FITNESS LINGO

Aerobic Exercise: Also know as “cardio,” aerobic exercises are low-to-high intensity activities that stimulate the heart rate and breathing rate. Examples include running, cycling, and swimming at a slow to moderate pace.

Anabolism: All of the metabolic processes that build biomolecules. The phase of metabolism that builds muscle and other complex living tissues from simple substances such as glucose and amino acids. High insulin levels produce an anabolic environment in the body, which decreases the rate at which muscle proteins break down and therefore allows muscles to grow larger more quickly.

Anaerobic Exercise: Short term, high intensity exercise where your body’s demand for oxygen exceeds the oxygen supply available. Examples include heavy weight training, sprinting, and jumping.

Body Composition: Describe the percentages of muscle, essential fat, non-essential fat (storage fat), bone, and organs in your body. The term “body composition” is typically used to note body fat or lean muscle mass as a percentage of total weight.

Body Mass Index (BMI): A health metric that uses your height and weight to determine if you are underweight, at a healthy weight, or overweight. This is a rather poor metric because the calculation does not take into consideration a person’s body composition, age, or sex. In other words, a 200-pound, 5’ 10” muscular man with 8% body fat will have the same BMI (28.7 – an overweight BMI) as a 200-pound, 5’ 10” obese woman with 35% body fat.

Catabolism: All of the metabolic processes that tear down biomolecules (i.e. macromolecules), proteins, carbs, fats, and nucleic acids, to make them easier to utilize. Digestion is a catabolic activity. Through the process of digestion, proteins break down into amino acids, carbs break down into glucose, fats break down into fatty acids, and nucleic acids break down into nucleotides.

Catabolic State: A condition that occurs when a person trains excessively with a lack of adequate nutrition, especially protein.

Circuit Training: A form of resistance training using high-intensity aerobics to strengthen muscles and build endurance. A “circuit” is a series of exercise stations that work different muscle groups with little to no rest.

Core Muscles: The group of muscles that stabilize your body and move the spine. These include abdominal muscles, back muscles, and the muscles around the pelvis.

Dynamic Stretching: A form of stretching that utilizes momentum to propel the muscle into an extended range of motion. Care should be taken to not exceed one’s static-passive stretching ability.

Fast Twitch Muscle Fibers: There are two general types of skeletal muscle fibers: slow-twitch (Type I) and fast-twitch (Type II). Fast-twitch muscle fibers are used in powerful bursts of movements like sprinting and heavy weight lifting and fatigue quickly.

Hypertrophy (Muscle hypertrophy): Increases in skeletal muscle size through a growth in the size of a muscles’ component cells. Many factors contribute to hypertrophy including: exercise selection, intensity, weight load, frequency, and diet.

Interval Training: A type of training in which one alternates through periods of high-intensity exercise and low-intensity recovery periods. An example of interval training is sprinting for 200 meters, then jogging 200 meters, and repeating.

Lactic Acid: A compound in the body produced when glucose is broken down and oxidized. Lactic acid is a product of cell metabolism that accumulates when cells lack sufficient oxygen.

Lean Mass: One’s entire body weight minus fat.

Metabolism: All of the physical and chemical activities in your body that confer or use energy (examples include breathing, digesting food, and circulating blood).  Metabolism breaks down large molecules like food into useable energy. There are two parts of metabolism: anabolism and catabolism (defined above).

Moderate Intensity: Any activity that expends 3.5 to 7 calories per minute. An example of moderate physical activity is walking at a 15-20 minute mile pace.  You’re working hard enough to raise your heart rate and break a sweat.

Muscle Hypertrophy: Regular exercise and weightlifting cause micro-trauma (micro-tears) within your muscles. Your muscles respond to this micro-trauma by not only repairing the damaged tissue, but actually overcompensating by increasing the size (and thus strength) of its cells. This overcompensation process is known as muscle hypertrophy. There are two types of hypertrophy that work together to increase muscle size and strength: sarcoplasmic hypertrophy and myofibrillar hypertrophy. Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy occurs when a muscle increases its glycogen storage (glycogen is a multi branched polysaccharide of glucose, which you found out above is the main source of fuel for our cells). Myofibrils are the rod-like building blocks of muscle; they are cylindrical structures composed of tubular cells called myocytes (muscle fibers). Myofibrillar hypertrophy refers to an actual increase in size and number of the individual myofibrils.

One Rep Max (1RM): The maximum amount an athlete is able to lift in compound exercises like bench press, deadlift, and squat. Unless you are a competitive lifter, there’s little reason to do one rep maxes. In fact, a 2RM or 3RM works better for building strength.

Opposing Muscles: Opposing muscles are paired according to the agonist, which does the movement, and the antagonist, which performs the opposite movement. For example, biceps and triceps are opposing muscles.

Overload Principle: The only way to grow muscles and increase strength is to force them to adapt to a tension that is above and beyond what your muscles have previously experienced. In other words, you can’t lift the same weight every time you go to the gym and expect to increase strength or muscle size.

Plateau: A period of little to no strength progress. The human body is incredibly effective at adapting to change. So if you do not vary your workouts in the gym you will hit a plateau.

PNF (Proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation) Stretching: Flexibility training that simultaneously stretches and contracts the targeted muscle groups. PNF stretching, originally developed as a form of rehabilitation, is an extremely effective method to implement mobility training.

Plyometric Training: Dynamic “jump training” that builds explosive power and directly translates to improved athletic performance.

Repetitions (Reps): The number of times you perform a specific exercise. For example, if you bench press 150 pounds 10 times in one shot, you have completed 10 reps.

Resting Heart Rate (RHR): The number of times your heart beats while you are at rest.  A normal heart rate for a healthy individual is 40-70 beats with conditioned athletes falling at the lower end of this spectrum.

Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR): The amount of energy require to maintain the body’s normal metabolic activity, such as respiration, maintenance of body temperature (thermogenesis), and digestion.

Set: The number of cycles of reps that you complete. For example, if you bench press 150 pounds 10 times in one shot and you repeat this process 5 times with rest periods in between, you have completed 5 sets.

Slow Twitch Muscle Fibers: As mentioned above, slow-twitch muscle fibers are one of two general types of skeletal muscle fibers: slow-twitch (Type I) and fast-twitch (Type II). Slow-twitch muscle fibers are used in long-endurance movements such as distance running.

Static Stretching: A form of flexibility training that involves holding a muscle at the stretched position for 20-30 seconds. Research suggests there is no benefit to static stretching longer than 30 seconds.

Target Heart Rate (THR): Monitoring a person’s pulse to determine if it falls within a target heart rate zone is an effective method to monitor physical activity intensity.

Testosterone: Part of a group of hormones called androgens, or steroid hormones. While it is mostly thought of as a male hormone, women also have testosterone.

Type IIA Muscle Fibers: Also known as “fast twitch oxidative,” Type IIA muscle fibers are the first type of fast twitch muscle fibers that function for both aerobic and anaerobic exercise.

Type IIB/X Muscle Fibers: Also known as “fast twitch glycolytic,” Type IIB/X muscle fibers are the second type of fast twitch muscle fibers that function exclusively for anaerobic exercise.

V02 Max (maximum oxygen consumption): The maximum volume of oxygen an athlete can use.