If you recently purchased a gym membership your trainer must have mentioned terms like compound exercises, circuit training etc. And if you are a beginner then to you these new terms might seem like you learning a totally new language.
Health and fitness has its own set of jargon and terminology used by gym goers or powerlifters. A few years back terms like HIIT ( high intensity interval training ) and WOD ( workout of the day ) were terms would have been understood by people who do crossfit. But now such terms are pretty common and most intermediate lifters know about them.
We at Demi God’s Fitness have curated a list of certain terms with their meaning related to strength and conditioning to help and assist beginner and intermediate lifters to understand the terms being used in gym.
Circuit Training
Circuit training is basically a series of exercises performed one after the another. One can think of it as a round of exercises. For eg a circuit training programme may consist of 4 exercises squats, rows, lunges and push ups. So in a circuit training program you would first complete set of squats followed by a set of rows followed by set of lunges and finally ending with push ups. One would then repeat this pattern for more sets which will be a circuit.
HIIT Training
HIIT stands for high intensity interval training and is becoming really popular. HIIT training is basically a training style where you alternate between high intensity and low intensity exercises. For eg if you sprinted for 30 seconds as hard as you can and then jogged for 60 seconds this pattern will be called as HIIT training.
Core Training
Core in simple language basically means centre similarly in strength and conditioning core training means training the muscles located in the centre of the body which is the ever elusive abs.
Calisthenics
Calisthenics is the type of training where you use your body as a weight. Such type of training is also known as bodyweight training. Calisthenics training usually consist of push-ups, pull-ups, squats, lunges, jumps etc.
Rep
Rep is basically an abbreviation of the term repetition. Which is simply the number of times you lift and lower weight in one set of an exercise.
Set
Set is basically a group of reps. Suppose if your programme calls for 3 sets of squats. You will perform one set of 10 repetitions take rest then perform a 2nd set followed by rest and the third set.
Super Set
Supersets are when you do two exercises back to back with little or no rest in between them. There are 2 ways of doing this either you do 2 muscle groups back to back eg – one exercise of back and second of chest so you will perform an set of lat pulls followed by a set of push ups with no rest between them this will save time. The other way of doing it is when you do 2 exercises back to back of the same muscle group for eg 2 sets of exercises for shoulders eg – set of front raise followed by shoulder dumbbell press with no rest between them this way u will fatigue the muscle more.
Drop Set
Drop sets simply means dropping/reducing the weight you lifting and taking out more reps till failure. Eg – if you are doing bicep dumbbell curls with 12.5kg and your schedule has a drop set included then after take out maximum reps with 12.5 kg you drop the weight till 10 or 7.5kg and do bicep curls with that till failure.
Compound Exercises
A compound exercise / compound movement basically is a movement or group of exercises which involves multiple muscle movements like deadlift, bench press, squats.
Cool-Down
This is basically done at the end of the workout to bring the body back to a resting state and lowering the heart rate after an intense workout session.