Strength training is the process of using resistance to increase muscle strength, endurance, and size. It improves functional abilities such as sports performance and daily activities like climbing stairs. This glossary lists both general terms used in this field and highly technical ones specific to each type of workout.
The “Ultimately Glossary of Strength Training Terms” is a glossary that provides definitions for the most common terms used in weight training. The glossary is broken up into categories, including: barbells and dumbbells, equipment, muscle groups, bodybuilding, physical fitness, exercise science, strength training workouts.
Strength training, like any other field, has its own lingo and “secret language” that members employ. The words that are tossed about at the gym and on strength websites might be confusing and daunting for the newbie who is just starting his trip towards the Sacred Mountain of Gains. Even after over two decades of weightlifting, I still come across terminology in books or online that make me scratch my head.
I thought it would be good to compile a one-stop-shop lexicon of strength and conditioning words to assist beginners and advanced lifters alike navigate this realm and its related language. I sought advice from my friend and online strength coach Matt Reynolds on which phrases to include and their explanations (I also consulted Mark Rippetoe’s Practical Programming). The list isn’t thorough, but it’s comprehensive enough for the typical person to understand what even the most skilled lifters are talking about. I hope you find it as beneficial in reading it as I did in putting it together.
Programming Terminology
When people talk about how to schedule exercises for their training, you’ll hear these terms and phrases.
“Repetition” is abbreviated as “rep.” In one set of an exercise, the number of times you raise and drop a weight. So, if you raise the barbell five times before racking it, you’ve completed “five reps.”
A set is a collection of repetitions. You’ll do 10 repetitions of the lift if the program asks for 3 sets of 10 reps (310). That completes one set. Rest. Complete the second set of ten repetitions. Rest. Complete the third set of ten reps.
“How weighty,” says the narrator. In relation to your one-rep max, how heavy is a weight? (the maximum amount of weight that you can lift for a given exercise). The more weight you lift, the more intense the lift will be. Intensity is not the same as mental effort.
“How much is it?” There are a number methods for calculating volume. The most frequent method is to count how many total repetitions and sets a session has. As a result, 5 sets of 10 repetitions would be a higher volume than 3 sets of 3.
Another technique to calculate volume is to multiply the total number of repetitions completed by the weight lifted. This will give you your total “tonnage.” So, if you squatted 250 pounds for 3 sets of 5, your tonnage volume would be 3,750 pounds (15 total reps x 250lbs).
“How frequently?” is a phrase used to describe the frequency of something. Frequency may refer to how many times a week a movement is done, how many times a week a muscle group is exercised, or how many times a week a program is completed. Some programs, for example, require you to exercise just three times a week, while others need you to exercise every day.
The length of time an exercise lasts. The duration of the exercise from start to finish.
“How much work can be done in a given amount of time.” The term “density” refers to the combination of volume and duration. A one-hour exercise with three distinct lifts and three sets of five, with cardiovascular conditioning at the conclusion, is more dense than an hour-long program with two different lifts, lots of rest between sets, and no conditioning at the end.
PR stands for Personal Record, and it refers to the greatest weight you’ve ever lifted on a certain lift.
1RM stands for “one rep maximum.” For a certain exercise, the greatest amount of weight you can lift. Putting weight on the bar until you can’t lift it more than once is the simplest technique to establish your 1RM. If you don’t want to do that, you may use one of the many online calculators that attempt to estimate your 1RM based on the weight you can lift for repetitions.
Doubles are two-rep sets.
Triples are three-rep sets.
The Borg Scale is also known as the Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE). RPE is a subjective evaluation of how difficult an exercise feels (decided by you, the lifter). The scale ranges from 0 to 10 points. Your sets of an exercise should be between RPE 6 and 10 for typical barbell training.
Failure: When your muscles are so tired after an activity that you can’t complete any more repetitions with proper technique. Workouts may sometimes instruct you to “complete a set till failure.” This means you simply do as many repetitions as you can on that set (with perfect technique). Usually, you go until failure on the final set of an exercise.
Failure may strike even when you aren’t looking for it. If a workout asks for five sets but you can only complete four, you’ve reached failure.
AMRAP: “As many repetitions as possible” is an abbreviation for “as many reps as possible.” “Go to failure” is a phrase that comes to mind. This word may also apply to “as many rounds as feasible” in CrossFit.
