Hey Folks,
I wanted to do a quick post to clear up some verbiage for people when it comes to training and fitness in general. I was answering some questions for people the other day, and I realized that I think there is a lot of unnecessary confusion when people are trying to decipher what they are looking for. In the day to day use, a lot of these terms are used interchangeably and most of the time it doesn’t really matter when it comes to practical application. However, when someone is new to the scene and unfamiliar with them, it can often lead them to looking at the wrong thing or buying a plan for something they didn’t realize they were buying. This is just a quick reference for you guys so that you know what you are looking at when it’s advertised and also know what you are referring to when you say it! Some of these terms are “standardized” meaning it will mean the same thing across the board to people, and other ones tend to be more “slang” and can have slightly varying definitions depending on the group. There’s obviously things not included here, these are just ones I see commonly confused or used a lot that people might not know. Hope you find this helpful!
Program: your training plan. This can refer to a specific day, or a phase lasting any length of time.
Split: the breakdown of your training plan. This has an infinite amount of variations. Programs that have you chest and shoulders one day, back and biceps the next day, and quads and hammies the next day, this would be your “split.” In powerlifting, there might be a squat day, bench day, and deadlift day and that is their split.
RPE: this stands for “rate of perceived exertion.” This is a subjective scale that does require a good amount of experience to apply effectively. This is a way to both self assess and for a coach to say what amount of intensity a set should be done at. If you were to see in your program a command for “set of 8 squats at 8 RPE”, this would mean you’re doing a set of 8 and the weight you are using should feel like an 8/10 difficulty. This can be helpful in some ways and harmful in others. If instead of RPE we used percentages which are objective, it can on some days have us under perform or potentially be unable to complete a lift if we dont feel good. If that same set of 8 was listed at 70% instead of an 8 RPE, it has nothing to do with how we feel. We might feel amazing and the RPE was actually 6, it means we could have gone harder. If we felt terrible and couldn’t even do the 8 reps, then we should have adjusted either the weight or the reps to complete it. This can be a useful tool if we either dont have a 1 rep max to gauge percentages on, or if you have good experience and self awareness.
RIR: this is sometimes used in place of RPE and is short for “reps in reserve.” This more or less is two sides of the same coin. Instead of telling you how hard it should feel, it’s telling you how many reps left in the tank you should leave. So if you saw the set of 8 squats with 3 RIR, it means that however heavy you went, you should be able to do 3 more if you absolutely had to. The same considerations apply here, without experience and knowing how things feel and good body awareness, this can be hard to apply.
Bodybuilding: This is most commonly used to describe weight training in general when you are emphasizing certain body parts at a time. If you told someone you were doing some bicep curls, tricep extensions, and skull crushers, they would assume you are doing an “arm day” and that you are doing a bodybuilding style program. Bodybuilding however is a category that athletes compete in, and it usually implies this competitive aspect and all that comes with it. If you simply are enjoying lifting weights and shaping your body, that doesn’t necessarily mean you are doing “bodybuilding,” though its perfectly fine to do it recreationally and not competitively.
Powerlifting: This would generally imply that you are focused on the three powerlifting movements: squat, bench press, and deadlift. The term also usually implies some degree of competition associated with it, meaning the end goal is lifting the most on those three lifts. If you like doing bench press on chest day, squats on leg day, and deadlifts on back day but theres a lot of other things in there in equal importance, it may not be “powerlifting” per se. Powerlifting means improving those three movements as the primary focus, everything else is an accessory to help those.
Olympic lifting/ “OLY”/ weightlifting: This one gets misused a lot. Usually you dont get to say you are an “olympic lifter” unless you have made it to the olympics (sigh for most of us.) The term “weightlifting” by itself actually means you are training to improve the snatch and clean/jerk. Adding the “olympic” at the front tends to be helpful in most conversation as the average person wont realize you are talking about snatch and clean and jerk if you just say that you do “weightlifting.” Similar to the logic of powerlifting, weightlifting means that all your training revolves around improving those two lifts, the snatch and clean/jerk. Everything else is an accessory. Also a quick note: “weightlifting” means snatch/cj, “weight lifting” means you’re lifting weights. A bit pedantic, I know, but this is a vocabulary post after all.
