Low-intensity movement like stretching, yoga, or walking that boosts blood flow, reduces soreness, and speeds recovery. It’s a way to stay active between hard training sessions without overloading your body or risking burnout.

Your body’s way of getting stronger or fitter by responding to workouts, like growing muscles or improving endurance, so you can handle more next time.

A molecule that stores and transfers energy that is the primary energy carrier in your cells, fueling muscle contractions and overall body functions during exercise.

Targeted exercises that strengthen smaller muscles or address weaknesses to support major lifts. They fine-tune your performance and reduce injury risk while complementing your main training.

Ex. bicep curls, tricep pushdowns, shoulder lateral raises

Aerobic uses oxygen for steady energy during activities like jogging, while anaerobic relies on stored energy for short bursts like sprints or lifting. Both improve fitness but serve different goals like endurance or power.

A yoga pose that combines balance, flexibility, and strength while promoting mindfulness and breath control. Regular practice can enhance overall mobility, body awareness, and mental clarity.

The number of calories your body needs daily to maintain basic functions like breathing, digestion, and organ function. It’s the foundation of understanding calorie intake and energy balance, and tailoring nutrition plans to achieve weight loss, maintenance, or muscle gain goals.

The proportion of your body weight made up of fat. It’s a key metric for assessing health and fitness goals, and should often be prioritized over weight alone for tracking progress.

Changing your body composition by losing fat and building muscle simultaneously. It’s a slower but more sustainable approach to transforming your physique without drastically shifting your weight. Body Recomposition is extremely challenging and there are only a select few candidates who can actually pull it off: (1) Beginners/Newbies (2) Overweight people carrying a lot of body fat.

A technique where you engage your core by tightening your abs and breathing correctly to stabilize your spine. Bracing protects your lower back and maximizes power during heavy lifts like squats and deadlifts.

A phase focused on building muscle by eating in a calorie surplus and lifting heavy. While some fat gain is expected, the goal is maximizing lean muscle growth with nutrient-dense, protein-rich foods and progressive training.

When your nervous system becomes overworked from intense training or poor recovery, leading to reduced strength, slower reaction times, and mental exhaustion. Proper rest, nutrition, and deloads help mitigate CNS fatigue.

Your body’s internal clock that regulates sleep, energy levels, and recovery. Aligning workouts, meals, and rest with your rhythm can boost performance and overall well-being.

Movements engaging multiple joints and muscle groups simultaneously, like squats, bench presses, deadlifts and pull-ups. They’re efficient for building overall strength and improving coordination, making them staples in most training programs.

Exercises designed to improve your endurance and stamina, helping you keep up during tough workouts or sports. Think running, cycling, or circuit training that gets your heart pumping.

Exercises or movements you should avoid due to injury or specific health issues. It's all about knowing your body and training safely to prevent further harm.

Short reminders to help you perform exercises with better form. Cues like "brace your core" or "keep your chest up" can make a huge difference in your technique and results. Always try to write these when you are tracking your workout.

A phase focused on fat loss while preserving muscle through calorie deficits, strength training, and sometimes cardio. The goal is to achieve a leaner, more defined appearance without sacrificing performance or energy levels.

The muscle tightness and soreness felt 24–48 hours after exercise, caused by micro-tears in the muscles. It’s a sign of your body adapting to training. Gentle movement, hydration, and stretching can help alleviate discomfort.

A planned reduction in training intensity or volume to allow your body to recover from accumulated fatigue. Deloads improve long-term performance, prevent overtraining, and reduce the risk of injuries by prioritizing recovery and resetting motivation.

A training technique where you reduce the weight after reaching failure and continue the exercise to extend muscle fatigue. Drop sets are an effective way to push beyond your limits and maximize hypertrophy in a short amount of time.

Efficiency in fitness refers to getting the most out of your workouts with the least mechanical effort needed. It’s about maximizing the results from your time, energy, and resources, whether it’s through proper technique, smart programming, or balancing intensity and recovery.

Electrolyte balance refers to maintaining the right levels of minerals like sodium, potassium, and magnesium in your body, which are crucial for muscle function, hydration, and nerve signaling. Proper balance helps prevent cramps, fatigue, and dehydration, especially during intense exercise. I recommend always having an electrolyte supplement for your workouts and in the morning.

Endorphins are chemicals your body produces during exercise that act as natural painkillers and mood boosters. They help reduce stress, improve mood, and create that "runner's high" feeling, making exercise not only good for your body but also great for your mental health. Endorphins can often be a reason why the gym can be addicting.

Your body has three main energy systems:

1. The ATP-PC system for short bursts of power

2. The glycolytic system for moderate effort

3. The oxidative system for long-duration activities.

   Each system fuels different types of exercise, and understanding them helps you train smarter for your goals.

Enhancing recovery is about optimizing your body’s ability to repair and rebuild after workouts. This involves proper nutrition, hydration, sleep, and active recovery techniques like stretching or foam rolling to reduce soreness and prepare for the next session.