Reps completed beyond failure with the help of a spotter are known as forced reps. As an example, suppose you have a set of 5 bench press reps to complete and you fail at rep 3. When your spotter notices you’re having trouble, he’ll take the bar and elevate it just enough for you to do the following two repetitions before you rack. Those last two repetitions are forced. Forced repetitions may aid with short-term improvement, but most evidence suggests that for long-term growth, you’re better off avoiding them. Most high-level Olympic and powerlifters, in fact, avoid forced reps entirely.
Stress-Recovery-Adaptation Cycle: The stress-recovery-adaptation cycle is based on the notion presented in Hans Selye’s 1936 book “General Adaption Syndrome.” When the body is subjected to stress (or “alarm,” as Selye termed it), it begins a biological process to cope with it, recover from it, and then adapt and compensate so that it is better equipped to deal with it if it is exposed to the same stressors again.
This fundamental notion underpins all programming, progressions, and periodizations. To successfully employ the stress-recovery-adaptation cycle, lifters must use the notion of “progressive overload,” where we stress the body a little more each time. In other words, our training session is the stressor that causes homeostasis to be disrupted and tiredness to grow. We then spend the days following the stressful training session trying to recover through rest, proper nutrition, and so on, and our bodies adapt (getting bigger and stronger) and are ready to handle that stressor again, only to be given a heavier stressor the next time, and so on, repeating the stress-recovery-adaptation cycle.
Novice Lifter: This refers to how long it takes you to properly recover and adapt from exercise to workout, not how long you’ve been lifting. According to Mark Rippetoe, author of Starting Strength, a novice lifter is one who can completely recover and adapt from one session to the next in 24 to 72 hours. What does it mean to recover and adapt completely? It implies you may increase the weight in your next session without sacrificing the required amount of repetitions. If you’re a beginner lifter, every session is essentially a PR day.
As a result, being a novice lifter has nothing to do with how long you’ve been lifting; if you’ve been lifting weights haphazardly for ten years and then decided to lift more deliberately and began gradually adding weight to your workouts each week, you’d still be considered a novice, despite your decade of lifting experience. It takes a beginner lifter roughly six to nine months to cease noticing improvements at each exercise. When it occurs, he transforms into…
Intermediate Lifter: Rather of recuperating and adjusting after each exercise, this lifter does it on a weekly basis. To put it another way, new PRs are established every a week, if not once every three weeks. Your programming will vary when you go to an intermediate lifter to account for slower adaption.
Someone who is just getting started with weight training may be classified as an intermediate lifter rather than a rookie lifter, which is a fascinating distinction. These individuals are referred to as “situational intermediate lifters.” Because of their unique circumstances, they are intermediate lifters. Because the body’s capacity to adapt to physical stress slows as you become older, elderly starting lifters will likely be unable to properly recover and adapt after each exercise. Situational intermediate lifters are those who work in high-stress occupations or jobs that don’t enable them to get adequate sleep (such as police officers, firemen, and active duty military). Even if they are just getting started with lifting, these individuals will show improvements from week to week rather than exercise to workout.
Advanced Lifter: This lifter adjusts and recovers on a monthly basis. (New PRs are normally completed every 1-3 months).
To elicit the stress-recovery-adaptation response, just one variable (typically intensity or weight) is steadily raised every session. This is usually accomplished by increasing the weight of each lift in each exercise. For inexperienced lifters, linear progression is the greatest option. Starting Strength is a beginner lifter’s linear progression program.
Periodization: When you can’t progress from one session to the next (you’ve reached intermediate status), you’ll need to start periodizing your workouts. Periodization entails varying the amount, intensity, and/or frequency of the workout, as well as “loading” and “deloading.”
Loading: A period of training time (typically 1-3 weeks) during a periodization program of increasing intensity, volume, or frequency during which the body is not allowed to completely recuperate and fatigue progressively builds up in the system. This is done so that the body is sufficiently stressed to elicit an adaptation response and, as a result, become stronger.
Deloading (or Unloading): During a periodization program, a predetermined period of training time (typically 1-2 weeks) during which intensity, volume, or frequency is lowered to allow for the dissipation of accumulated fatigue. This is done to ensure appropriate healing and the stress-recovery-adaptation cycle to take place.
Over-Reaching: Over-reaching happens when a stressor is so intense that it cannot be completely healed before the following session, resulting in weariness. For example, let’s say you go for 225 pounds for three sets of five when you should have gone for 215 pounds. This isn’t always a negative thing as long as the body is allowed time to recuperate and adjust.
