6 week personal exercise programme

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I intend to improve my muscular strength, training to be a prop in rugby.

Personal Exercise Plan

Introduction

In the 6-week course in the gym I hope to improve my muscular strength, for rugby where I play a prop. For this I need to be quite strong, to bind tightly and push hard in the scum. I will hope to do this with the weight machines in the gym, using a weight training program. With the weights I will start off doing pyramid lifts at 60%-80% of my one rep max and when these weights get easy is shall then progress up to the heavier-harder ones after about four weeks of my training program. I will slowly work up to doing slightly heavier weights so my body adapts to the stress and my muscles become stronger. I do a lot of sport, which should keep my physical fitness levels up so they shouldn’t drop.

How I will apply the SPORT and FITT principles

SPORT Principle

Specify – I will be training to increase my muscular strength to be a prop in rugby and I will use weight training.

Progression – When I am doing my weight training I will be doing pyramid lifting, when my session starts to get easier I will increase the weights I am lifting, I will do this after about 4 weeks training

Overload – I will do extra amounts of training and longer periods of exercise so my body adapts to the stress and I become fitter.

Reversibility – Me doing a lot of sport should avoid atrophy and keep me fit.

Tedium – To avoid this I will listen to music when I’m in the gym.

FITT Principle

Frequency – I will train for my specified sport once a week and go to the gym at least twice a week

Intensity – When I am in the gym I will work at 60-80% of my one rep max for the whole length of time.

Time – I will make sure that each exercise session I do is at least 20 minutes

Type – I will be using weight training.

Why do we warm up?

We warm up to increase our heart rate, which in turn increases our blood flow to our muscles and therefore increases the oxygen to our muscles and it also gives our muscles enough oxygen to respire aerobically. It also warms up our muscles for the intensity of the session, which prevents injury. Finally it gives us time to prepare mentally (to get us into the right state of mind).

Why do we cool down?

We cool down so we can repay our oxygen debt, which restores our body to a pre-exercise level, prevent soreness and stiffness, makes our heart rate to return to near our resting level and finally it helps us to remove ‘nasty’ waste products, which result from exercise e.g. Lactic acid.

Sessions

In my sessions in the gym I will aim to work on my quadriceps, hamstrings, pectorals and Latissimus dorsi. I am working these muscles because they are antagonistic pairs and work together to form an action. The quadriceps and hamstrings work together to move the lower leg, when the quadriceps contract and the hamstring relax they allow extension at the knee joint to happen and when the hamstring contracts and the quadriceps relax they allow flexion at the knee joint. The pectorals and Latissimus dorsi work together to move the arm at the shoulder joint.

When we are training we need to work both muscles in antagonistic pairs so that they develop the same and can work to the same degree in all actions of movement. We also do this to keep them a similar size so we don’t have a strange body shape. It will also help us prevent injury during sport, because if one muscle is stronger than the other the force that exerts may be too much for the other and an injury could occur.

Join now!

Before I begin my PEP I found out my one rep max for all of the machines I will be using. I did this so at the end of my PEP I can do them again and see if I have improved my muscular strength. The results were:

To work the muscles I want to I will be using the leg extension, leg curl, chest press and pec deck machines in my sessions. The leg extension will work my quadriceps, the leg curl will work my hamstrings, the chest press will work my pectorals and Latissimus dorsi and ...

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