Exercise form is the way you position and move your body during exercises. Proper form ensures you target the right muscles, prevent injury, and maximize the effectiveness of your workout. Good form also helps improve long-term strength and movement patterns.

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Fatigue management is about balancing intensity and recovery to avoid burnout. It involves recognizing the signs of overtraining, adjusting your workouts, and incorporating rest periods to ensure your body stays strong and continues making progress without getting exhausted.

Flexibility refers to the range of motion of a muscle or joint, while mobility is the ability to move that joint through its full range of motion with control. Both are important for overall movement, but mobility also includes stability and strength, making it key for injury prevention and performance.

Frequency refers to how often you train or perform specific exercises during the week. It’s about finding the right balance between training enough to make progress and allowing your body time to rest and recover to avoid overtraining.

Exercise triggers hormonal changes in your body.

• Testosterone promotes muscle growth

• Cortisol helps manage stress

• Growth hormone (GH) aids recovery and fat metabolism.

  Balancing these hormones through proper training, nutrition, and rest helps optimize performance and health.

Hypertrophy is the process of increasing muscle size through resistance training. It happens when muscle fibers repair and grow after being stressed with mechanical tension during exercise, especially when you focus on progressive overload and nutrition to support muscle recovery and growth.

These are single-joint exercises like bicep curls or leg extensions. They target one muscle at a time, helping you build definition or fix weak spots without worrying about other muscle groups jumping in.

Lactate builds up during intense exercise and can cause that burning sensation. Lactate clearance is your body’s way of getting rid of it after the workout, helping you recover faster and push harder next time.

Muscle that isn’t covered by excess fat. Building lean muscle means you’re increasing your strength and metabolism. Carrying lean muscle mass is the gold ticket for health and longevity.

This is when you do as many reps as possible until you can’t push out another one with good form. It’s an intense way to push your muscles to their limit and trigger growth.

The phase where you maintain your gains rather than trying to bulk or cut. Keep your calories and training at a level that lets you hold onto your muscle mass while keeping fat levels steady.

These are just ways of breaking up your training into chunks:

• Macrocycle is the long-term plan (a year or more).

• Mesocycle is a few months of focused training.

• Microcycle is a week-to-week schedule of workouts within a mesocycle.

This is when you focus on the muscle you’re working, feeling the contraction, and being aware of how it’s moving. This mental connection can help you activate the right muscles and make your workouts more effective.

Mobility is all about your joints’ ability to move through their full range of motion without pain. It’s key for functional movement and preventing injuries. Think of it as the oil that keeps your body’s machinery running smoothly.

When you lift weights, your brain calls on motor units (groups of muscle fibers) to contract. The more you train, the better you get at recruiting more motor units to lift heavier or for longer.

• Eccentric: Lengthening of the muscle under tension (like when you lower a squat).

• Concentric: Muscle shortening as it contracts (like when you stand up from a squat).

• Isometric: Holding the muscle in a contracted position without movement (like holding a plank).

MPS is your body’s process of building new muscle. After lifting weights, you’re tearing fibers that repair and grow back stronger through MPS. Protein intake and recovery are key for this.

This is lifting weights to build muscle, increase strength, and improve overall fitness. It involves progressively overloading your muscles so they adapt and grow over time.

Negatives focus on the eccentric (lengthening) part of the movement. You lower the weight slowly, which places more stress on the muscle and can lead to more muscle growth over time.

This is the energy you burn through daily activities like walking, cleaning, or even fidgeting. While not part of formal exercise, N.E.A.T. helps with fat loss by increasing your overall calorie burn without hitting the gym.

This is the maximum weight you can lift for one single repetition of an exercise. It’s often used to assess strength levels and to set up training programs for progressive overload.

The method of organizing your training into cycles (macro, meso, and micro) to optimize performance and recovery. By varying intensity and volume, periodization helps prevent plateaus and keeps progress steady.

When progress slows or stops after a period of improvement. Plateaus happen, but you can break through them by changing up your training, diet, or recovery routines.

Proprioception, or sensory awareness, is the body’s ability to sense its position, movement, and balance in space. It allows us to perform coordinated actions without consciously thinking about them, like walking or lifting weights. Proprioception relies on sensory feedback from muscles, joints, and the nervous system to adjust and refine movement.

Activities like yoga, resistance training, and stability exercises can strengthen this sense, helping prevent injuries and improve athletic performance.

The key to progress: if you don’t challenge your muscles beyond their current abilities, they won’t grow. Adding weight, reps, tension or intensity over time helps your muscles adapt and get stronger.

A classic workout split where:

• Push days work chest, shoulders, and triceps.

• Pull days target back and biceps.

• Legs hit quads, hamstrings, and glutes.
  It’s a balanced way to train major muscle groups multiple times a week.

