What can language learners learn from a personal fitness trainer’s “sets” and “reps” method for fitness?

If you are one of a growing number of people who go to a gym, you may have used or seen a personal trainer. A great personal trainer creates an exercise program that if followed diligently will help enhance the client’s physical fitness. This fitness may consist of stamina, strength, sense of balance and flexibility. 

The trainers use terms like “sets” and “reps” (repetitions) and after a few sessions prepare a sheet that typically has three components:

1) The exercise to be performed;

2) the number of sets of the exercise; and

3) number of repetitions for each exercise;

4) how many times a week the workout should be done. Finally the trainer may also provide tips on eating healthy and getting proper rest.

A good personal trainer will not give the client an unrealistic time frame for seeing results or propose a magic pill for quick fitness. 

Why do trainers use the “set” and “rep” approach to achieve fitness? The need to do “sets” is because our body has many different muscle groups – so there are sets for legs, sets for arms, sets for chest, sets for back, etc. If only one type of exercise is done we will end up having an unbalanced and injury prone physique. There are also sets that work on our stamina and flexibility. 

Within each “set” a trainer will suggest the effort to be used, e.g. the weight to be used in a machine or the weight of dumbbells or kettlebells etc. and the number of repetitions to be done. These could be anywhere from 6 to 10. The stress of repeated use allows the muscles to get used to the challenge and gradually get stronger.

The benefit of a good personal trainer can be seen for people who are not professional sportsmen and sportswomen as well for professional athletes who make their living through their fitness. 

A language learner is “enhancing his or her brain fitness” and in many ways the process is not too different from the physical fitness improvement process. Encore!!! Language Learning app has functions that have similarities to the “set” and “rep” method used in physical fitness. Using the distributed content that comes with the subscribed app as well as with any additional language entries the user adds, one can make a series of  “Playlists” and then listen and speak the entries of the playlist “repeatedly”. The playlists can have different grammar themes such as “sentences with different verb conjugations”; “use of prepositions”; “adjectives” etc. The playlists can also be situational theme based with contents made for situations such as “making new friends”; “going shopping”; “visiting a museum” etc. The repetitions act like physical workout “reps” and reinforce and strengthen the brain and tongue memory for long term retention.

Encore!!! Language Learning app, just like a good physical trainer, does not offer a magic pill such as “15 minutes a day will make you fluent in a language in two months”. At Encore!!! we understand that one has to devote several hundred hours of effort to learn to reach a basic level of any new language. Encore!!! with its approach where you can listen-speak-learn with repetitions as you do your daily chores makes it easy to find the time to reach the hundreds of hours needed to learn a language.  

Author: Dr. Jasprit Singh, President Gurmentor, Inc.

A Learning Company https://gurmentor.com

Professor Emeritus, Electrical Engg. & Comp. Sci. and Applied Physics

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor