Exercise names are a mess — arm curl, bicep curl, biceps curl for one movement; every app its own schema; no shared key so two datasets can agree on which movement they mean. OMEN is a naming standard that fixes it the way chemistry fixed molecules: describe a movement by its facets, and get back a canonical form and a stable, language-neutral identifier — the “InChI of human movement.”
In OMEN a movement is a bundle of orthogonal facets. You never type the muscle — it is derived from the movement pattern. And you never type the name — the name is an output the facets resolve to. Here is an incline dumbbell press, decomposed and then encoded:
The source of truth: posture, implement, movement pattern, laterality, and optional modifiers (grip, angle, contraction, range). The only thing a human authors.
source of truthDerived deterministically from the record. A readable canonical string, and a short, stable, versioned identifier fit to be a database primary key — like an InChIKey.
the shared key“Bench Press” is a curated alias hanging off the record, never the identity — so it stays free to be localised while the key stays stable.
presentation layerEncode horizontal-push and the primary movers — pec major, anterior deltoid, triceps — and “compound” fall out automatically. No ambiguous free “muscle” field.
It is a grammar, not a catalog. It can name a movement invented next year by composing existing facets — the way systematic chemistry names a novel compound.
An eccentric-only variant is its own identity — closing a gap the literature flags in existing naming conventions. Isometrics and plyometrics too.
Produced verbatim by the reference encoder. Note pull-up and chin-up differ only in grip yet get distinct keys — a distinction colloquial names blur — and the last row is a movement with no accepted name, so its canonical string simply becomes its label.
| Movement | OMEN-C | Primary muscles (derived) | OMEN key |
|---|---|---|---|
| Back squat | barbell squat | quadriceps, gluteus-maximus | OMEN-0.1-HWYDOFIMW3MXQ |
| Bench press | barbell horizontal-push | pec-major, ant-deltoid, triceps | OMEN-0.1-VRQRJHQSX5NX6 |
| Pull-up | vertical-pull | latissimus-dorsi, teres-major | OMEN-0.1-L2SHL5OD62KEW |
| Chin-up | supinated vertical-pull | latissimus-dorsi, teres-major | OMEN-0.1-NJJ6HLRNNFORY |
| Triceps pushdown | rope cable elbow-extension | triceps | OMEN-0.1-LX2LC34DVHM4I |
| Romanian deadlift | barbell hip-hinge | glute-max, hamstrings, erectors | OMEN-0.1-K5R5GCRCMTPDE |
| (unnamed) 1-arm cable row | single-handle cable unilateral horizontal-pull | lat-dorsi, rhomboids, mid-trap, post-delt | OMEN-0.1-6PY6ZOH7GNUNG |
A survey of 205 professionals found exercise terminology is used inconsistently, most use several names for one movement, and a majority want standardization (Jackson et al., 2013).
Open exercise datasets each invent their own schema and derive IDs from the display name — so nothing lets two of them refer to the same movement. OMEN is the missing shared key.
Training logs, wearables, and sports-science studies increasingly compute on exercise data — volume by pattern, push:pull balance, cross-study pooling. All of it needs a stable identifier.
The paper covers the prior art, the facet grammar, the identifier scheme, an inter-annotator evaluation protocol, and a governance model. Free and open; the reference encoder runs today.