Welcome back to the Learn English Podcast, the podcast teaching English in context so you can learn naturally.
It is the month of May if you're listening to this episode when it comes out, and that means that summer is about to begin.
At least here in the northern hemisphere, the weather is getting warmer, the days are getting longer, and it is almost summertime.
During this time of year, at least here in the United States, there are a lot of advertisements for health and fitness and to help people improve their fitness before summertime.
Because of that, on today's episode, I want to talk about exercise and fitness vocabulary.
I'm going to talk about different words and sayings, what they mean, vocabulary that's specific to exercise, and idioms that we use so that you could better understand a native speaker when they are speaking to you.
If you want to improve your vocabulary and your listening comprehension, follow along with us because we're about to begin.
Before we start, I want to remind you to check out the link in the description of this podcast and of our previous podcast episodes.
In the description, you will find a list of the words and phrases that I use in that episode.
These words come with a definition so you can incorporate them into your own vocabulary learning system and start using them in conversation yourself.
Now, let's just talk in general about exercise.
When we say exercise, what we're talking about is some type of physical activity, some type of movement that you are doing that is burning calories and helping you do some type of physical achievement.
The two general categories are resistance training and cardiovascular exercise, which usually gets shortened to cardio because cardiovascular is just a lot to say.
Resistance training involves weight of some type.
Resistance training is the training that people do to try to increase the strength or the size of their muscles, and this is done by doing some type of movement where there is resistance to that movement.
For example, people use dumbbells or barbells or some type of equipment that provides extra weight when they're doing a movement, and that would be considered resistance training, or people might just use their own body weight when they're doing push -ups or squats.
Either way, with using body weight, which is called calisthenics, or using outside weight, which is weightlifting, both of those are resistance training.
When people resistance train, they usually say that they weight lift or that they lift weights.
You might hear someone say that they lift weights three times a week, for example, which means that they're doing some type of resistance exercises three times a week.
Cardiovascular exercises are exercises that help with your heart and your lung health.
We call that system the cardiovascular system, and because of that, it's called cardiovascular exercise.
When people say that they're doing cardio exercise, it really could be anything.
They could be running, which means that they're going at a very fast pace.
They could be jogging, which is a little bit slower, somewhere in between a walk and a run.
They could be biking, using their bike, either a mountain bike, or a street bike, or even a stationary bike that is in their home or at a gym.
They could be dancing, swimming, playing some type of sport.
Really, the possibilities are almost endless.
When we talk about exercise, people will usually say how many days a week they exercise, how many days a week they are doing some type of physical activity.
They usually use the phrase working out.
Exercise and working out are synonymous with each other.
They mean the same thing, but people usually, more colloquially, more in everyday language, will use the phrase working out.
People might say that I'm going to work out or I just worked out, or they might say I work out five days a week.
For example, myself, I can say that I weight lift five days a week.
I don't do a lot of cardio.
I'm not one of the people who likes to run.
I'm not a person who ever goes jogging, but I like weightlifting and it's one of the things that I enjoy.
Besides using the term workout, people might also say that they go to the gym.
If someone says that they go to the gym, it's implied that they're going there to do some type of exercise, to do some resistance training, or to do some cardio work.
That's another way of saying that they work out.
Someone might say that I go to the gym three days a week, or they might say I work out three days a week, or I exercise three days a week.
All of those would mean the same thing that they're doing physical activity, purposeful physical activity, three days a week.
If people go to the gym to work out with other people, with an instructor, someone who's leading the group and is showing the movements and then multiple people involved, that is called an exercise class.
These are very popular at gyms.
There's a lot of dance classes, Zumba classes, hip -hop classes.
You might have heard of.
People also do yoga or Pilates in these type of sessions, and you might hear that people are working out in a class.
People might also just have an individual person who is helping them when they are exercising or working out.
That person is called a trainer, and they're usually called a personal trainer.
So if someone is working with a professional, a personal trainer, that person is helping them, showing them different exercises, helping them with their exercise routine and their exercise plan for some type of goal.
This is common when you think of actors, people who are trying to get ready for some movie parts, especially in superhero movies.
Usually they'll do interviews about their training routine, about their diet, and they talk about their personal trainer.
And that's what they're referring to, someone who is helping them to exercise and get ready for that movie role.
Now let's talk about some vocabulary around health.
When you are talking about how active someone is, how much someone moves, if someone moves a lot, if they go and work out a lot of days a week, they're very active, you might hear the term fit.
What fit is referring to is the word fitness.
Fitness is a way of describing how healthy, active, and able to do physical activity someone is.
If someone is able to do a lot of exercise, works out pretty regularly, someone like The Rock, or Chris Hemsworth, or Chris Evans, or Jason Momoa, you would say that they are fit, they're physically fit, they are able to exercise, they are in very good physical condition, and that gets called physically fit
or just fit. Here are a couple of terms that you might see or that you might hear when people are talking about fitness and people who are physically fit.
You might hear the word jacked, swole, cut, buff, ripped, all of those are talking about someone who is very muscular.
Again, think of those actors who play superheroes.
These words usually come from the fitness community and the bodybuilding community.
People who are bodybuilders are people who compete based on their looks, they work out a lot, they try to have really big muscles, and they go on stage and they compete to see who looks the best.
In those communities, in magazines that are centered around health and fitness, you see these terms a lot, and you also hear them in everyday language.
Let's talk about what these all mean.
Jacked, ripped, swole, buff, all of those mean the same thing, that the person is just very muscular.
I can say personally, I probably use the word jacked more when I'm talking about someone who has really big muscles, who's in really good physical shape.
That's just a personal preference.
You might hear any of those terms and again, they all mean about the same thing.
