The gym
glossary.

One complete movement. Lower the weight, lift it back. That’s one rep.

A group of reps done back to back, then you rest. Ten squats, stop, breathe. That’s one set of ten.

Three sets of eight reps. Sets first, reps second. So 4×12 is four rounds of twelve, and 5×5 is five rounds of five.

If you see 3×8 to 10, it means three sets, and anywhere from eight to ten reps is the target. Pick a weight where you land in that window.

Warm-up sets are the lighter ones you do first to get the movement feeling right. They don’t count. Working sets are the hard ones the programme is actually asking for.

How long you wait between sets. Roughly 60 to 90 seconds for most things, 2 to 3 minutes for heavy compound lifts. Resting properly isn’t slacking. It’s what lets the next set be good.

How well you’re doing the movement. Good form means the right muscles are working and your joints aren’t taking the hit. Always worth more than more weight.

How far the joint travels during a rep. “Full range” means all the way down and all the way up. Half-repping a heavier weight builds less than full-repping a lighter one.

The single idea the whole gym runs on: to keep changing, you have to keep asking for slightly more than last time.

“More” can be more weight, more reps at the same weight, more sets, better range of motion, or the same work with less rest. If you do the exact same session with the exact same weight for six months, your body has no reason to change. It’s already handled it.

Write down what you lifted. That’s the whole system.

A 1 to 10 scale for how hard a set felt. RPE 10 is “I could not have done one more rep.” RPE 8 is “I had about two left in me.”

It’s how you train hard on a good day and sensibly on a bad one, without needing a percentage chart. Most of your sets should sit around RPE 7 to 9.

The same idea as RPE, counted the other way: how many reps you had left. 2 RIR means you could have done two more. RPE 8 and 2 RIR are the same thing.

Doing reps until you physically can’t do another one with good form. It works, but it’s expensive. It takes longer to recover from, so most sessions shouldn’t be full of it.

Leaving one or two reps in the tank on most sets, and going to failure occasionally on safer machine or isolation work, gets you nearly all the benefit for far less wreckage.

Personal record, or personal best. The most you’ve ever lifted for a given lift and rep count. Yours only competes with your own.

A deliberately easy week of lighter weights and fewer sets, taken every couple of months so your body can catch up. It feels like going backwards and it is the opposite.

Two exercises done back to back with no rest in between, then you rest. Usually two muscle groups that don’t compete, like a set of rows straight into a set of lunges.

It halves your time in the gym and raises your heart rate. Useful when you’re busy.

You go to near-failure, immediately drop the weight, and keep going. Brutal, effective, and best saved for the last exercise of a session.

Compound movements use several joints and lots of muscle at once: squats, deadlifts, rows, presses. They give you the most for your time and should be most of your session.

Isolation movements work one thing: bicep curls, lateral raises, hamstring curls. They’re the detail work you add on top.

How you divide your week. Common ones:

Upper / lower. Upper body one day, lower the next. Great for 4 days a week.
Push / pull / legs. Pushing muscles, pulling muscles, legs. Great for 3 or 6 days.
Full body. Everything, 2 to 3 times a week. Genuinely the best option when you’re starting.

How fast you move. The eccentric is the lowering half of a rep. Controlling it for 2 to 3 seconds instead of dropping the weight is one of the cheapest upgrades available to you.

EMOM. Every minute on the minute. Do the work, rest whatever’s left of the minute, go again.
AMRAP. As many rounds (or reps) as possible in a set time.
HIIT. Short bursts of very hard effort with short recoveries. Great for conditioning; not a replacement for lifting if you want to build muscle.

Muscle growth. That’s all it means. “Training for hypertrophy” usually means moderate weights, 6 to 15 reps, taken close to hard.

Delayed onset muscle soreness. The ache that shows up a day or two after a session, especially a new one.

Soreness is not a scoreboard. It tells you a movement was unfamiliar, not that the session was good. You can build plenty of muscle without ever being sore.

BMR is what your body burns doing absolutely nothing. TDEE (or maintenance) is that plus everything else you do in a day. Eat around maintenance and your weight stays put.

Work out yours here →

A deficit is eating under maintenance, so you lose weight. A surplus is eating over it, so you gain. “Cutting” and “bulking” are just gym words for those two.

Recomp is building muscle and losing fat at roughly the same time. It’s slower, and it’s very achievable if you’re new to lifting.

Short for macronutrients: protein, carbs and fat, the three things calories come from. Protein builds and protects muscle, carbs fuel hard sessions, fat runs your hormones. You need all three.

No. Building noticeable muscle takes years of deliberate effort and eating in a surplus, and women have a fraction of the testosterone that makes it fast. What lifting actually does over a year or two is change your shape, make you visibly stronger, and protect your bones.

The look most people are describing when they say “toned” is muscle. You have to build it first.