Powerbuilding: I dont really like this term, but I see it thrown around a lot. Usually this just means the person is looking to build both strength and muscle at the same time, and are combining aspects of both body building and powerlifting. The reason I dont like this term is that I think almost all training should have some aspect of either getting stronger or building muscle in one way or another. Practically speaking, I see people use this term when they are doing a body building split or program, but include the powerlifting movements in there and have a good degree of focus on still improving those along side the strength numbers.
Calisthenics: this is essentially body weight training. The scale for this is immense. It can be as simple as doing push ups, and as advanced as elite gymnastics. Some of the most impressive things you’ll ever see are from the calisthenics community.
Strongman: I dont see this commonly misused, but I felt bad leaving it out after describing the other strength sports. There is competitive and pro strongman, though it is a little more niche. However some strongman movements you do see incorporated into all sorts of programs. In general this is going to be more of the “odd” object lifting and carrying. Things like farmer walks/carries, over the shoulder movements, long holds with med balls, tire flips, etc all have their origins in strongman. The sport itself has several events and you’re scored based on placing across each event.
Functional: this one is cause for much debate in the industry. It originally came out as sort of a backlash to the idea that focusing too much on appearance at the expense of athleticism and moving well was an issue. The stereotype of body builders being very big and slow and clunky gave way to things like CrossFit and circuit training taking center stage for a while. When people say “functional”, what they are saying is that the training will transfer to everyday life. A farmer carry, where you hold DBs and walk around (not a bad movement, used for grip strength most often) is “functional” because we need to carry things in everyday life whether it be luggage or groceries. My issue with this word is that how we determine what is functional or not tends to be very myopic in nature. For the most part, most of us will have much better success in our every day lives by simply getting stronger. How we decide to do that a lot of the time matters less than the doing itself. If we get a stronger back from lat pull downs, even though we aren’t typically pulling things down towards us every day, thats still a pretty functional attribute we’ve gained. A stronger back means help with posture, carrying things, and resisting injury. We are all victims of specificity, and our bodies will adapt to what we do. This is something to consider always whether trying to recover from an injury or prepare for something, but for the most part if we are getting stronger and building more muscle over time, our bodies will be more functional for whatever we decide to use it for.
HIIT: this stands for high intensity interval training. This means we are alternating between rest and working hard. Usually this is used in a cardio setting, and it can be time or distance based. An example here would be something like a “tabata” which is a specific type of HIIT where you do 20 seconds of work, 10 seconds of rest, for 8 rounds. This could be sprints, rowing, etc. This could also be a strength movement however like push ups or air squats. Distance based intervals are things like sprinting the straight away on a track and walking the curve. Anything where you are going hard, then resting, would be HIIT. If you aren’t trying to go hard, it would still be an interval, just not “high intensity.”
LISS: this stands for low intensity steady state cardio. This means you aren’t going hard, you're just maintaining the movement for a determined amount of time. So if you were to go on a light 30 min jog, that would be LISS.
Core: this has been bastardized more than probably any other word in the industry over the years. Usually this just means “abs” for most people when it’s used. A slightly better definition would be everything around the midsection, so not just abs but also your low back and obliques on the sides. In reality though nothing works in isolation. The hips, glutes, hamstrings, upper back, mid back, and even the feet can all have effects both good and bad on what the torso is doing. Most usually stumble into this word in relation to helping or preventing something from happening with the low back. “Brace your core” or “improve the core” usually just means that we need stability in the midsection, which is helpful for a lot of things.
Hypertrophy: building muscle! Most programs have this as a goal to some degree, though the effectiveness will vary from program to program. Much of muscle building is also very dependent on your nutrition, so a program being designed for “hypertrophy” is only part of the equation.
Bulking: intentional gaining of weight. In a perfect world this would be all muscle, but a little fat gain is usually inevitable. This is purely a dietary adjustment, we generally dont have “bulking” vs “cutting” training programs. Some adjustments are made in extreme cases but usually this is just an adjustment of the diet.
Cutting: this is the intentional removal of body fat. This is what most people are doing when you go on a diet of any kind. Just like bulking, this is a dietary adjustment, not a training adjustment fundamentally.
If you guys have any other words you’re unsure of leave a comment and ill address them!
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