The words used on this site, defined plainly. Training and nutrition carry a lot of overlapping vocabulary, much of it marketing rather than measurement, and a clear definition is usually the fastest way to work out whether two coaches are describing the same thing.
Also known as: The City, City of London.
The City of London, the financial district that sits inside but is governed separately from the rest of London. The City of London Corporation records 614,500 workers against 8,600 residents, which is the ratio that shapes how almost everyone here trains. It is a place people commute into rather than live in.
Source: www.cityoflondon.gov.uk
Also known as: Training block, Transformation block.
A fixed period of coached training and eating with a start date, an end date and a stated target. Twelve weeks is the usual length. The point of a block is that it ends, which forces a review and a decision rather than an open-ended arrangement that quietly continues without anyone reading the numbers.
A planned week inside a block where food returns to roughly the amount that holds your current weight and training volume drops. Placed deliberately over a known-bad work week, it keeps the block alive instead of breaking it. It is scheduled in advance rather than declared after a week has already gone wrong.
A short, planned reduction in training volume or intensity, usually a week, to let accumulated fatigue clear. It is a programming tool rather than a rest from discipline. In a City block a deload is often placed against reporting season, so the two low points land together instead of compounding.
Also known as: Non-exercise activity thermogenesis.
The energy you use doing everything that is not deliberate exercise: walking, standing, fidgeting, the commute. It varies enormously between people and between days, and it is the largest single difference between a desk day and an active one. It is why the national guidance asks you to break up sitting time as well as train.
Source: www.nhs.uk
The category the UK Chief Medical Officers use for resistance work, which adults are advised to do on at least two days a week alongside their aerobic activity. A coached block is one way of meeting it. The guidance sets a floor for health rather than a programme for changing body composition.
Source: www.nhs.uk
The relationship between the energy you take in as food and drink and the energy you use. A sustained shortfall is what reduces fat mass and a sustained surplus is what adds tissue. Everything else in a nutrition plan is a method for making one or the other survivable across a working week.
Source: www.nhs.uk
Eating less energy than you use, sustained over time. The size matters more than most people expect. An aggressive deficit produces faster early numbers and is abandoned sooner, and a deficit sized to survive twelve weeks of client dinners and travel usually beats one sized to look impressive in week two.
Source: www.nhs.uk
A daily amount of protein set against your body weight and your training. It matters most while eating in a deficit, because it is the main lever protecting muscle while fat comes off. It is also the target most disrupted by eating out, which is why it gets planned around client meals rather than ignored.
Source: www.nhs.uk
Gradually increasing the demand you place on a muscle, by adding weight, repetitions or better control. Without it a programme becomes exercise rather than training. In a coached block it is the reason sessions are logged, because the increase has to be measured against last time rather than guessed.
Source: www.nhs.uk
The split between fat mass and everything else, rather than total weight. It is the reason a scale can stay still while a body changes noticeably. Any measurement method carries an error margin, so a reading is only useful as part of a trend measured the same way each time.
Source: www.nhs.uk
Also known as: Body mass index.
Weight divided by the square of height, used as a population screening tool. It says nothing about what the weight is made of, so it reads a heavily muscled person as overweight. It is worth knowing mainly so that a number from a health check can be put in proportion.
Source: www.nhs.uk
Also known as: DXA, Dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry.
A scan that measures bone density and can estimate fat and lean tissue, using low-dose X-ray. It is the most accurate method in common use for body composition. It is named here for completeness only: UNTIL holds no DEXA scanner, and no block arranged through this site includes one.
Source: www.nhs.uk
A movement that loads several joints and muscle groups at once, such as a squat, a hinge, a press or a row. Compounds carry most of the useful work in a short session, which is what makes them the backbone of a programme built for people with 45 minutes rather than 90.
Source: www.nhs.uk
A shortened version of your programme, agreed before you go, for weeks spent working somewhere else. It uses fewer sessions and a small list of movements any hotel gym can cover, with an eating approach built for restaurants. It is deliberately less ambitious than a normal week, which is why it survives one.
Also known as: Results season.
The period when listed companies publish results, which lands at known points in the year and predictably consumes the working weeks around it. In a City block it is treated as a fixed constraint on the calendar in the same way an injury would be, and the training is placed around it.
How long you have trained seriously, rather than how old you are. It predicts the rate of change more reliably than age does. Somebody returning after a decade away will move quickly at first, and somebody who has trained consistently for years should expect a slower and more stubborn twelve weeks.
The first appointment, where a coach establishes what you can currently do, what your week genuinely contains, and what is realistic across twelve weeks. It is where a block gets written. An assessment that does not ask about your travel, your sleep and your evenings has not gathered enough to write anything useful.
A coach who plans and supervises training for an individual. There is no statutory regulator for the role in the United Kingdom, so the checking falls to you. CIMSPA maintains the professional register for the sector, and a recognised qualification, current insurance and a register entry are the reasonable minimum to ask for.
Source: www.cimspa.co.uk
The UNTIL service that takes an enquiry and matches it to a practitioner across the clubs. It is how an enquiry from this site reaches a coach. No payment passes per enquiry, and the person you speak to afterwards is an independent practitioner rather than an employee of this website.