Overtraining happens when over-reaching stressors occur with such frequency or severity that the body is unable to recoup and adapt in order to properly prepare for the next stressor. The stress-recovery-adaptation cycle is disrupted.
Marathon runners who do not allow themselves adequate time to recuperate between training sessions and races are at risk of overtraining. It also occurs among CrossFitters who exercise with such high intensity that they are constantly sore and injured, or worse, develop rhabdomyolysis, a condition in which muscle fibers die and their contents are discharged into the bloodstream and filtered by the kidneys. The body can and will ultimately heal from these traumatic experiences with enough time and rest, but it will not adapt to a better version of itself, as it should in the normal stress-recovery-adaptation cycle.
Western Periodization: The most popular form of programming for intermediate and early-advanced strength athletes is Western periodization, in which the programming progresses from higher volume and lower intensity (12-16 weeks out from a competition) to high intensity and lower volume as the competition approaches.
Multiple physical abilities are taught and developed, or at the very least maintained, at the same time with concurrent periodization. Strength training alone causes a rookie lifter to improve in all physical skills, therefore this is best for intermediate lifters.
This is how CrossFit programming is done (jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none). Westside Powerlifting has long employed a variation of this periodization to attempt to make its competitive powerlifters larger, stronger, more explosive, and even more conditioned all at once. Because his lifters attempted to enhance all elements of lifting in a single training cycle, Louie Simmons (the pioneer of contemporary powerlifting) referred to it as “conjugate” programming. However, it is much closer to concurrent periodization.
(Advanced Programming/Periodization) Conjugate/Block Periodization: Specific training blocks (typically 2-6 weeks) are planned to concentrate on one physical talent or trait while attempting to retain the others. Advanced lifters and athletes (powerlifters, Olympic weightlifters, college throwers, etc.) should use this. When preparing for a competition, conjugate programming will almost always use a variety of lifts or athletic movements to allow for general adaptations, and then as the competition approaches, the exercise selection will be drastically reduced to only the competitive movements to allow for specific adaptations. In the 1960s and 1980s, this was the Soviet Union’s principal training method (when they were killing the rest of the world in international sport).
(Extremely Advanced Programming/Periodization) Bulgarian Method/Specificity Training To adapt and develop stronger, just the competitive motions and one or two extra workouts are utilized. This periodization approach is called after the Bulgarians since it is the major method of training that they have employed to dominate the sport of Olympic weightlifting for over fifty years. Bulgarians exercise very hard (high intensity) all of the time, with a high frequency (typically 2-4 training sessions per day), a minimal volume each session, and only the snatch, clean-and-jerk, front squat, and back squat.
Performing back-to-back-to-back exercises (typically 2-4 distinct exercises) with no break in between is known as circuit training.
Because you perceive the body as a system rather than a collection of isolated components, you may train the complete body in one session. In the Starting Strength program, for example, a lifter will do three sessions each week in which they will squat, press (or bench press), and pull (deadlift or power clean, and generally chin-ups). Every exercise targets both the upper and lower body. CrossFit also include full-body workouts.
Split Training: Instead of executing lifts that train the complete body in one exercise, you’ll concentrate on one significant region or movement with split training. Two lower body days per week focusing on squats and deadlifts (and cleans) and two upper body days focusing on presses (press, bench press, dips) and upper body pulls are the most typical split for strength/performance athletes (pull-ups, chin-ups, curls, etc.)
Body Part Training: Bodybuilders who are more concerned with appearance than with performance would break the body down into distinct sections and train one or two of them separately from the rest of the body in a body part split program. You could work out five days a week with these routines: Leg Day is Monday; Back Day is Tuesday; Shoulder Day is Wednesday; Chest Day is Thursday; Tricep and Bicep Day is Friday.
Physical Abilities
You may train for a broad range of physical talents while you exercise.
Fitness was originally described as the capacity to be completely prepared for the precise activities that needed to be completed. As a result, the fitness required for a baseball player differs from that required for a distance runner. CrossFit has re-defined fitness in today’s society as the capacity to accomplish the “10 general physical abilities,” which they describe as “cardiorespiratory endurance, stamina, strength, flexibility, power, speed, coordination, agility, balance, and accuracy.” Of course, not everyone thinks that these are the top ten physical talents, nor that they are all created equal.
Strength is the force generated in the face of external opposition. The external resistance while lifting a barbell is the barbell itself. The more force you can generate, the more powerful you become. Strength improves all other physical characteristics.
Power is strength that is expressed fast. It refers to the capacity to quickly contract a large number of muscle units. Standing vertical leap, power clean, running, and punching are all examples of power in action.
Speed is defined as the capacity to reduce the time cycle of a repeating movement to the shortest possible duration. This might refer to your running pace or how quickly you can repeat a task like a barbell movement or jumping rope.
Agility is the ability to swiftly shift one’s bodily posture or direction.
Muscular Endurance: The capacity of a muscle or set of muscles to endure repeated contractions against a resistance for a prolonged length of time is known as muscular endurance. Muscle endurance is shown by long-distance and high-rep calisthenics (push-ups, pull-ups).
Cardiovascular endurance (also known as respiratory/oxygenation efficiency) refers to your body’s capacity to collect, process, and distribute oxygen.
Glycolytic Efficiency: Your body’s capacity to convert glucose into the energy required for muscular contraction during high-intensity exercise, as well as its ability to rid itself of lactate/hydrogen effectively (the primary waste product of glycolosis).
Flexibility is traditionally described as the ability to move a joint across its full range of motion. The “ability of the muscles that restrict motion around a joint to stretch beyond their resting length,” according to Rippetoe, is a more practical term.
Two conceivable training goals: performance vs. attractiveness. The goal of performance-based training is to improve a particular fitness domain, such as strength, power, speed, or agility. How “shredded,” “ripped,” or “jacked” you seem gets little or no attention. Aesthetic training focuses on molding the body to make you look nice rather than on improving your strength, speed, or power.
Kinesiology and Biomechanics
When reading workout descriptions, you’ll notice that authors often utilize biomechanical and kinesiological words to describe how the activity is performed. The most often used terms and phrases in the fitness literature are included in this section.
Concentric Contraction: A muscular contraction that causes it to shorten. A concentric contraction occurs when you curl a dumbbell up towards your body. Eccentric contractions induce more pain and irritation than concentrated contractions.
Eccentric (Negative) Contraction: When a muscle is loaded, it lengthens. It’s the contraction that happens during a movement’s “negative” or lowering phase. An eccentric contraction of the chest muscles occurs as you drop the bar to your chest on the bench press, for example. Because more muscle damage happens during this section of the exercise (which isn’t always a negative thing), eccentric contractions often induce greater discomfort and inflammation than concentric contractions.
Isometric Contraction: When a muscle contracts without moving, it is said to be isometric. During a squat or deadlift, your back, spinal erector muscles, and abdominals, for example, perform this. They’re in isometric contraction, but they’re not the muscles responsible for the barbell’s primary movement. This is how your whole “core” functions. Its role is to stabilize the whole trunk by isometric contraction so that no energy is wasted between the load and the base of support (the floor) (the barbell). Bodybuilders, for example, “flex” their muscles to drive blood into them without actually moving the joints where the muscles cross.
Exercises or motions that include more than one joint and muscle group are known as compound movements. Compound activities include squats, deadlifts, bench presses, shoulder presses, power cleans, and pull-ups. Compound movements have numerous advantages: they provide the most bang for your buck for the time spent on them, they work the body as a whole rather than piece by piece, they trigger a major hormonal response that causes your body to naturally produce more testosterone and growth hormone, and they get you bigger and stronger faster than anything else.
Exercises or motions that use just one joint and a small number of muscle groups are known as isolation movements. Bicep curls, leg curls, hamstring curls, and tricep extensions are among examples. Isolation exercises provide virtually purely cosmetic advantages, since they promote greater sarcoplasmic hypertrophy (muscle storage development) than heavier compound actions, resulting in larger-looking but not necessarily stronger muscles.
Supplemental Exercise: A supplemental exercise is a compound exercise that is done immediately after the primary exercise to support, boost, and improve the main exercise. If you’re doing bench press as your primary activity, for example, you may do heavy dumbbell bench presses as a supplementary exercise.
Accessory/Auxiliary Exercises: Accessory exercises are done after the primary and supplementary exercises for enhanced work capacity, antagonist muscle training (training the opposing muscle groups), hypertrophy, prehab, rehab, and support of the major lifts. Auxiliary activities for a barbell strength training regimen include pull-ups, bicep curls, and ab work.
Plyometrics are a form of workout in which a fast eccentric contraction is followed by an explosive concentric contraction. It’s used to boost power and speed. Jumping motions are the most frequent plyometric workouts. Normally, you would leap down from a box and then quickly jump back on top of it. Plyometrics must be done with caution since they place a lot of stress on the joints and tendons. Explosive push-ups and varied medicine ball tosses are other plyometric alternatives.
