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1RM

One repetition max: this is the absolute most weight you can lift for a given exercise. 1RM is viewed by many as the gold standard of strength testing but it is important to consider that 1RM testing isn’t a practically applicable test for all exercises and so it should be reserved for exercises that it suits. For instance, the barbell back squat or barbell bench press. We also recommend some prior training consistency prior to pushing to your absolute max

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AMRAP
As Many Rounds/Reps As Possible: this is where you complete as many rounds or reps of a given exercise or multiple exercises, within a given time, typically used for conditioning workouts
Read more about AMRAP Workouts
Accessory lifts
This refers to lifts that support what you may consider your ‘KPI lifts’ or ‘main lifts’, those that you track over a long period and use as a measure of your progress. Accessory lifts are intended to allow you to lift even more in your main lifts and to help you stay resilient to injury. For example, you may use Good Mornings or Jefferson Curls as accessory lifts to your Deadlift.
Read more about accessory lifts here
Active recovery
Strategies other than rest to improve your recovery after a workout to allow you to perform better during your subsequent sessions. Active recovery can be as little as going for a light cycle or a walk. It is really important that your active recovery is of a low enough intensity that it doesn’t contribute to more fatigue, for that is the opposite of what active recovery is there to do
Read more about how to use active recovery
Aerobic exercise
Exercise that predominantly uses aerobic energy systems to break down glucose, typically characterised by long steady state exercise. For instance, going for a long continuous run or cycle, improving your cardiovascular endurance
All or nothing law
The all or nothing law states that once a stimulus exceeds the contractile threshold of a motor unit, it contracts FULLY. If a stimulus does not exceed the contractile of a motor unit, it does not contract at all; an individual muscle fibre is either fully contracted or at complete rest.
See here for a more detailed explanation of the all or nothing law
Anaerobic exercise
Exercises that utilise the anaerobic energy systems (glycolysis and creatine-phosphate system) without the presence of oxygen, typically in the form of high intensities. For example, high intensity interval training using maximal effort sprints with moderate rest times, improving your ability to perform repeatedly at high intensities. This is particularly beneficial for sports like rugby and football who have to perform high intensity sprints intermittently for long spells
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Bodybuilding
Bodybuilding, popularised by greats like Arnold Schwarzenegger, is a physique sport in which athletes are challenged to build as much muscle mass as possible and perform a display on stage to further exaggerate such gains. Bodybuilding-style training is often adopted as a training method, utilising a lot of high rep, close to failure style hypertrophy training, which is why you may hear people refer to parts of their session or program as bodybuilding.
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Calisthenics
Gymnastics based exercise performed with little or no equipment, using your own body weight to make the exercises intense.
Learn about calisthenics for beginners
Cardio
Cardiovascular Training: training in which the predominant adaptive processes are related to the heart, lungs, and associated blood vessels, improving your ability to perform low intensity steady state exercise (LISS)
Find out why you shouldn't skip cardio
Circuit
Group of exercises executed in a round-robin format, one after another. This can be used for a variety of goals but is often used as a form of cardio because of the inherent lowered intensity on each exercise resulting from performing each exercise one after another
Clean and jerk
A pair of weightlifting exercises in which you get the bar overhead in two stages, across the movement. Both involve a strong lower body triple extension to create
vertical displacement of the bar, with the clean getting the bar form the floor up to the front of your shoulders and the jerk getting the bar up overhead
Read a clean and jerk masterclass
Compound movement
Compound exercises refer to those that utilise multiple joints at the same time, working together to produce a movement, as opposed to isolation exercises which target individual joints. Compound exercises are great to build a programme around because of their inherent bang for buck in that they train a wide variety of muscles and body regions at the same time
Compound movements beginners should know
Conditioning
Conditioning your body for future demands: it is often used to describe forms of cardiovascular training to differentiate between strength training, which also conditions your body, but in a different capacity
Read more about what body conditioning is
Core
The muscle surrounding the spine, hips and pelvis, abdominal structures and the proximal lower limb muscles (those close to the torso). They are responsible for creating stability and helping in the generation and transfer of force during exercise
Ten best core exercises
Corrective exercise
This is constraint-based training; an exercise to force you to alter your technique to align it more closely to the goal of the lift. This can be used to correct poor form
learn more about corrective exercise
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DOMS
Delayed Onset of Muscle Soreness: post-exercise muscle aching, typically 24-72 hrs after training, decreasing your performance in the short-term while you recover. DOM’s is normal on occasion, but we want to aim for the sweet spot where we are still able to perform to a high level on our subsequent sessions, without DOM’s stopping this
How DOMS make you stronger
Deadlift
Picking a weight off the floor from a dead stop position, using predominantly the musculature around the hips to hinge the weight up
How to deadlift
Drop set
When you immediately decrease the load used for an exercise after hitting failure at your starting weight, allowing you to work closer to absolute failure. You can perform multiple drop sets, we recommend x2-3 drops sets, dropping by around 20% each time from your initial working weight
What is a drop set?
