What does it all mean?

Part 1 covered the slang and the etiquette. This one's the alphabet soup.

1RM is your One Rep Max, the heaviest weight you can lift once with good form. Programs often prescribe percentages of it, like "5 sets of 3 at 80 percent." Beginners shouldn't test it. Estimate it from a set of five instead.

AMRAP means As Many Reps As Possible, or As Many Rounds As Possible, depending on context. On a single exercise it's reps: go until you can't do another one with good form. In a timed circuit it's rounds: set a clock and get through the sequence as many times as you can. Either way, form is the limit. Five clean rounds beats ten sloppy ones.

BMI is Body Mass Index, a weight-to-height ratio. The normal range is 18.5 to 24.9.

It's important to understand that BMI can't tell muscle from fat. It was built to describe populations, not individuals, and it routinely classifies lifters as overweight or obese while their body fat is low. It's a rough screening number, not a measure of your fitness. Body fat percentage, waist circumference and what you can actually do are all more informative.

BMR is your Basal Metabolic Rate. The calories your body burns doing nothing at all, just keeping your heart beating, your lungs working and your temperature steady. For most people it's the largest single chunk of daily calorie burn, bigger than exercise.

DNF means Did Not Finish, and shows up next to a name on race results. Sprained ankle, overheating, or the day just wasn't there. It's a race term rather than a gym one, but you'll see it.

DOMS is Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness, the ache that shows up a day or two after a hard workout and peaks around 24 to 48 hours.

The old explanation was microscopic tearing of muscle fibers. That's part of it, but soreness and actual muscle damage don't track together as neatly as that model suggests. Current thinking leans more toward inflammation and the sensitization of nerve endings in the connective tissue around the muscle.

What's reliable is what causes it. Movements you're not used to, and especially eccentric work, which is the lowering half of a lift. Walking downhill, lowering a weight slowly, the first leg day in a month. It's not a measure of how good the workout was, and it fades as you adapt.

EPOC is Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption, the calories you keep burning after a hard session while your body returns to normal. Also called afterburn.

It's real, and it's smaller than the marketing suggests. EPOC usually accounts for something in the range of 6 to 15 percent of the calories burned during the workout itself. On a session that burns 400, that's maybe 30 extra. Good to know about. Not a reason to choose one workout over another.

HIIT is High-Intensity Interval Training. Short bursts of hard effort with recovery in between, like 30 seconds hard and 90 seconds easy, repeated. It's time-efficient and effective. It's also demanding to recover from, so it's not something to do daily.

LISS is Low-Intensity Steady State. Sustained easy effort, keeping your heart rate in the lower aerobic range. Walking, easy cycling, a slow jog you could hold a conversation through.

This used to get dismissed as the outdated way to do cardio. It's had a real comeback, often under the name zone 2, and for good reason. It builds your aerobic base, you can do a lot of it without wrecking yourself, and it's most of what serious endurance athletes actually spend their time on. It's also the right starting point for beginners and for anyone coming back from injury.

Lactate threshold is the effort level where lactate starts building up in your blood faster than you can clear it. Threshold training means holding a hard but sustainable pace at or just under that point, usually for 20 minutes or more, to push the line higher.

One correction on something you'll hear constantly: lactic acid does not cause the burn in your muscles. That model was overturned about two decades ago. Lactate is a fuel your body uses, not a waste product. The burning comes from other metabolites accumulating, including hydrogen ions, and stimulating sensory nerves. Lactate rises at the same time, which is why it got blamed. It also has nothing to do with next-day soreness. That's DOMS, and it's a separate thing.

MMC is Mind-Muscle Connection, deliberately focusing on the muscle you're working rather than just moving the weight. There's decent evidence it increases activation in the target muscle, particularly on isolation exercises at moderate loads. Less useful on heavy compound lifts, where you're better off thinking about moving the weight.

NEAT is Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis. Everything you burn that isn't deliberate exercise. Walking to your car, cooking, cleaning, fidgeting, standing instead of sitting.

NEAT varies enormously between people and it's often larger than what you burn at the gym. It also drops quietly when you start eating less, which is one reason weight loss stalls.

RIR means Reps In Reserve, how many more you could have done. Stopping at 2 RIR means you had two left in the tank. It's a practical way to gauge effort without going to failure every set.

ROM is Range of Motion, how far the joint travels during an exercise. Full range generally beats partial for building muscle, and cutting range short is one of the most common ways people quietly make an exercise easier.

RPE is Rate of Perceived Exertion, usually on a 1 to 10 scale. An RPE of 8 means hard, with roughly two reps left. Modern programs often prescribe effort this way instead of percentages, because it adjusts for how you feel on a given day.

TDEE is Total Daily Energy Expenditure. Everything you burn in a day, combining four things: your BMR, your NEAT, the calories burned during exercise, and the thermic effect of food, which is the energy spent digesting what you eat, roughly 10 percent of intake.

TUT is Time Under Tension, the total seconds a muscle is working during a set. A slower tempo means more time under tension for the same number of reps.

WOD is Workout Of the Day. The term comes from CrossFit, where CrossFit.com publishes a daily workout, though affiliate gyms program their own. It's since spread well beyond CrossFit and now just means whatever's on the board today.

Part 1 2

Call for a FREE Consultation (305) 296-3434
CAUTION: Check with your doctor before
beginning any diet or exercise program.

1/26/2019
Updated 8/30/2026