Advanced Vocabulary for Exercising at the Gym & Working Out in English

Hi, I'm Anne Marie with Speak Confident English and welcome to your confident

English lesson - the first lesson in 2018 happy new year if I haven't already had

the chance to tell you that. And what would be better than starting the new

year with a lesson on getting fit and working out in English? It might be a

total cliche but everyone thinks about eating better, working out, and getting

fit at the start of a new year. We can't help it. If you're like me then over the

holidays you probably indulged a little bit too much so it makes sense right

that we'd want to focus on how to be a little bit more healthy and look good

after the new year. So for today's Confident English lesson we're going to

focus on how English speakers talk about getting fit: what are some of the key

expressions or interesting language that we use? And we'll also look at some great

conversation starters or questions that you can use when you want to start a

conversation with someone at the gym or someone in your running club.

Today we're going to focus on how English speakers talk about their

fitness goals and how they crush them. Now that's a really fun expression - to

crush something to crush something means that you press something so hard that

you destroy its shape or you break it. For example if you crush a bottle of

water or a can. Now if you do that, if you're going to crush a bottle of water

and throw it away, make sure you recycle it. Be good to the

earth. But this is what it means to crush something - to press it so hard that you

destroy it. However we also use it in another context with a much more

positive meaning. If you are crushing your goals or if you're crushing your

job at work it means that you are dominating it, you are doing so well,

beyond expectations, you're performing at a hundred and ten percent. At the

beginning of a new year we all have a lot of motivation and we're ready to

crush our new goals and our fitness. For this lesson I'm going to look at three

different common situations that happen at the new year and we'll use some

advanced vocabulary to talk about them. One of these situations just might be

similar to what you are doing right now. Situation number one: accidental marathon.

It's the new year and you're feeling like you ate too much, you drank too much

so you and a friend decide on a whim - at the last moment - to sign up for a

marathon. Have you ever signed up accidentally for a marathon? Maybe you

weren't thinking so much about it and in your mind you think oh it's so many

months away, I have a lot of time to train and prepare. It'll be great. So you

get online, you search Google for the next marathon near you and boom! In April

you're signed up for a marathon. So it's January, your marathon is in

April, you immediately go back to Google and you search for marathon training

programs. You find over a hundred websites and you start reviewing all of

the different training schedules and you start to realize just what a

huge commitment is to train for a marathon. But the good news about all of

those training schedules is they are progressive training schedules.

A progressive training schedule is training that gets a little bit more

challenging with every week or every month, each week builds on the previous

week. Now if it's a good schedule it will give you the right advice which is: if

you are new to running you should definitely not immediately go out and

run a 10 miler. A 10 miler as we would say in American English is simply a 10

mile run or about 16 kilometers. Instead as a beginner to a marathon schedule you

would have a combination of short and long runs throughout the week and maybe

your longest run that first week is a 5 miler or a 6 miler. As you continue

each week those runs get much longer so you're probably going to create a

playlist - a list of songs that you love running to. Now if you're not new to

running, if this is your second or third marathon, maybe you're going to set a PR.

A PR is a personal record and to set a personal record means that your goal is

to do better to run faster than your previous marathon. Now maybe running

isn't your thing. If something isn't your thing it means you don't like it you

don't enjoy it. So for you maybe your fitness goal at the start of the new

year is to hit the gym. In other words you go to the gym or you go work out.

Maybe you join classes, get a personal trainer, or simply work out on your own.

Now it may be instead of lots of cardio like running and bicycling you prefer

HIIT workouts. A HIIT workout is high-intensity interval training. These

are workouts with short bursts or short time segments of intense cardio. You're

working as hard as you can and then you combine that with strength training.

Strength training is focusing on specific muscles and building your strength.

Strength training can include body weight movements where you only use

the weight of your body to build strength or weight lifting. A lot of body

weight exercises are considered total body moves. What that means is they work

many different muscle groups in your body at the same time. Or perhaps you

prefer weight lifting where you focus on one specific muscle and you lift a

weight again and again focused on that muscle group, whether it's your biceps,

your shoulders, your legs, something specific. If you're not into HIIT workouts

or strength training, then maybe you prefer something more like CrossFit,

which has become hugely popular in the last several years. CrossFit is also

focused on effectively building muscles and strength but through lifting heavy.

To lift heavy means to lift really heavy weights and when you do that you should

always have a spotter. A spotter is someone who is going to be there next to

you making sure that you don't injure yourself and they can help you if you

need it as you're trying to lift those weights or put them back down. But maybe

you don't love marathons and you don't love going to the gym for intense

workouts so situation 3 is more your style. Maybe you already work out

regularly and now that the holidays are over you're ready to get back into your

normal routine. And for you it's all about balance and cross-training.

Cross-training means doing different exercises and movements so that over a period of

time, maybe over the period of a week, all of your different muscle groups get used.

You work on stretching and flexibility and cardio. A common example of

cross-training would be running or bicycling a few times a week for cardio

combined with maybe yoga or pilates for flexibility and strength with a little

bit of weight training as well. Every day is something different which helps you

avoid getting bored with your workouts and it's also great for preventing

injuries. When you're exercising, no matter what you're doing after the

holidays, for most of us the goal is to get fit. Now before we finish with

today's lesson on getting fit and using advanced language to talk about it, let's

think about a few great questions for conversation starters. If you're going to

the gym, or you join a running club, you go to the same yoga class every day

you'll probably see the same people and wouldn't it be nice to start a

conversation and get to know some of the other people that you're working out

with? To help you do that here are a few common questions that native speakers

use all the time to just start a conversation, have a little bit of small

talk, and get to know someone. Number one: have you taken a class with this

instructor before? Number two: if you're into that weight lifting or CrossFit you

might ask someone would you mind spotting me or could you spot me?

Remember a spotter is that person who stands next to you to make sure that you

don't injure yourself so if you're asking someone to spot you you're asking

them to be that person next to you. Or you could start a conversation with a

compliment which is always super nice for example you could say I really like

your training shoes, are they comfortable? And finally if you're running with

someone training for that marathon you might want some

recommendations for a playlist so you could ask someone what are your favorite

workout songs or what's on your playlist? And with that you have a lot of new

advanced vocabulary to help you talk about working out in English and

starting conversations about fitness. As always I do have some challenge

questions for you today. After you watch this video go to the

online lesson and at the end I have a few questions for you - you can share your

thoughts, your ideas in the comment section below. It's a great place to get

to know others in the Confident English Community, learn from each other, and get

feedback. Whatever your fitness goals are for 2018

I hope you crush them and I hope that you're ready to talk about them more

easily in English. Thank you so much for joining me and I'll see you next week

for your Confident English lesson.