Dynamic stretching
Moving the muscles and joints through their full range of motion before exercise.
Dynamic stretching - how well can you move?
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EMOM
Every Minute on the Minute: During an EMOM workout you start a given exercise or group of exercises at the start of a minute until you finish the prescribed/desired reps and then rest until the start of the next minute. You can manipulate this for different work to rest ratios like E2MOM (every 2 minutes on the minute) or E3MOM (every 3 minutes on the minute), depending on your workout
Make every minute count with an EMOM workout
EPOC
Excess post-exercise oxygen consumption: the increase in the rate of oxygen uptake after exercise to pay back the oxygen debt created during strenuous exercise
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Fast Twitch muscle fibres
Split into fast twitch 1 and 2 fibres, that are large and able produce high forces and speeds, used during exercises like resistance training, jumping and sprinting
Free weights
Free weights are weights that are not part of a machine, applying resistance to your body directly in line with gravity, down towards the floor. Some of the most popular examples of free weight exercise examples include the bench press, military press, back squat, front squat or deadlift. Popular free weights that can be used for these exercises include dumbbells, a barbell, kettlebells, and a trap bar.
Functional training
A highly contextual term given that any and all training can be functional if it has a function. However, functional training often gets used to describe exercises which have similar biomechanical characteristics to day-to-day life, like squats or hinge exercises
For more details see What is functional training?
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Giant sets
Multiple exercises grouped together, similar to a superset but with 4 or more exercises. This, like a superset, can be used for a more time-efficient workout, or even to work your body closer to failure to induce more hypertrophy
More details on giant sets here
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HIIT
High Intensity Interval Training: a specific variation of interval training that uses high intensity bouts of work, making it predominantly anaerobic. This is a great way to improve your fitness levels without the longer time requirements of LISS
see our top 5 HIIT exercises
Heart rate zones
Heart rate zones refer to percentages of your maximum heart rate to quantify training intensity, so you know how hard to work and also how hard you are working
Hypertrophy
Refers to an increase in muscle cross-sectional area (muscle mass), usually as a result of resistance training. Increasing muscle size is a good way to improve strength long term by increasing your potential for force
Learn how to build muscle size and mass with hypertrophy training
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Interval training
Using a series of intended working and resting periods. This can be used for multiple reasons but is often used to train anaerobically, at high working intensities, often in sporting populations looking to mimic the demands of their sport
Isometrics
Contrary to isotonic contractions, isometric contractions involve placing the muscle(s) under tension without significant movement, holding a position under load. This is great for targeting positions that you are weak in or targeting muscles that you may compensate away from loading normally.
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LISS
Low intensity steady state: often synonymous with long runs or cycles, this is a predominantly aerobic form of exercise and is great for improving your cardiovascular fitness without needing to work at high intensities. A useful tip to train at an appropriate intensity for LISS is to aim for a ‘conversation pace’, in which you only train as hard as you are capable to have a conversation if you had to
LISS the perfect workout for everyone
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Metcon
Metabolic conditioning: A Metcon is a broad term, often used by functional training enthusiasts. It’s an umbrella term to describe a variety of ways to train different energy systems. You may do this using an AMRAP, LISS or even an EMOM
Mobility
Mobility is synonymous with range of motion but typically in the fitness industry refers to your range of motion in more dynamic tasks. For example, your ability to hit a deep squat may reflect your lower body mobility.
Motor variation
In a training context, motor variation can be seen as the variation in the accuracy of your movement rep to rep. Each rep you complete will be slightly different, whether you can see it or not,. Long term, looking to reduce this variation in individual exercises will be beneficial to create more targeted adaptation, however, remembering that it will always be there to some degree is important to stop any catastrophising when movement isn’t perfect throughout a set.
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Neutral grip
A neutral grip is when the palms of your hands are facing in towards each other and is commonly used in upper body dumbbell exercises or Swiss bar exercises to reduce the stress placed on the shoulder for those that struggle in that area.
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Olympic weightlifting
Olympic Weightlifting is first and foremost a strength sport in which competitors attempt to lift as much weight as possible across the barbell snatch and barbell clean and jerk. These exercises are also used as training methods, given their vast benefits, and thus those outside of competitive Weightlifting may reference Olympic lifting in their training.

