PHILLIPS FIT Glossary

Key Terms Explained

The PHILLIPS FIT Method™ uses several terms relating to personal training, nervous system capacity and Feedback-Informed Training.

Some have a specific meaning within the Method that may differ slightly from how they are used in everyday conversation.

This glossary explains them in straightforward language.

Assess

To gather relevant information before deciding what should happen next.

Within the PHILLIPS FIT Method™, assessment can include your goals, biomechanics, movement, force production, subjective feedback and your nervous system's response to particular demands.

Assessment is the first stage of:

Assess → Match → Expand

PHILLIPS FIT First Principle: Never assume capacity. Assess it!

Capacity

Capacity describes what your nervous system and body are currently capable of successfully organising and tolerating.

Capacity can change. Sleep, stress, recovery, previous training, illness, sensory demands, previous experiences and other factors can all influence what your system is capable of at a particular time.

However, there is an important distinction.

Although capacity is variable over time, at any given moment it may be constrained by the prediction your nervous system is currently operating from.

In other words, your body may possess the physical potential to do more, while your nervous system's current prediction limits how much movement, force or other demand it is prepared to successfully allow.

This is one reason PHILLIPS FIT distinguishes between what somebody may ultimately be capable of and what their nervous system is demonstrating that it can successfully organise and tolerate right now.

Where appropriate, training can be matched to that current capacity. In other situations, assessment may indicate that the prediction itself needs to be addressed before greater demands can be successfully tolerated.

Never assume capacity. Assess it!

Confidence

Within PHILLIPS FIT and Neuro Reset Technique (NRT), confidence refers to how much the nervous system trusts its ability to successfully produce and control movement or force in a particular situation.

This confidence operates primarily at a non-conscious level. It is not the same as consciously feeling confident or believing that you can perform a task. You may feel completely comfortable performing an exercise while your nervous system still produces a defensive response when that demand is assessed.

Within NRT, this broader concept is described as motor confidence — the nervous system's confidence in its own movement and output.

Motor confidence includes two important dimensions:

Motion confidence relates to how confidently the nervous system can control movement through space. When motion confidence is reduced, movement may become restricted, hesitant, less precise or more compensatory.

Force confidence relates to how confidently the nervous system can produce and regulate force. Reduced force confidence may appear as a drop in force output even when the person possesses adequate physiological strength.

Within PHILLIPS FIT, confidence is therefore inferred from the nervous system's non-conscious response rather than assumed from how an exercise looks or how confident you consciously feel.

Decision Point™

An area of information that can influence the next coaching decision.

The PHILLIPS FIT Method™ uses 11 Decision Points™ covering:

Daily Readiness • Training Demand • Exercise Selection • Exercise Response • Training Dose • Progression • Movement Capacity • Force Production • Sensory Demand • State Regulation • Intervention Choice

They are not 11 rigid tests that must all be performed during every session.

Instead, they provide a framework for organising relevant information and deciding what should happen next.

Defensive Response

A change in nervous system behaviour in response to a particular demand that may indicate the demand currently exceeds the system's capacity or confidence.

This may be reflected through changes in movement, range of motion, force production or other assessed responses.

Within PHILLIPS FIT, a defensive response is treated as information, rather than simply something to push through or ignore.

Expand

The third stage of:

Assess → Match → Expand

Expand means determining the most appropriate strategy for increasing what your nervous system and body can successfully tolerate.

Sometimes appropriately matched exercise can be progressively developed, allowing strength, fitness and other biological adaptations to build over time.

Sometimes assessment indicates that exercise modification alone may not be sufficient, and another approach — such as a dedicated Neuro Reset Technique (NRT) session — may be more appropriate before training can progress.

The goal is not simply to stay within today's limits.

It is to determine the most appropriate way to expand what's possible.

Feedback-Informed Training

The underlying training philosophy of the PHILLIPS FIT Method™.

