Fitness jargon wrecks a workout
Source: Agencies |
November 8, 2011, Tuesday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
Fire your glutes, relax your traps, lengthen your spine, engage your core - if you find the instructions confusing, you are not alone.
Experts say fitness is about action, not words, and fitness jargon sprinkled too liberally through a workout can confuse clients.
"The terms are important if a client wants to know them," said Josh Stolz, a senior trainer at a fitness center in New York City. "Understanding how the body moves, which muscles move you in which direction, and the exercises associated with them, is really the key."
Stolz said trainers can get too wrapped up in using anatomical terms to impress clients. "In America we like to shorten everything: tris and bis instead of triceps and biceps, quads and hams instead of quadriceps and hamstrings," he said.
Often a touch is worth a thousand abbreviated words. "I am very tactile when I train. So if a client cannot activate a muscle, I will actually rub it so they feel what I am talking about," he said.
"If I am trying to get someone's rhomboids (upper back muscles) to fire, I will just poke underneath the shoulder blades."
The training is easier, he maintains, if the client is not forced to think too much about the movement.
"I can think of one trainer who just talked and talked and talked," he said. "Finally I sat him down and said, 'You need to use as few words as possible to explain a movement. Teaching a client a brand new movement is hard enough without having the verbiage going on.'"
Sara Ivanhoe, a yoga instructor with a national chain of studios, said anatomical terms often do not translate well even to the most intelligent student.
"If I am telling someone to soften their floating ribs in, or rotate their inner-upper thighs back, people often have no idea what that means," said Los Angeles-based Ivanhoe.
A student of Sanskrit, Ivanhoe uses the ancient language of Hinduism alongside her anatomical vocabulary to connect students to the spiritual side of the practice, and to each other.
"Sanskrit is one of the things that unify us as yogis. It is the international yoga language," she said.
She said colloquialisms created to enhance communication between student and teacher do not always succeed.
"The point of the teacher is to have all these tools. The job of the teacher is to be watching. If I give a direction to lengthen the spine and nothing happens, I will try something else," she said.
Experts say fitness is about action, not words, and fitness jargon sprinkled too liberally through a workout can confuse clients.
"The terms are important if a client wants to know them," said Josh Stolz, a senior trainer at a fitness center in New York City. "Understanding how the body moves, which muscles move you in which direction, and the exercises associated with them, is really the key."
Stolz said trainers can get too wrapped up in using anatomical terms to impress clients. "In America we like to shorten everything: tris and bis instead of triceps and biceps, quads and hams instead of quadriceps and hamstrings," he said.
Often a touch is worth a thousand abbreviated words. "I am very tactile when I train. So if a client cannot activate a muscle, I will actually rub it so they feel what I am talking about," he said.
"If I am trying to get someone's rhomboids (upper back muscles) to fire, I will just poke underneath the shoulder blades."
The training is easier, he maintains, if the client is not forced to think too much about the movement.
"I can think of one trainer who just talked and talked and talked," he said. "Finally I sat him down and said, 'You need to use as few words as possible to explain a movement. Teaching a client a brand new movement is hard enough without having the verbiage going on.'"
Sara Ivanhoe, a yoga instructor with a national chain of studios, said anatomical terms often do not translate well even to the most intelligent student.
"If I am telling someone to soften their floating ribs in, or rotate their inner-upper thighs back, people often have no idea what that means," said Los Angeles-based Ivanhoe.
A student of Sanskrit, Ivanhoe uses the ancient language of Hinduism alongside her anatomical vocabulary to connect students to the spiritual side of the practice, and to each other.
"Sanskrit is one of the things that unify us as yogis. It is the international yoga language," she said.
She said colloquialisms created to enhance communication between student and teacher do not always succeed.
"The point of the teacher is to have all these tools. The job of the teacher is to be watching. If I give a direction to lengthen the spine and nothing happens, I will try something else," she said.
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