This is called the principle of specificity; I created exercises and sessions that have been specifically made to work on my horses and my weaknesses. I chose what I wanted to improve and then decided on the exercises that would be most suitable.
Each week will include;
- 1 lesson with my trainer
- 3 Session by myself putting everything I have learnt from the week into practise.
- 1 day off for rest.
- 2 hack to work on fitness.
Each session will be about 45-50 minutes long.
Action plan to improve my cardiovascular endurance.
One of my weaknesses is my cardiovascular endurance I feel that it has dropped massively lately, this therefore isn’t helping with my riding and will need to be higher if I want to progress further with eventing, fences will get higher, lengths of courses will get longer. This means my cardiovascular endurance will need to be higher to ensure that my heart can deliver oxygen to all my muscles during long lengthy events to allow the strength to keep the horse under my control at all times.
To test my level of cardiovascular endurance I will do the multistage fitness test. This will allow me to see my level of fitness. I will then retest myself after the 6 week action plan and see weather my training programme has worked. This will be shown by reaching a higher level in the multistage fitness test.
I will be doing various running courses which I have planned out around the fields situated by my house.
Course 1; A flat course.
Course 2; A course with different gradients of terrain.
Course 3; A long course with lots of different gradients of terrain.
By including hills will allow muscles to work harder and therefore raise the heart rate and make myself work in my continuous training zone because it will be putting stress on my cardiovascular and respiratory systems. By having different courses also prevents boredom this can also be known as the principle of variance.
To start off with I will run the courses once each week. I will record the times and set my goals there after. Each week I will set targets using the results obtained from the week before:
Week by week running guidance.
Week 1 Week 4
Course 1 Course 1
Course 2 Course 2
Course 3
Week 2
Course 1 Week 5
Course 2 Course 1 [2laps]
Course 2 [2laps]
Week 3 _ Course 3 [2laps]
Course 1 Course 2 Week 6
Course 3 Course 1 [2laps]
Course 2 [2laps]
Course 3 [2laps]
As the training programme progresses I will introduce the principle of overload, where the frequency will be increased and the amount of times I run each course a day e.g. running course 1 twice instead of once. This will therefore make my body work harder than normal, by increasing the amount of work it has to perform will allow the body to gradually adapt to your new fitness level. Its important to analyse my performance so I can see when adaptations have incurred and will know when to bring into to consideration the principle of progression and start to overload. This is why I will be timing every session and seeing if I have made any progress. Each week is made up of a micro cycle, it’s a short training programme that can be effective and will get changed week on week depending on my performance. I will also record my heart rate each week. My heart rate is the number of times my heart beats a minute. I will measure my pulse on the radial artery at my wrist, below the thumb. I am going to record my pulse before I do my run, straight after I have finished and then 1 and 3 minutes after. I will do this to see if my recovery rate decreases, is so this means that I am fitter. Various changes should occur over the 6 weeks
-Blood volume may increase.
-Arteries get larger and more elastic.
-Resting HR gets lower.
-After exercise HR returns to normal quicker.
-More exchange of O2 and CO2.
-More capillaries.
-Better gas exchange.
When completing this action plan, I must take into account other exercise that I participate in. I’m a keen hockey player and will shortly be going away on hockey tour. Where we will always be on the move at all times, this means my fitness should increase. I also train regularly with my tetrathlon team. We go swimming weekly and are under going a training programme with exercises to help us not only with the swimming phase but the running as well. This is another aspect which should help boost my fitness levels.
At the end of the training programme I will repeat the multistage fitness test. If any improvements have been made then I will gain a higher level in the test. This will prove my action plan has been successful an will allow me to become a stronger horse rider.
