Glossary
Personal Trainer Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential personal trainer terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key personal trainer vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in personal trainer training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- Body composition
- Fat and lean mass.
- Compound exercise
- A movement using multiple joints.
- Cueing
- Instructions that guide form.
- HIIT
- High-intensity interval training.
- Isolation exercise
- A single-joint movement.
- Mobility
- Ability to move joints through range.
- PAR-Q
- Physical activity readiness questionnaire.
- Periodization
- Planning training in phases.
- Progressive overload
- Gradually increasing training demands.
- Rep
- One repetition of an exercise.
- RPE
- Rating of perceived exertion.
- Scope of practice
- What trainers are qualified to do.
- Set
- A group of reps.
- Spotting
- Helping a lifter safely.
- Warm-up
- Preparing the body for exercise.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Personal Trainer practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Personal Trainer training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.