Training glossary

By the Coresa Training coaching team·Last reviewed 25 August 2026

Coaching has a vocabulary, and pretending otherwise just moves the confusion into the session. This page defines every term you might hear on our floor or read in this library, in a sentence or two each. Where a term deserves a fuller explanation, its name links to a dedicated page.

Nothing here requires memorizing. Coaches translate as they go; this glossary exists for the members who like to know why a word was chosen, and for anyone reading the library who hits a term mid-sentence.

The terms

Adherence

The unglamorous variable that decides results: whether you keep showing up. Every format argument bows to it.

Aerobic base

The foundation of easy-effort fitness that hard intervals are built on top of. Built slowly, mostly in zone 2.

AMRAP

As many reps (or rounds) as possible in a set time. Useful for testing; risky as a default, because form decays with the clock.

Anabolic resistance

The way older muscle responds less to the same training and protein signal — real, modest, and beatable with a louder signal.

Bilateral

Both limbs working together — the barbell lifts. Where the biggest loads live.

Bracing

Creating pressure and stiffness through the trunk before load arrives — breathe in, tighten as if about to be nudged, keep breathing.

Compound movement

A multi-joint lift — squats, rows, presses — that trains several muscles at once. The backbone of every session here.

Concentric

The lifting phase of a movement, where muscle shortens — standing up out of a squat, pressing the bar away.

Concurrent training

Training strength and endurance in the same program — which is most people's reality, and works fine at normal volumes.

Cool-down

The few minutes of easing off at the end of a session. Modest physiology, excellent transition.

Deload

A deliberately easy week that lets accumulated fatigue drain so the previous weeks' work can show up as fitness.

Density

Work done per unit of time. Circuits raise it; rest lowers it; neither is virtuous by itself.

Detraining

The gradual loss of adaptations when training stops. Slower than feared: strength holds for weeks, not days.

DOMS

Delayed onset muscle soreness: the ache that peaks a day or two after unaccustomed work. Covered fully in the answers library.

Eccentric

The lowering phase of a movement, where muscle lengthens under load. Where soreness comes from, and where descent strength is built.

EMOM

Every minute on the minute: start a fixed piece of work each minute and rest with whatever remains.

EPOC

The afterburn effect — extra energy spent after hard exercise while the body puts itself back in order. Real, and smaller than advertised.

Finisher

A short, hard block at the end of a session — conditioning or high-rep work that empties what is left.

Frequency

How often you train a movement, a muscle, or at all. Two a week builds; three to four is the sweet spot for most.

GPP

General physical preparedness: the broad base of strength, engine and movement quality that every specific goal is built on.

Heart-rate recovery

How fast your pulse falls after effort. Fitness shows up here before it shows up anywhere else.

Heart-rate zones

Effort bands tied to training purposes, from recovery-easy to near-maximal. Explained fully in the answers library.

Hypertrophy

Muscle growth. Driven by hard sets near your limit, enough weekly volume, and a reason to keep adapting.

Intensity

In strength talk: how heavy relative to your max. In conditioning talk: how hard relative to your ceiling. Context decides.

Interval

A repeated cycle of hard work and planned recovery. The recovery is part of the training, not a pause from it.

Isolation movement

A single-joint lift — curls, raises — used to support the compounds, not replace them.

Isometric

Producing force without moving: planks, holds, a pause at the bottom of a squat.

Lactate threshold

The effort line beyond which the burn accumulates faster than your body clears it. Tempo work lives just beneath it.

Maintenance dose

The surprisingly small amount of training that holds fitness through a busy season — far less than building it took.

Mobility

Range of motion you can control with your own muscles. Different from flexibility, which is passive range.

Movement pattern

One of the basic shapes human movement reduces to: squat, hinge, push, pull, carry. The exercise library is organized by them.

NEAT

Non-exercise activity thermogenesis: all the movement that is not a workout. Often a bigger daily burn than the workout.

Neutral spine

A back held near its natural curves rather than deeply rounded or arched. A range, not a razor's edge.

One-rep max (1RM)

The heaviest single rep you could perform. Estimated from lighter sets here, almost never tested directly.

Overreaching

Short-term overshoot of training beyond recovery — fixed by an easy week, and sometimes used deliberately.

Overtraining

The deep, months-long hole past chronic overreaching. Rare in recreational training, and worth respecting anyway.

Periodization

Planning training in phases so hard work and recovery arrive on purpose instead of by accident.

Power

Force times speed. The quality that fades first with age, and the reason jumps and throws stay in programs for adults.

Progression

The harder version a movement grows into once the current one finishes strong.

Progressive overload

Gradually asking your body for slightly more than it is adapted to. The engine under every program that works — the full page lives in the answers library.

Ramp set

A lighter set on the way up to working weight, rehearsing the movement while waking the tissue.

Regression

The easier version of a movement — a rung down the ladder, not an insult.

Relative strength

Strength per kilogram of you. What hills, chin-ups and mountain sports actually care about.

Reps in reserve (RIR)

How many more reps you could have done when the set ended. 'Two in reserve' is the most common prescription on this floor.

Resting heart rate

Your pulse at complete rest — one of the cheapest fitness tests there is, trending down as your engine grows.

RPE

Rate of perceived exertion: a 1–10 scale for how hard a set felt. Coaches use it to set loads without testing maxes.

Scaling

Adjusting a movement's load, range, tempo or variation to the person doing it. In a coached room, everyone is scaled.

Stability

The ability to keep a joint or the trunk where you put it while forces argue otherwise.

Steady state

Continuous cardio at one sustainable effort, from strolls to tempo runs, depending on the zone.

Superset

Two exercises performed back to back before resting, usually pairing movements that do not compete.

Tempo

Prescribed speeds for each phase of a rep, written like 3-1-1-0: three seconds down, one pause, one up, no pause.

Time under tension

How long a muscle works during a set. Matters less than effort, but tempo work uses it deliberately.

Training age

How long you have trained consistently — a better predictor of what you need than your birthday.

Training block

A run of weeks in which the same movements repeat so their loads can climb, before the program changes shape.

Unilateral

One-limb-at-a-time work — split squats, single-arm rows. Where imbalances show and get fixed.

VO2 max

The most oxygen your body can use per minute — the ceiling of your engine, and one of the better-studied predictors of healthy aging.

Volume

The total amount of hard work, usually counted as challenging sets per muscle or pattern per week.

Work capacity

How much training you can do and recover from. Raising it is often the first, invisible phase of getting fitter.

Work-to-rest ratio

The shape of an interval, like 1:2 — thirty seconds on, sixty off. Shorter rests make the same work harder.

Working set

A set done at the prescribed effort, as opposed to the warm-up ramp that leads to it.

Zone 2

Conversational-effort cardio — the pace you could hold while speaking in full sentences. The base most engines are missing.

Common questions