Plain words
The words we use, and what they actually mean.
26 terms, one sentence each, in the words a trainer would use standing next to you. Each one links to the page that covers it properly.
A to the point
No jargon for its own sake.
- Movement screen
A short set of filmed movements that shows how your joints actually travel under load, so a programme can be built on what your body does rather than what you tell a form.
- Overhead squat
A squat with your arms held overhead. Holding the arms up removes the places you can hide a restriction, which is why it is the movement a screen leans on hardest.
- Corrective exercise
Work chosen to change a specific fault a screen found — something to release, something to wake up — rather than a general mobility routine everybody gets.
- Muscle balance
Whether the muscles on the two sides of a joint are pulling evenly. When one side is short and tight, the other tends to be long and weak, and the joint sits off line.
- Knees caving in
The knees travelling toward each other as you squat or land. It is one of the three faults Brad most wants caught, and it usually comes from the hip or the ankle rather than the knee.
- Arched lower back
The lower back dropping into an exaggerated curve under load, most visible when the arms go overhead. Another of the three faults the camera is tuned hardest for.
- Rounded shoulders
The shoulders sitting forward of the hips, usually with the upper back rounded. The one most desk workers arrive with.
- Hip hinge
Sending your hips backwards while the back stays flat, so the movement happens at the hip and not in the spine. The pattern underneath deadlifts, rows and picking anything up.
- Range of motion
How far a joint actually travels in a rep. The camera reports it in degrees, which is why a range that is quietly shrinking can be spotted before you feel it.
- Repetition and set
A repetition is one complete movement; a set is a run of them before you rest. The app counts both and logs the weight against them.
- Progression and regression
Making an exercise harder, or easier, on purpose. A good programme does both: it steps an exercise down after a bad set instead of telling you to try harder.
- The OPT model
The phased model VeraForma programmes to: stabilise first, then build strength, then build power. Phases are not optional and the order is not cosmetic.
- Stabilisation phase
The first phase: control, posture and muscle balance before load. It is free in VeraForma for as long as you want it.
- Eccentric
The lowering half of a rep, when the muscle lengthens under load. It is where most people lose control and where a lot of injuries happen.
- Isometric hold
A rep with no movement — a plank or a wall sit. The camera times the part you actually held still rather than the part you were in position.
- Form check
Watching an actual working set and calling what went wrong in it, as opposed to showing you a demonstration video of someone doing it right.
- Freestyle
Starting to move without telling the app what you are doing, and letting the camera name the exercise. No menus and no picking from a list.
- Gait
How you walk. Prop the phone up and it calls what it sees as you go, then gives you cadence, left and right step time and sway.
- Protein target
How much protein a day your body needs for the training you are actually doing. It matters more than usual on a GLP-1, when appetite falls but the muscle still has to be fed.
- Diet break
A planned pause in a calorie deficit. VeraForma names one when your filmed sets show your range shrinking while you are dieting.
- Body composition
The split between muscle and fat, as opposed to what you weigh. It is the reason the scale alone is a poor judge of whether training is working.
- Chair-stand test
Standing up from a chair and sitting back down, counted against published norms for your age. One of the simplest honest measures of leg strength there is.
- Balance test
Standing on one leg, timed. It predicts a great deal about falls, and it needs no equipment at all.
- Referred pain
Pain felt somewhere other than where the problem is. It is why the app starts at where a thing comes from rather than where you feel it.
- Desk posture
What a day in a chair does to the hips, the upper back and the shoulders. A new chair is not the fix that the evidence supports; moving is.
- Employer perk code
A single-use code a company hands an employee, worth three free months of Premium for them and their spouse. No card, and the company never sees an individual's data.
