Weight-Training Jargon

Weight training certainly has its fair share of confusing jargon. You don’t need to be fluent in the language spoken at bodybuilding competitions and physiology conferences, but to design an effective workout, you need to know the basics to better understand your coach or training materials.
In the following list, the main strength training terms and training principles are outlined:
>>> Endurance: Muscular endurance refers to the number of times you can lift a weight below your maximum during a period of time. Muscular strength and endurance are related, but not the same. Muscular endurance is useful for everyday tasks such as carrying a heavy box from your house to the car.
Don’t confuse muscular endurance with cardiovascular endurance, which is the endurance of the heart and lungs. Muscular endurance affects only the muscle in question and lasts only a minute or two; You improve the staying power of a single muscle rather than the endurance of your entire body.
>>> Failure: To achieve the overload, you have to take your muscles to failure – a level of fatigue where you can’t do one more repetitions well. For example, when you can’t complete the full range of motion, it’s time to finish your set.
>>> Overload: To increase your strength or endurance, you need to train by pushing your muscles to do more than they used to. You can overload your muscles by lifting a heavy load of weight, doing a lot of repetitions and sets, or increasing the number of times a week you train.
>>> Progress: Loading your muscles by lifting weights to muscle failure stimulates your muscles to get stronger. This is the principle of privacy at work. To continue to tire your muscles and keep moving forward, you need to find new ways to challenge your muscles.
That’s why you need to change your program or routine. In general, wait six to eight weeks to see visible results from your training when you are new to weightlifting. Internal changes begin to occur immediately in response to the first training session.
>>> Range of motion and speed of motion: Perform most of your exercises with the widest possible range of motion of the working joints to stimulate the muscles more effectively. Movement speed should be slow and controlled.
Anyone lifting weights for general fitness should do four second repetitions – two seconds to lift the weight and stop the movement and two seconds to lower it. Pause for a moment in the middle of a rep to avoid using your momentum, rather than your muscles, to power you up. Don’t stop for more than a split second at the end of the repetition – otherwise it will become a rest. Each rep should flow smoothly into the next.
Athletes and those who lift for extreme strength or high volume can do slower or faster workouts depending on their goals.
>>> Recovery or Rest Period: When your muscles reach failure at the end of a set, you need to recover or rest before you can challenge those muscles to work again. This is also referred to as the rest period. Likewise, after you work out a muscle group in the exercise, you need to allow it to recover for at least 48 hours before training it again.
>>> Repetition: This term, often shortened to rep, refers to a single width of an exercise. For example, pressing two dumbbells above your head and then lowering them back to your shoulders form one complete repetition of the shoulder press with dumbbells.

>>> Routine: This term includes almost every aspect of what you do in one weightlifting session, including the type of equipment you use; the number of exercises, sets and repetitions you perform; The order in which you do your exercises; and how much rest you take between sets.
By changing the elements of your routine – for example, reducing the number of repetitions or adding new exercises – you can significantly change the results you get from weight training due to the principle of specificity. Your routine (also referred to as your program or exercise) can change from one exercise session to the next, or it can stay the same over the course of weeks or months.
>>> Sets: A set is a set of successive repetitions that you perform without rest. When you do 12 repetitions of dumbbell shoulder presses and then lower the weights, you have completed one set. If I rested for a minute and then did 12 repetitions, I did 2 sets.
>>> Specific: Your muscles develop precisely in response to how you train them. For example, if you want to strengthen your hips and legs, you should do a squat, not a pushup. Likewise, if you want to become a better runner, you eventually need to practice running. Weight training exercises can complement your running program, but they cannot replace the hours you need on the track.
>>> Strength: Muscular strength is the maximum amount of weight you can lift in one time – also called the single rep max. For example, if you can only press one shoulder with a 45-pound weight, that’s the maximum one rep for this exercise.