Rather than allowing a predetermined programme alone to dictate what happens during a session, your real-time responses provide additional information that helps guide each training decision.

If the response changes, the decision may change with it.

The response informs the training.

Force Production

The amount of force your nervous system and muscles can successfully express at a particular moment.

This expression of force is sometimes referred to as motor output.

Reduced motor output does not automatically mean that a muscle simply lacks long-term physiological strength. Force production can change temporarily in response to a particular demand.

PHILLIPS FIT therefore distinguishes between what somebody is generally capable of and what their nervous system is successfully expressing at that moment.

Gain / Gain Control

Within Neuro Reset Technique (NRT), gain refers to how strongly the nervous system is accessing or amplifying information from a particular sensory input, movement, memory or other stimulus.

A useful way to think about gain is like the volume control on an amplifier.

The stimulus itself may remain exactly the same, while the nervous system effectively turns the signal up or down, changing how much information it is processing from that stimulus.

This means that two exposures to what appears to be the same demand do not necessarily represent the same nervous system challenge.

As capacity increases, the nervous system may be able to apply more gain and access more information from that same stimulus.

This is particularly important following an NRT reset.

If a stimulus has been successfully reset at one level, the capacity gained at that level has not simply disappeared if the same stimulus produces a defensive response again later.

 Instead, the nervous system may now be accessing the stimulus at a higher level of gain, revealing another layer of demand that was not previously available to be processed.

That newly accessed level can then be assessed and, where appropriate, reset in turn.

Same stimulus. More information. A new level of capacity to access.

Intervention Choice

The decision about what should actually happen next based on the information gathered.

An intervention simply means the strategy chosen.

That might involve:

continuing an exercise as planned • modifying its dose • changing the exercise • progressing or regressing a demand • or, where appropriate, recommending dedicated NRT work

PHILLIPS FIT does not assume that exercise is always the right answer.

The assessment helps determine the most appropriate approach for the person in front of you at that moment.

Match

The second stage of:

Assess → Match → Expand

To Match means selecting the most appropriate approach and level of demand for the capacity demonstrated at that moment.

This can involve matching the exercise itself as well as its load, range of motion, tempo, volume, breathing strategy, complexity, sensory demand and other variables.

PHILLIPS FIT Second Principle: Right intervention. Right level of demand. Right time. Right person.

Movement Capacity

The movement your nervous system and body can currently access and successfully tolerate.

PHILLIPS FIT does not automatically assume that restricted movement means a tissue simply needs stretching, massaging or "releasing".

Instead, the restriction is treated as information.

Where appropriate, nervous system assessment can help explore why the movement is currently limited before deciding whether additional range should be introduced.

Once the movement can be successfully tolerated, newly available range can then be incorporated into appropriately matched exercise and progressively strengthened.

Neuro-Personalised Training

Personal training that adds another dimension to individualisation:

your nervous system's current capacity.

Traditional personal training may already take account of your goals, experience and biomechanics.

Neuro-Personalised Training adds your nervous system's real-time response to the demands being placed upon it, allowing exercise selection, training dose, progression and other decisions to be adapted accordingly.

Neuro Reset Technique (NRT)

A nervous-system assessment and intervention system developed by Simon Frost.

NRT principles and assessment methods form an important part of the nervous system testing used within the PHILLIPS FIT Method™.

Where assessment indicates that even significantly simplified exercise demands cannot currently be tolerated successfully, a separate NRT session may be recommended to explore and address the capacity limitation before returning to the exercise programme.

Organise / Organised Response

Within PHILLIPS FIT, organise does not mean "organised" in the everyday sense.

It refers to the nervous system's ability to coordinate an appropriate response to a particular demand while maintaining the capacities being assessed.

Because this language can sound technical, PHILLIPS FIT often uses tolerate in client-facing material where it communicates the idea more clearly.