A pyramid set involves increasing or decreasing the weight while adjusting reps. Start with lighter weight and higher reps, and as you go, increase the weight and decrease the reps. Great for building strength and endurance.

This refers to the full movement potential of a joint. Increasing your R.O.M. through flexibility and mobility exercises allows you to perform lifts with proper technique and prevents injury. Full R.O.M. is not always necessary for an effective exercise.

Recovery is just as important as the workout. It’s when your muscles repair and grow stronger. Sleep, hydration, stretching, and nutrition all play key roles in making the most of your hard work. Exercising and eating right can be so futile if recovery isn’t prioritized correctly.

Reps (repetitions) are how many times you perform an exercise in one set. For example, 10 squats in a row equals 10 reps. The right rep range depends on your goals—strength, hypertrophy, endurance, etc.

Rest is the break you take between sets or exercises. It’s crucial for allowing your muscles to recover and for replenishing your ATP (adenosine triphosphate), the energy your muscles use during exercise, so you can perform at your best in the next set.

How many more reps you think you could have done before reaching failure. Aiming for around 1-3 R.I.R. ensures you’re challenging yourself without overtraining. We use this in our tracking.

A scale (1-10) of how hard you feel like you’re working. An R.P.E. of 10 is max effort, while 1 is easy. It’s a good way to track intensity without relying solely on numbers or weight.

A set is a group of consecutive reps. For example, doing 3 sets of 10 reps means you do 10 reps, take a rest, and repeat two more times.

A training split is how you organize your weekly workout routine, breaking it down into specific days for different muscle groups or movements. Common splits include full-body, upper-lower, and push-pull-legs, but more specialized splits like 7-day, 8-day, 9-day, or even 10-day routines can be used depending on your goals, recovery time, and experience level. These splits allow for strategic rest and recovery for different muscle groups while keeping your training intensity where we want it.

The balance between the challenge of a workout (stimulus) and how much fatigue it creates. A good ratio means you’re working hard enough for growth, but not so hard that you’re too tired to recover. This is kind of like asking, is this effort expended(exercise) for this stimulus(hypertrophy or muscular adaptation) WORTH the fatigue that is being placed on my body and CNS. You can fatigue without stimulating, but you can’t stimulate without fatigue.

Strength is how much force you can exert against resistance. It’s the foundation for most workouts, whether you’re lifting heavy weights, doing bodyweight exercises, or just moving big objects.

A superset is when you do two exercises back-to-back with no rest in between. It’s a great way to maximize time and increase intensity for faster results.

Tempo is the speed at which you perform an exercise. For example, a 3-1-1 tempo means you take 3 seconds to lower the weight, 1 second to hold, and 1 second to lift. Control the pace for better muscle engagement.

Thermogenesis is the process your body uses to generate heat, often through metabolism or exercise. It helps burn calories, boosting your metabolic rate and aiding fat loss. Carrying higher lean muscle mass, eating more protein (thanks to its high thermic effect), resistance training, and even caffeine can all increase thermogenesis for better fat-burning potential.

This refers to how long a muscle is under strain during a lift. Longer TUT can increase muscle growth because it creates more time for the muscle fibers to work. This is a very popular bodybuilding concept.

A proper warm-up prepares your body for exercise in three stages.

1. First, increased blood flow delivers oxygen and nutrients to muscles.

2. Then improved viscoelasticity enhances tissue flexibility and reduces stiffness.

3. Lastly, activation primes specific muscles for movement patterns.

   Together, these steps prevent injuries and maximize performance.

VO2 max is how much oxygen your body can use during intense exercise. The higher it is, the better your endurance and overall cardio fitness. It’s like a fitness gauge for how efficiently your body powers through tough workouts.

Training volume is the total amount of work you do, calculated by multiplying sets and reps. For example, 3 sets of 10 reps equals 30 reps total. The right volume is crucial—too little won’t challenge your muscles, while too much can lead to overtraining or fatigue. Gradually increasing volume helps build muscle and strength without burning out.

Yoga is a practice that combines movement, breathing, and mindfulness to improve physical, mental, and emotional well-being. Through poses (asanas) and breathwork, it enhances flexibility, strength, and balance while reducing stress and promoting relaxation. It’s fitness for both body and mind. It is also considered a spiritual exercise as it seeks to unite the mind, body, and spirit, fostering inner peace and self-awareness.

Cardio zones reflect effort levels, measured by heart rate or how easily you can talk.

1. Zone 1 lets you chat comfortably, perfect for recovery.

2. Zone 2 supports fat burning and endurance, allowing short sentences.

3. Zone 3 boosts aerobic fitness but limits you to a few words.

4. Zone 4 is high-intensity—talking becomes nearly impossible—great for speed and power.

   The best zone(s) to train in depend on your goals: Zone 2 is great for endurance and fat loss, while Zones 3 and 4 focus on performance and conditioning. A mix ensures balanced progress.