- By Ridam Sharma
- Sat, 05 Jul 2025 07:01 PM (IST)
- Source:JND
Gym Lingo: Stepping into a gym for the first time can be intimidating, especially when you’re surrounded by unfamiliar words and phrases. Gym-goers often use a unique vocabulary that can leave beginners feeling lost. Understanding this gym lingo is crucial for following workout instructions, communicating with trainers, and making the most of your fitness journey. Here is a list of the 50 most common gym terms in simple, beginner-friendly language. Whether you’re lifting weights or joining a group class, keep this list handy to feel more confident and connected in any gym environment.
List Of 50 Common Gym Lingos For Beginners:
1. AMRAP stands for as many repetitions or rounds of a certain exercise as possible in a given time frame.
2. If someone tells you they are in beast mode, what they mean is they're giving it their all in a workout.
3. BCAAs stand for branched-chain amino acids, which individuals take in the form of supplements to help their muscles recover from exercising.
4. The bench press is an exercise where you lie on a bench and press a barbell up from your chest.
5. If you're bulking, your purpose is to eat more and do heavy lifting to build muscle mass.
6. A cheat meal is when you temporarily drop your diet to eat food that you normally don't eat.
7. Cutting is a period when you attempt to reduce body fat with as much muscle retention as possible.
8. Delts stand for deltoids, your shoulder muscles.
9. Dips are an exercise done with your body weight when you go down and up on parallel bars, primarily exercising triceps and chest.
10. DOMS is an abbreviation for delayed onset muscle soreness, that soreness you experience in your muscles one or two days after a strenuous exercise.
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11. A drop set is performing an exercise as much as you can, then lowering the weight and continuing without stopping.
12. An EZ bar is an arched barbell that is less stressful on your wrists with some exercises, such as curls.
13. Good form refers to performing an exercise with the proper technique to prevent injury and achieve the most effective results.
14. A front squat is a squat where the barbell is across the front of your shoulders rather than on your upper back.
15. Your glutes are the muscles in your buttocks, which play an important role in many lower-body movements.
16. HIIT is high-intensity interval training, which switches between brief spurts of hard effort and rest time.
17. An isolation exercise is a movement that involves working only one muscle group, such as a bicep curl.
18. Kipping is a swinging action utilised in certain variations of pull-ups to assist in getting your chin over the bar.
19. The lat pulldown is a machine exercise in which you pull a bar down toward your chest to target your upper back.
20. Lats is short for the latissimus dorsi muscles, which are the wide muscles on the sides of your back.
21. When others refer to macros, they're referring to the big three nutrients: protein, carbs, and fats.
22. Micros are micronutrients, such as vitamins and minerals, which your body requires in small quantities.
23. The military press is an overhead shoulder press, normally done standing.
24. A muscle-up is a difficult movement that involves a pull-up and a dip to get your body up over a bar.
25. A personal trainer is a fitness instructor who develops exercise routines and shows you how to perform exercises.
26. Pecs is an abbreviation for pectoralis, which are the chest muscles.
27. To hit a plateau is to have ceased gaining ground in your workout, though you're still working hard.
28. Plates are the circular weights that you place on barbells or machines.
29. The pump is the swollen, tightened sensation you experience in your muscles during or after a workout.
30. A push-pull-legs split is a system of structuring your workouts by breaking them into push, pull, and leg exercises.
31. Quads are the big muscles in the front of your thighs.
32. Range of motion is how far you take a joint through an exercise, from beginning to end.
33. Reps is an abbreviation for repetitions, or how many times you repeat a movement in succession.
34. Rest is the period you give yourself between sets or exercises when you take time to rest.
35. Sets are a series of repetitions done without resting.
36. To kill a workout is you do it with sheer effort and vigour.
37. To spot somebody is to assist them in lifting a weight safely, particularly in demanding exercises.
38. A squat is a fundamental leg exercise involving bending the knees and hips to descend into a lower position, then rising up.
39. A superset is doing two exercises consecutively without a break in between.
40. When someone claims to be swole, they're talking about how their muscles appear large and pumped.
41. A thruster is an exercise that pairs a front squat with an overhead press into one continuous movement.
42. Your traps are the trapezius muscles that rest between your neck and shoulders.
43. Time under tension is how long your muscles are actually under tension during a set.
44. WOD is an abbreviation for workout of the day, used frequently in CrossFit gyms.
45. A warm-up is a set of light exercises or stretches you perform before your main workout to get your body ready.
46. Weightlifting is the act or sport of weight lifting to increase strength and muscle.
47. A workout split is the way you structure your weekly training sessions, for example, targeting different muscle groups each day.
48. A deadlift is a compound movement in which you lift a barbell from the ground to your hips.
49. A chin-up is a variation of a pull-up in which palms are facing you on the bar.
50. A handstand push-up is an expert move in which you do a push-up while balancing on your hands in the handstand position.
This list covers all the essential vocabulary that you will need as a beginner in the gym. These terms are very often used in gyms and help you understand workouts, communicate better, and train smarter.