Find our range of Olympic lifting equipment here
Overload
The progression of work done by a muscle or system over time. This is essential to ensure long term progress and to avoid plateaus as we adapt to the initial load imposed upon us.
Read about progressive overload
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Periodisation
Synonymous with other common terms like ‘programming’, periodisation is the planned variation of training variables, like intensity, volume and frequency, to optimise gains and training progression and minimise non-functioning fatigue to reduce the chances of injury or overtraining. The most used types of periodisation are Linear Periodisation, Non-linear Periodisation and Block Periodisation. These can be used by themselves or all at the same time to get the best out of your training.
Read more about concurrent periodisation
Plyometrics
Plyometric exercises are ballistics that involve a prior landing and rebound to promote muscle stiffness, for instance, repeated jumps and bounds
See our guide to plyometric training
Powerlifting
Powerlifting is first and foremost a strength sport in which competitors attempt to lift as much weight as possible across a barbell bench press, barbell deadlift and a barbell back squat. These exercises are also used as training methods, given their vast benefits, and those outside of competitive Powerlifting may refer to exercises in their program as Powerlifting exercises.
Find powerlifting products here
Primal flow
Refers to a seamless ‘flow’ between exercise variations that are biomechanically similar to positions that we find ourselves in during day-to-day life. This is a great way to
warm up, work on mobility or even use as your main session, adding external load or longer times under tension to make them more intense
Find out more with What is Primal Flow?
Progressive overload
A steady increase in the intensity and/or volume you expose yourself to in your training. This is really important to ensure long term progress as your body adapts to stimulus over time, and thus needs more stimulus to further adapt
Learn how to use progressive overload
Pyramid set
An ascending and descending rep scheme, set to set, with a top set, thus creating a pyramid. This can be used for a variety of reasons but is often used to train at a high absolute intensity before ‘topping up’ your volume at lower intensities, which is great during higher intensity periods of your training where you may not be able to get in the same volume as usual at your current training intensities
More details in our What is a Pyramid Set? article
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RPE
Rating of Perceived Exertion: this is a subjective measure of intensity, often on a 1-10 scale of difficulty and is a great tool to use alongside percentage-based training because it adjusts for fluctuations in performance as a result of day-to-day stressors. It also allows you to work out an approximate training intensity for exercises that practically don’t suit 1RM testing and subsequent percentage-based training prescription
Range of motion
Range of motion refers to the degrees of movement available through a joint. This can be split into active range of motion and passive range of motion. The active range of motion is what degree of movement you have in a joint without external assistance. Whilst the passive range of motion is what degree of movement you have out of a joint with external forces pushing the joint as far as possible. Passive range of motion is typically greater than active range of motion.
Rest day
By its truest definition, a rest day is an entire day off the gym or exercise. This is an essential part of the training process to allow the body to recover and turn acute training fatigue into adaptation (gains). How often you need rest days will be heavily dependant on a number of factors, for instance, your training age, how hard you train in each session, your lifestyle and work schedule and your training goals
More rest equals better performance
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Slow twitch muscle fibres
Low force muscle, low fatiguability muscle fibres, utilised during endurance training and low intensity movement
Snatch
A weightlifting exercise in which you lift a barbell overhead in one movement using a strong lower body triple extension to train lower body power, catching the bar in an overhead squat position
Read a snatch masterclass
Static Stretching
A stretch performed without significant movement, holding it for a prolonged period
Superset
Coupling two exercises together, performing one after the other, prior to a rest. A superset can be used in a variety of ways, for time efficiency with an agonist antagonist superset or even to increase proximity to failure at a target muscle with a post or pre fatigue superset
Supersize your workout with a superset
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TABATA
A form of HIIT founded by Japanese scientist Dr. Izumi Tabata. It involves 20 seconds of hard work, followed by 10 seconds of rest, for 8 rounds, making a total of 4 minutes of work for a highly time-efficient method of using interval training
TABATA - is eight minutes enough?
Thoracic spine
The mid to upper portion of your spine. It is important to have a mobile thoracic spine to perform a number of exercises because it has a knock-on effect on your shoulder motion and range of motion
Find out how thoracic mobility can improve your lifting
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V02 max
The maximum rate that the body can use oxygen during exercise as an indication of your aerobic capacity
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Warm up
This is an initial portion of your session designed to improve performance of your subsequent main session exercises. A warm-ups benefits are often looked at through the lens of the RAMP Protocol (Raise, Activate, Mobilise and Potentiate)
Why it is important to warm-up
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Z Press
The Z Press is a popular exercise for Powerlifters, Strongmen and Weightlifters who all require pushing strength.
What is a Z Press