Where useful, both terms may appear together:

successfully organise and tolerate the demand

PHILLIPS FIT Method™

A Feedback-Informed approach to personal training in which information from the individual — including their nervous system's real-time response — helps determine how training should be applied.

The Method integrates more than two decades of coaching experience with principles drawn from resistance training, biomechanics, Muscle Activation Techniques® (MAT®), Neuro Reset Technique (NRT) and nervous system science.

Its three-stage process is:

Assess → Match → Expand

The Principles govern how PHILLIPS FIT thinks.

The 11 Decision Points™ determine what information PHILLIPS FIT considers.

The Method brings those together to determine what happens next.

Prediction

Within PHILLIPS FIT and Neuro Reset Technique (NRT), a prediction refers to the nervous system's non-conscious expectation of what is likely to happen in response to a particular movement, force, sensory input or other demand.

The nervous system does not simply wait for something to happen and then react. It continuously uses previous experience, current sensory information and context to anticipate what is about to happen and organise an appropriate response.

When that prediction matches the demand well, movement and force can be expressed efficiently.

When the nervous system predicts that a demand may exceed its current capacity, it may alter movement, reduce force output, increase protective muscle tone or produce another defensive response.

These predictions are not necessarily permanent. NRT is designed to help update them by providing the nervous system with new information and opportunities to experience a demand differently.

Within PHILLIPS FIT, this is important because the prediction the nervous system is currently operating from can influence the capacity it is prepared to express at that moment.

Progression

An increase in training demand.

This might involve greater load, more repetitions, increased range of motion, greater complexity, altered stability requirements or another form of increased challenge.

Within PHILLIPS FIT, progression is not assumed to be successful simply because the greater demand was completed.

The response to the new demand can be reassessed to determine whether the nervous system can still successfully organise and tolerate it.

Progression must be demonstrated — not presumed.

Sensory Demand

The amount and type of sensory information the nervous system is being asked to process.

This can include proprioceptive, tactile, visual, vestibular and other sensory inputs.

Exercise is therefore not only mechanical.

Two movements that appear almost identical can create different nervous system demands if the sensory information associated with them changes.

State Regulation

The nervous system's capacity to successfully state-shift between activation (sympathetic) and relaxation (parasympathetic).

A state-shift is simply a transition from one physiological or autonomic state toward another.

Breathing patterns, breath holds, longer exhales and shifts between more activating sympathetic demands and more calming parasympathetic demands can themselves represent challenges to the nervous system.

PHILLIPS FIT may therefore consider how successfully these changes are tolerated rather than assuming that a particular breathing or relaxation strategy is automatically appropriate.

Training Demand

Everything an exercise or training session asks you to handle.

Training demand can include:

movement • force • stability • breathing • sensory input • complexity • volume • fatigue

The question within PHILLIPS FIT is not simply how much training can be completed.

It is whether the demands being placed upon you can be successfully tolerated today, and how the session should respond to that information.

Training Dose

How much of a particular training demand is applied.

Choosing the right exercise is only part of the decision.

The dose matters too.

Training dose can be influenced by:

load • repetitions • sets • range of motion • tempo • breathing strategy • stability requirements • complexity • sensory demand • recovery

The aim is therefore not simply to prescribe a standard combination of sets, reps and load, but to establish a dose that can be successfully organised and tolerated right now.

Tolerate / Tolerance

The ability of your nervous system and body to successfully handle a particular demand.

Within PHILLIPS FIT, tolerating an exercise does not simply mean being physically capable of completing it.

The way your nervous system responds to that exercise can also provide important information about whether the demand is appropriate or not.

Client-facing PHILLIPS FIT material often uses tolerate rather than more technical language such as organise because it communicates the principle more intuitively.

PHILLIPS FIT in One Sentence

Assess what the person can tolerate today, match the most appropriate approach and level of demand to that capacity, then determine the best way to expand what's possible.

Never assume capacity. Assess it!

Train to your capacity. Expand what's possible.