it­at­ing pain.

The tem­por­ary dis­com­fort starts a day or two after a workout, and eases off by day three or four.

The sore­ness is a sign that your muscles have been worked and your fit­ness is pro­gress­ing, but you shouldn’t be get­ting DOMS after every workout unless you’re exer­cising only once a month!

HIIT

High intens­ity inter­val train­ing (HIIT) is a form of car­dio exer­cise char­ac­ter­ised by short peri­ods of all-out exer­cise, inter­spersed with rest or act­ive recov­ery ses­sions.

It com­bines both car­dio and strength train­ing, with the inten­tion to max­im­ise ath­letic per­form­ance.

It incor­por­ates sev­eral rounds that altern­ate between sev­eral minutes of high intens­ity move­ments to sig­ni­fic­antly increase the heart rate to at least 80% of one’s max­imum heart rate, fol­lowed by short peri­ods of lower intens­ity move­ments.

There is a ratio that is fol­lowed, i.e. the amount of time spent work­ing versus the amount of time spent recov­er­ing – also known as the work-to-recov­ery ratio.

For example, when you per­form 60 seconds of work, fol­lowed by 60 seconds of recov­ery, your HIIT ratio is one-to-one.

Tabata

This is another form of HIIT con­sist­ing of short workout blocks.

Tabata train­ing breaks a workout down into clearly defined inter­vals – typ­ic­ally, 20 seconds of a push-it-to-the-limit exer­cise, fol­lowed by 10 seconds of rest.

One cycle is repeated eight times for a total of four minutes.

You can mix two exer­cises in a cycle, e.g. 20 seconds jump­ing jacks, 10 seconds rest, 20 seconds crunches, 10 seconds rest, then repeat.

The recom­mend­a­tion is to do four to five cycles for a 16-20 minutes’ workout – you’ll be sweat­ing buck­ets by then!

Tabata, foun­ded by Japan­ese sci­ent­ist Izumi Tabata, is a highly effect­ive train­ing style for build­ing power and car­di­ovas­cu­lar fit­ness.

However, bear in mind that Tabata is gruelling and you’ll need to be fit enough to meet its phys­ical demands without get­ting injured.

Also note that Tabatha is HIIT, but not all HIIT is Tabata.

Act­ive rest or recov­ery

This is usu­ally one day in a set time period when you give your body a “break” and do some sort of move­ment that is less intense than your reg­u­lar workout days.

But this does not mean you can lounge on the couch or scroll through social media throughout the day.

Instead, act­ive rest means schedul­ing a low-intens­ity activ­ity like a leis­urely stroll, foam-rolling or gentle yoga to help with cir­cu­la­tion. 

You can even opt for a mas­sage. Your body needs time to recover (just like the mind needs to recharge) so that the muscles can rebuild stronger.      

By Revathi Mur­ugap­pan, a cer­ti­fied fit­ness trainer who tries to battle grav­ity and con­tin­ues to dance to express her­self artist­ic­ally and nour­ish her soul. For more inform­a­tion, email star­health@the­star.com. my. The inform­a­tion con­tained in this column is for gen­eral edu­ca­tional pur­poses only. Neither The Star nor the author gives any war­ranty on accur­acy, com­plete­ness, func­tion­al­ity, use­ful­ness or other assur­ances as to such inform­a­tion. The Star and the author dis­claim all respons­ib­il­ity for any losses, dam­age to prop­erty or per­sonal injury suffered dir­ectly or indir­ectly from reli­ance on such inform­a­tion.

Related posts:

Science on high intensity interval training: HIIT, or SHIIT?

Weights and protein: Are protein supplements really the whey to go?

 

 

 

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