Premier Vocabulary is a mini-podcast for you to learn football English one word at a time. We have three different levels for you: easy, medium and hard.

This episode is easy so we’re looking at common football words and phrases. Things you use and need to know to play the game.

Summary

Learn more football vocabulary with Premier Skills English. Each lesson in our Premier Vocabulary section looks at one football word or phrase. This lesson looks at the word exercise.

You can find more lessons on the side of this page.

Transcript

Rich: Hello my name’s Rich and welcome to Premier Skills English - Premier Vocabulary.

Jack: Hi there! I’m Jack. We’re here to help you with your football English. Premier Vocabulary is a mini-podcast for you to learn football English one word at a time.

Rich: Don’t forget you can always find the transcript for all our podcasts on the Premier Skills English website. We have three different levels for you: easy, medium and hard.

Jack: This episode is easy so we’re looking at common football words and phrases; things you use and need to know to play the game.

Rich: The word we are looking at in this episode is: exercise.

Jack: There are a number of meanings and uses of the word exercise, but we are just going to look at how the word is used to talk about sport and fitness.

Rich: We’ll look at how it can be used as a countable noun, an uncountable noun and a verb and we’ll look at some common collocations with the word exercise.

Jack: Let’s start with the noun. Exercise is the physical activity we do to stay healthy and get stronger.

Rich: It’s good to do some exercise every day even if you only go for a twenty-minute run. It’s better than nothing.

Jack: Yes, exercise is good for us. Here the noun is uncountable - when we are talking about exercise and fitness in general.

Rich: We might say that running is good exercise, it’s good to do regular exercise, or I don’t get enough physical exercise. In all of these common collocations, exercise is an uncountable noun.

Jack: The most common collocation is probably do exercise - I do exercise every day, but we can also take exercise and it means the same thing - my doctor tells me I should take more exercise.

Rich: We could also just use the verb - I should exercise more. How often do you exercise, Jack?

Jack: I don’t exercise enough. That’s for sure. We can also exercise parts of our body. Doing sit ups exercises our abs or lunges exercise our hamstrings and calves in our legs.

Rich: We also said that exercise is used as a countable noun. When we use exercise as a countable noun we are usually talking about a set of activities that we do.

Jack: Before you do exercise you might do some stretching exercises or warming up exercises and after you finish your exercise you might do some cooling down exercises.

Rich: We’ve used a few common collocations already in this episode: do exercise, physical exercise, regular exercise and good exercise.

Jack: We also talk about different types of exercises. When we do exercise we might do some cardiovascular exercises or just cardio for short.

Rich: These are exercises that get your heart rate and breathing rate up. Good cardiovascular exercises might be things that involve running.

Jack: These are sometimes also called aerobic exercises. I’ve read that it’s best to do different types of exercises: cardio or aerobic exercises and also exercises that work on strength, balance and flexibility.

Rich: That sounds a lot - maybe I should just buy an exercise bike then I can do exercise while I’m at work.

Jack: There is the final whistle!

Rich: We’ll be back soon with more Premier Vocabulary from Premier Skills English.

Jack: Bye for now and enjoy your football. 

Discuss

How much exercise do you do?

What types of exercises do you do?