Emily Skye

Workout vocab: all the fitness words you need to know

Butt wink? No, it’s not a new flirting method, it’s what my backside is doing on the left.

Butt wink

If you do squats, your butt may be winking! This is a flaw in form where, at the bottom of a squat, rather than pointing out at a straight angle, your butt is tucking in towards the back of your legs. Find out if you’re a butt winker and how to fix it.

DOMS

Delayed onset muscle soreness, or DOMS, a feeling of stiff and tender muscles that usually sets in the day after a workout. The good news is it means the workouts are doing their job! Find out how to tell the ‘good’ pain of DOMS from the bad pain of an injury.

Engage, activate, switch on

You’ll hear me say this a lot: “Activate your core!” “Switch on your glutes!” But what does it mean? Think about your stomach and how it feels just hanging relaxed versus how it feels when you suck it in – that is the feeling of engaged muscles. And when muscles are engaged, they’ll better support your movement and you’ll get better results. Take a look at how to activate key muscles.

HIIT

This stands for high-intensity interval training. In a HIIT workout, you alternate bursts of high-intensity exercise (the work phase) with shorter periods of rest or recovery (the rest phase). For example, you may give it your all doing 40 seconds of star jumps, then rest or walk on the spot for 20 seconds. HIIT workouts – or circuits as you might hear them called – are fast, effective and great fat-burners.

HILIT

High-intensity low-impact training is the same style of training as HIIT, but without movements that may be hard on your joints. This is the type of training you’ll experience if you’re doing my FIT Foundations program. For instance, a HILIT workout wouldn’t include explosive box jumps or squat jumps. This means if you have bad knees or are returning from an injury, you don’t have to sit it out.

HIRT

Stands for high-intensity resistance training. HIRT involves short bursts of exercise and rest just like HIIT, but adds resistance into the mix to build strength. This may involve equipment like weights or resistance bands.

Modified star jumps (the kind you’ll find in FIT Foundations) are just one example of a HILIT exercise.

Lateral

Lateral movement is a sideways movement. For example in a lateral lunge, you lunge to the side instead of forward.

NSV

Stands for “non-scale victory”. We can all get caught up on the number on the bathroom scales, but your progress may actually be better measured by feeling more comfortable in your clothes, completing a full workout for the first time, or realising you no longer get puffed walking up the stairs! What you consider an NSV is up to you and your goals.

Planner

Your FIT planner lays everything out for you each day: your workouts, meals and all the tools you need for success. You can follow your planner workouts each day, or take on a program.

Program

As a FIT member, there’s more than one way to get it done! My short-term programs (which last 4–6 weeks) are designed to help you achieve specific body goals and master different styles of training. You’ll find all the programs in the Programs section – including FIT Foundations (which is entirely in ‘At Home’ style), The Booty Challenge, FIT Pregnancy and plenty more.

Recovery

This is time taken away from training to give your body time to rest, repair and get stronger.

Psst… stretching is a type of active recovery!

Rep

Short for repetitions, as in how many times you repeat a move. For instance, a bicep curl is an exercise where you raise a dumbbell to your shoulder, then lower it back down again – this up and back motion is 1 rep.

Round

Rounds are groupings of exercises that make up your entire workout. A round is usually made up of several different exercises, each performed for a certain number of reps and sets.

Set

Sets in a workout tell you how many times to do a collection of reps. Let’s say you’re doing bicep curls and the workout calls for “3 sets of 8 reps”: you’ll do 8 curls (then rest) three times before moving onto the next set.

Working with weights? Yep, you’re strength training!

Strength training

Also known as resistance training, strength training involves using equipment or bodyweight to build muscle, strength and endurance. Common strength training equipment includes dumbbells, kettlebells and resistance bands.

Superset

Ooh, now you’re sweating! Remember up in “Set” when I said you could rest between each collection of reps? In a superset, you do one set of an exercise then immediately switch to do another exercise – with no rest in between.

BONUS ROUND: I’m working WHAT muscle?!

Ready to work your delts? Well, you would be if you knew what delts were! Without going full biology class, here are the essentials you may see in your workout targets:

• Glutes: your booty – made up of three muscles, all of which help drive power and stability throughout the rest of your body.
• Hamstrings: the rear of your upper legs – again, this area is made up of three muscles between your hip and your knee.
• Quadriceps (or quads): your thighs – no surprises that your quads are made up of four individual muscles, and are one of the most powerful parts of your body!
• Calves: the rear of your lower legs – between your knee and your ankle.
• Lats: the largest muscles in your back, your lats are on either side of your spine just below your shoulders. They play a big part in any pushing or pulling motion.
• Deltoids (or delts): The muscles across the top of your shoulders.
• Triceps: the rear of your upper arms.
• Biceps: the front of your upper arms – you know, the one you flex to show how strong you are!
• Abs & core: the muscles in your torso – your core is made up of around 20 muscles, all of which provide stability to the rest of your body. Your abs are part of that group! They’re the ones we notice when we see someone with a six-pack.
• Posterior chain: the powerful muscles at the back of your body, including calves, hamstrings, glutes and lats.

Now that you’ve got the language down, you’re ready to smash it! (That’s when you do a workout really well.)