The words used on this site, defined plainly. Half are training terms and half are railway terms, because on this side of the City the two decide each other.
Also known as: Usable window.
The time genuinely available for a session once travel, changing and showering are subtracted from the gap between arriving in the district and having to leave it. A commuter arriving at a terminus has two fixed walls rather than one, so the window is usually shorter than it looks in a calendar and it is the number a programme should be written against.
Also known as: Compliance.
The share of planned sessions actually completed. It is the single strongest predictor of whether twelve weeks of training changes anything, and it is far more sensitive to scheduling than to programme design. Two sessions a week held for twelve weeks beats four sessions a week abandoned in week three.
Source: www.nhs.uk
A programme that places the sessions carrying the most important work in the morning, on the reasoning that morning sessions are the ones least often lost. An evening session competes with an overrunning meeting, a delayed service and a club that closes at 20:00. A 06:30 session competes with nothing except getting out of bed.
Also known as: MED.
The smallest amount of training that still produces the change you are after. It matters here more than it does for someone who lives nearby, because the honest answer to "how many sessions a week" is often two, and a programme built on two has to spend them well rather than pretend there are four.
Source: www.nhs.uk
A session that trains the whole body rather than one region. It is the format that survives an unpredictable week: if you train twice and both sessions cover everything, losing one costs you half your volume instead of removing an entire muscle group from the fortnight.
Source: www.nhs.uk
How the training week is divided between sessions. Upper and lower on separate days, or push, pull and legs across three, are common splits. Both assume the sessions happen. A split is a luxury of a reliable week, and a week bounded by a timetable often is not one.
Source: www.nhs.uk
Training that runs without the equipment of a particular building. It matters at a terminus because the club shuts at 14:00 on a Saturday and nobody travels into Zone 1 at the weekend to train, so any work that falls outside Monday to Friday has to be doable at home in Essex or Hertfordshire or it does not get done.
Adjusting the load on the day to the state you actually arrived in, rather than to the number written down weeks earlier. Useful for anyone. Close to essential for someone whose sleep is shortened at both ends of the day by travel, because the prescribed weight and the available weight drift apart quickly.
How much useful work is completed per minute of a session. Raising it is the main lever available when the window cannot be lengthened, and it is achieved by pairing exercises, shortening rest where the movement allows it, and removing the warm-up drift that quietly consumes the first fifteen minutes.
A defined training period with a start date, an end date and a review at the finish. Twelve weeks is long enough for a measurable change in body composition and short enough to plan around a known diary. It is a unit of work rather than a subscription.
Source: www.nhs.uk
A station where the line ends and every train turns around. Liverpool Street is one, which is why the district it sits in fills and empties on a timetable rather than gradually. It also means there is no through service: arriving and leaving both happen here, and both are fixed points in the day.
Source: www.nationalrail.co.uk
Also known as: GEML.
The railway running from Liverpool Street out through Essex and Suffolk towards Norwich, calling at Shenfield, Chelmsford, Colchester and Ipswich. For a large share of the people training in this district it is the line that decides what time the session has to finish.
Source: www.nationalrail.co.uk
Also known as: WAML.
The railway from Liverpool Street north through the Lea Valley into Hertfordshire and on to Cambridge, serving Broxbourne, Harlow and Bishop’s Stortford. It carries the Hertfordshire half of the commuter population who train around Bishopsgate.
Source: www.nationalrail.co.uk
The Transport for London railway running east to Shenfield and Abbey Wood and west towards Reading and Heathrow, calling at Liverpool Street. Its arrival changed the shape of this district measurably: Liverpool Street has been the busiest station in Great Britain in each of the three years since the central section opened.
Source: tfl.gov.uk
Also known as: Lea Valley lines.
The London Overground service from Liverpool Street to Enfield Town, Cheshunt and Chingford. It is the shorter-distance commuter option into this district, and the one where an extra thirty minutes at the end of the day costs the least.
Source: tfl.gov.uk
Also known as: Planned closures.
Planned maintenance that closes or diverts a line, usually at weekends and over bank holidays. For a twelve-week block it is programme risk rather than trivia, because a handful of the twelve weekends will be affected on any main line out of this station and a plan that assumed twelve identical weeks will not survive them.
Source: www.nationalrail.co.uk
The fare and timetable bands that divide a commuter day. They matter to training because they set what a session actually costs. Staying in town until 19:30 to train can be cheaper and quieter than leaving at 17:30, and for some routes it is the difference between standing and sitting.
Source: www.nationalrail.co.uk
The number of sessions a week you can hold in a bad week rather than a good one. Setting it honestly is the most useful thing done in the first conversation. A floor of two that never breaks produces a result; a ceiling of four that is met twice in twelve weeks produces a story about being too busy.