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.