The midline is a kinesiology phrase that refers to an imaginary line that runs along the center of the body, dividing its right and left sides.
Flexion and extension are movements that change the angle between two bodily components. Flexion motions reduce the angle between a segment’s proximal segment and the rest of the body. Because the angle between your forearm and bicep reduces as you bend your elbow towards you in a bicep curl, it’s a flexion activity. Because the angle between your thigh and calf reduces as you squat down, it’s a flexion action.
The angle between a segment and its proximal segment is increased by extension motions. In a tricep pushdown, extension means straightening your elbow. Hip and knee extension are used to get out of a squat. In a deadlift, hip and knee extension are also used to straighten up.
Supination/Pronation is the rotation of the foot or forearm such that the sole or palm faces forward (supination) or backward (pronation) (pronation). When your hands are facing out from your body, you’re supine; when they’re facing in, you’re pronated. Pronation is the “overhanded” grip used in deadlifts and pull-ups. Supination is the “underhanded” grip.
Abduction and adduction are actions that move a structure away from or towards the body’s center.
When a bodily portion travels away from the body’s midline, it is called abduction. Abduction of the shoulder occurs when you elevate your arms to the point where your hands are level with your shoulders (as in lateral raises). Abduction is when you squat with your knees pushed out (the outside muscles of your butt are the primary abductors).
When bodily components migrate towards the midline of the body, this is referred to as adduction. Adduction of the shoulder occurs when you drop your arms to your sides. When you rise up after a squat, your adductors (the muscles on the inner of your thigh) are working.
Internal/External Rotation (Medial/ Lateral): Internal rotation occurs when an appendage is rotated towards the body’s midline. External rotation is movement away from the body’s midline.
Stretch Reflex: When a muscle is abruptly extended under stress (eccentric phase), a rebound reaction occurs, similar to a rubber band being stretched fast. This is why it’s more difficult to pull a deadlift off the ground and reset each rep than it is to touch-and-go each rep after the first. Starting a bench press or squat from the bottom rather than the top would be considerably more difficult.
Physiology
If you want to know what’s going on in your body as you become stronger, you’ll need a basic grasp of physiology and how muscles grow in size and strength.
Motor Neuron: Nerve cell that provides contraction impulses to muscle fibers. The number and kind of muscle fibers to which motor neurons are connected determine their size. Just a few muscle fibers or thousands might be signaled to contract by a single motor neuron.
Muscle Fibers are long, cylindrical cells that make up muscles. The striped or striated appearance of skeletal muscle is due to muscular fibers.
Type I fibers are also known as slow twitch fibers. Muscular fiber that produces energy/ATP (more on that later) via the use of oxygen and fatty acids to power muscle contraction. The oxygen-dependent mechanism that slow twitch fibers employ to make ATP takes substantially longer than the process used by quick twitch fibers. Slow twitch fibers are smaller than quick twitch fibers, create less force, and have less potential for growth. Slow twitch fibers, on the other hand, are very fatigue resistant. They help you stand up straight, sit up straight, and stroll. Slow twitch fibers are used more in exercises that demand muscular endurance, such as long-distance running.
Fast Twitch Fibers: Also known as Type IIA or Type IIB, Type IIB is the emphasis when it comes to strength training. Glycolysis — or the breakdown of glycogen — is a kind of muscle fiber that uses glycolysis to generate the ATP needed to drive muscular contraction. Fast twitch fibers earn their moniker because glycolysis generates ATP considerably faster than slow twitch fibers’ oxygen-dependent mechanism. Fast twitch fibers are substantially bigger than slow twitch fibers, can produce much more force, and have greater potential for growth. Fast twitch fibers, on the other hand, tire considerably faster than slow twitch fibers.
When you lift big weights or run, you employ rapid twitch fibers. Strength exercise increases the size of fast twitch fibers in your body as well as the quantity of fast twitch fibers in your body, making you stronger.
Either all or none Muscle Principle: Muscle fibers either contract completely or do not contract at all. As a result, if you lift a weight that is 50% of your maximum, 50% of the possible muscle fibers that may be utilized to lift that weight contract at 100%, while the remainder do not contract at all. It’s impossible for 100% of your muscle fibers to contract at 50% of their maximum power. When a result, in order to engage ALL of the possible muscle fibers in lifting a weight, you must either lift 100% of your maximum or complete more repetitions, such that as muscle fibers exhaust, new fresh muscle fibers are called upon to “take up the slack.” Adenosine triphospate (ATP) is a short form of adenosine (3 phosphates). It is, in essence, the scientific term for the body’s energy. It’s an enzyme that transports energy throughout the body’s cellular activities. Because ATP is necessary for muscular contraction, it is a crucial chemical in terms of strength. More ATP and improved ATP processing equals increased strength.