When you hear ripped, shredded, or lean, they might have slightly different connotations.
Someone might be very muscular and they might have a fair amount of body fat on their body.
Think of the mountain from Game of Thrones.
He was very tall, very muscular.
He's a power lifter, someone who can lift extremely heavy weights, but he also had a fair amount of body fat on his body.
Usually, people who do power lifting, who do those competitions, have a decent amount of body fat, and of course, a lot of muscle.
When someone has a lot of muscle, very little body fat.
You can see all of the definition of their muscles.
That can be called ripped, cut, or lean.
You'll especially hear this if you are a person who follows bodybuilding or listens to bodybuilding podcasts, that type of thing.
People who do bodybuilding have to lose a lot of their body fat.
Again, they're going on this stage.
They're trying to compete.
They're trying to show all of their muscles, and because of that, they want that definition to their muscles.
They want the judges to be able to see all of their muscles.
That's usually also the body type when someone is playing a superhero in a movie.
They want to get very defined, very obvious muscles on their body.
Because of that, because they have very little body fat, that's called being very lean or very cut.
In the bodybuilding world, when someone is trying to lose fat, they call that cutting, which is decreasing the amount of food they are eating.
That gets called cutting calories, and when they do that, their muscles are more defined.
You can say that someone is cutting or that they look very cut at the end.
Ripped is another way to say that, or shredded, just a way of saying that you can really see their muscles on their body, and it's very obvious what good shape they are in, how muscular they are.
You might also hear the words trim or tone.
Those words usually get applied to females, so if you're looking at magazine covers that has a female celebrity on the cover, you're more likely to see the word trim or tone, and not those other words such as jacked or buff.
Those words usually go with a male, but not always.
Of course, if someone gets in very very good shape for a role, like Natalie Portman in the last Thor movie, people were saying that she looked super jacked because she was very muscular.
Even though she was a woman, that word was still being applied to her.
However, it's just not very common.
Usually you hear the words athletic, tone, trim when you're talking about a female.
To be honest, I'm not really sure why, but if you do look at magazine covers, you might notice that and you might see that on articles online or fitness magazines, fitness videos, things along those lines.
During those first couple of days when you're first starting to work out, what you can say is that you are trying to get back into it.
What that means is that you are trying to get into a physical activity routine that you're trying to get used to exercising again.
If someone tells you that they're trying to get back into it, what that means is that they're trying to work out and they're trying to get used to exercising again.
That also means that they're trying to get in shape.
When we're talking about physical fitness and the shape of someone's body, the shape of someone who usually works out a lot, we say that that is in shape.
If you're in shape, you're able to exercise well, you're able to do a lot of physical activity without getting tired.
That is in shape. The opposite would be out of shape.
If you don't exercise, if you were the person who never goes to the gym, who doesn't like walking, who has a hard time just going up the stairs, that would be someone who is out of shape, someone who does low physical activity.
When someone is saying that they're trying to get back into it, they mean that they're trying to get back into physical activity and trying to get back in shape.
Once you have a physical activity routine, once you are able to work out multiple days a week on a consistent basis, you might call yourself a gym rat.
Billie Eilish, the singer, was doing an interview recently where she called herself a gym rat.
A gym rat is just someone who goes to the gym a lot.
I'm not sure why we use the word rat.
It doesn't sound very nice.
It doesn't sound very pleasant, but that's what that means.
Someone who goes to the gym often, who likes being at the gym, they usually refer to themselves as gym rats.
When we're talking about exercise and working out, the hardest part is getting started.
If you have ever been a person who does not exercise or did not exercise a lot and you start doing it and you start going to the gym and exercising on a consistent basis, you know that those first couple days are difficult.
When you work out and your body hurts the next day, that is called soreness or muscle soreness to be more specific.
When someone works out for the first time in a long time, usually they will say that I'm sore.
Other things that they might use to describe those first couple days of working out and how difficult it was, they might use these idioms.
They could say that during the workout they were huffing and puffing.
Huffing and puffing has to do with breathing and how hard or how fast they're breathing.
Because the first couple of times when you're exercising is really difficult and your body just isn't used to it, you breathe faster and you breathe harder the first couple days compared to after you've been doing it for a long time.
So when people are first starting to work out and it's really difficult and they are having a hard time breathing, they can say that they're huffing and puffing.
They also might say that they can't catch their breath.
When you say that you can't catch your breath, it means about the same thing.
That your breathing rate is so fast it feels like you're you can't get enough oxygen in like you can't breathe fast enough and that would be not being able to catch your breath.
So let's say that you are at the gym for the first time in years and you are doing a dance class with a bunch of other people.
You are having a hard time breathing and you could say I can't catch my breath.
I am just huffing and puffing.
Another way of saying that you can't catch your breath is to say that you are out of breath.
Now this sounds really bad it sounds like you stopped breathing but it means about the same thing that you're having a difficult time breathing, you're having a difficult time trying to get enough oxygen to compensate for the amount of physical activity you are doing and so you can say that I am out
of breath or that I can't catch my breath.
Both of those mean the same thing that you feel like you just cannot breathe fast enough.
Another idiom that you might hear people say is that they are winded.
In English we sometimes use the word wind with exercise and with breathing.
You might have heard this saying or this idiom before if someone says that they're winded or that they're getting winded again it means that they're having trouble breathing.
So huffing and puffing can't catch my breath out of breath and getting winded all mean the same thing that you cannot keep up with how fast you need to breathe and with getting the amount of oxygen because of the physical activity that you are doing.
I hope this episode helped you.
I hope you learned a little bit about the vocabulary, the words, and the sayings that we use when we talk about exercise and physical fitness.
Reminder to check out the description of this episode so you can learn the words and phrases that I used during the episode.
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