Fitness Terminology
Fitness terminology is something I have been exposed to during my time as a personal trainer. In fact, being a personal trainer lends itself to exposure to many different ways of saying the same thing. Especially when working at a corporate gym, the wide range of terms they use to communicate simple movements is obnoxious. It was so obnoxious that I frequently refer to it with current clients and prospective clients for humor.
It is a blessing to live in an age where information is so rich and readily available and free. However, along with information comes confusion in some cases. This is absolutely the case in fitness.
The main thing to take away from this article is to let your exercise be simple. There are only a handful of things you can do to introduce any type of stimulus to your muscles. You can push, pull, squat, lunge and hinge. Those 5 movements will produce adaptation to over 90% of the muscle tissue in the human body.
So whether you’d doing air squat, body weight squat, compound squat, pistol squat, blah blah squat, you’re still doing a squat. I’ve read each of these movement descriptions (except for the blah blah blah squat) in programmed material produce by a team of “experts”, online and among my peers in the industry.
Why Fitness Terminology Matters
The struggle for a prospect or new client isn’t exposure to a wide range of fitness terminology. The real struggle is making it simple. In fact, one of the most common things people struggle with when trying to get started is that they don’t know what do to. So the problem is actually the opposite of knowing the fanciest way to say “squat”. The bottom line is fitness terminology doesn’t really matter.
Next time you’re looking for a new workout program and it calls for a compound bench press, just know that what it’s saying is bench press. Keep your workout terminology simple. You will get the exact same results as if you use the most complex, obnoxious fitness terminology.