There are three methods to make ATP:
- Creatine phosphate recycles previously stored ATP (nerd alert: throughout the energy consumption process, ATP loses one of its phosphates and becomes adenosine diphosphate). Creatine phosphate then comes along and says, “Hey, ADP, you can have my phosphate,” converting it back into ATP and allowing it to be used as energy once again. (Another reason creatine phosphate is amazing)
- Glucose metabolism that is not oxygen-dependent (glycolysis)
- Fatty acids are used in oxygen-dependent metabolism (oxidization).
During aerobic respiration, muscle cells always use fatty acid oxidation to make ATP (we never stop breathing). When huge quantities of energy are required, such as when doing a hard set of squats, your muscle cells consume any stored ATP. The body recycles spent ATP using creatine phosphate to refill stockpiles. Muscle cells begin to employ glycolysis (or the burning of glycogen/carbs) to replace ATP reserves if the activity lasts longer than 10-12 seconds (such as when lifting for repetitions or running). Glycolysis generates a lot of ATP, but the accumulation of hydrogen ions and lactate makes it unsustainable over time. This is why high-intensity exercise can only last a few minutes until the intensity drops and the oxidative (aerobic) system takes over as the primary source of ATP.
Strength training increases the amount of enzymes required for ATP synthesis as well as the capacity of muscle cells to store additional ATP.
Creatine Phosphate is a molecule that aids in the recycling of ATP that has been utilized. Muscle cells may create ATP more quickly when there is more creatine in the circulation. Although you may receive creatine from your food, supplementing with a creatine powder is significantly more effective and inexpensive.
The chemical and metabolic processes inside cells that do not depend on oxygen to produce ATP are known as the anaerobic energy system. Anaerobic energy systems include the recycling of stored ATP through creatine and glycolysis. Anaerobic energy systems are predominantly used by fast twitch muscle fibers.
The chemical and metabolic mechanisms inside cells that depend on oxygen to produce ATP are referred to as the aerobic energy system. The aerobic energy system relies on the presence of oxygen and generates ATP from fatty acids and glycolysis products. ATP is produced at a significantly slower pace in aerobic energy systems than in anaerobic energy systems. Slow-twitch muscle fibers depend on aerobic energy sources largely.
Lactate is a glycolysis product. Through a process known as the Krebs cycle, aerobic energy systems may utilise it to make additional ATP.
Oxidation is the process in which you breathe in oxygen and that oxygen then “oxidizes” (or interacts with) fatty acids to produce energy. This is the same process that occurs when you chop an avocado in half and leave it on the counter (avocados contain mostly fat). The oxidation process causes it to become brown. The cardio-respiratory system in our bodies does exactly the same thing.
When muscle cells employ aerobic energy systems, fatty acids are used to make ATP. Muscle cells must have access to oxygen in order to convert fatty acids into ATP.
The metabolic mechanism that transforms glucose to ATP/energy is known as glycolosis.
Glycogen is glucose that has been stored in your muscles. During glycolysis, it’s used to make ATP/energy.
Hypertrophy is a term used to describe an increase in muscle growth.
Muscle atrophy refers to a reduction in muscle size.
Anabolism is the metabolic process that leads to the development of molecules. Muscle mass rises when your body is in an anabolic condition, which is the case with strength exercise. Anabolism is aided by hormones such as testosterone, insulin, and human growth hormone. Strength exercise, a healthy diet, and enough rest all contribute to the beneficial hormonal adaption required for your body to be anabolic.
Catabolism is the metabolic process that leads to the breakdown of molecules. In the case of strength training, muscle mass declines when the body is in a prolonged catabolic condition. Catabolism is aided by hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. Catabolism isn’t always a terrible thing. Anabolism, in reality, necessitates catabolism. Catabolism becomes a concern only when it becomes chronic as a result of excessive stress.
DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) is muscular discomfort caused by inflammation that occurs 1-2 days after an unfamiliar workout. Also known as “myositis.”
The “weightlifting competition terms” is a glossary of strength training terms that is used in weightlifting competitions. This glossary includes the most common and important terms used in the sport.
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