Fitness Program Design

GCSE Physical Education (Sport & Coaching)

I am a fitness consultant at a local sports club. A sports performer has approached me and asked for advice on improving their fitness levels for the forthcoming season. I have looked at what I will have to do and decided my work will involve planning an effective training programme and recommending suitable methods of fitness training to support and improve their performance.

There are four guiding principles, which apply to all fitness training. They are:

Specificity
Progression
Overload
Reversibility

1. Specificity means that the training specific to the sport or activity that you perform in, the type of fitness requirements of that sport and the particular muscle groups that are involved in your performance. For example, footballers and rugby players will do a lot of endurance work in their training along with exercise for specific muscles used in their sport, e.g. footballers- legs, rugby players- upper body work.

2. Overload means that training must be raised to a higher level than normal to create the extra demands to which the body will adapt. This can be done in three ways:

Increasing the intensity- by running faster, lifting heavier weights, etc…
Increasing the frequency- by training more often, e.g. 1 or 2 times a week to 3 or 4 times a week.
Increasing the duration- by training longer and longer to prolong the demands.

Both sets of players (rugby and football) will need to use this sort of training a lot because the demands in these two sports are very high and the training during pre-season must be gradually increased because both sports are very demanding.

3. Progression means that as the body adapts to training it progresses to a new level of fitness

Three important points about this graph:

Most progress is made in the early stages

At higher levels of fitness there is less progress

A plateau may be reached where further progression to a higher level of fitness is difficult to achieve.

4. Reversibility means that the training effects are reversible. If exercise is reduced in intensity or ...

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3. Progression means that as the body adapts to training it progresses to a new level of fitness

Three important points about this graph:

Most progress is made in the early stages

At higher levels of fitness there is less progress

A plateau may be reached where further progression to a higher level of fitness is difficult to achieve.

4. Reversibility means that the training effects are reversible. If exercise is reduced in intensity or stopped altogether then the benefit can be quickly lost. Deterioration sets in after about one week. Strength and speed are gradually lost with muscles losing their tone and size. In simpler terms someone that is very well built and fit will turn into someone that is small and weak. It is imperative that both sets of players do not reduce the intensity of their training otherwise, in the most serious of cases the player’s career could be ruined.

The different types of fitness training are:

Weight Training
Circuit Training
Interval Training
Fartlek Training
Continuous Training

Weight training involves a range of exercises where each one focuses on a specific muscle group in the body.

All of these exercises involve the overcoming of a resistance by the use of a machine or free weights.

Circuit training involves a series of exercises or activities, with each one taking place t a different station. Each station involves an exercise aimed at a specific muscle group in the body.

For example one station will work on the legs, one on the arms, one on the abdominals, etc…

Interval training involves alternating between fixed periods of exercise and fixed periods of rest for recovery. In simpler terms the player does a 25m sprint, a 30 sec rest, a 25m sprint, a 30 sec rest… and so on.

Fartlek training is very similar to interval training except that the intensity and the type of exercises are varied through changes in pace, terrain and style. For example the player has to complete a 10 min jog, 100m walk, 50m sprint, 2 min rest, 5 min jog… and so on

Continuous training involves long, slow, distance exercise at a constant rate without rest. At first the training should be light and as the heart rate increases the distance involved increases.

The similarities of these training methods are that all of them train both the aerobic and anaerobic systems.

I am now going to design a six-week training programme for a football player.

Week 1. I will introduce myself and tell the sports performer what we will be doing over the next six weeks. “I will take various training sessions on every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, having a rest on Tuesday, Thursday and at the weekends”, “ each training session will start off easy and gradually become harder as the weeks go by”. Before each training session I will undertake a safety check which will entail:

The training surface is in a good and safe condition
Floor mats in good condition
No jewellery worn by the football player
Correct equipment is worn
Secure nets and posts

In the first week I will just be testing my players ability and see where his fitness levels are at, I will tell him to begin each session with a good warm up consisting of jogging/running activities, stretching and some light football activities (e.g. passing the ball). I must have a warm up at the beginning of each one of my sessions to prepare my players body physically and mentally for the exercise and to prevent injury.

Also during the first week I will set up various easy circuits, 1 circuit per day, an aerobic circuit, an anaerobic circuit and a sport specific circuit. These circuits will not be hard and the performer should be able to complete them without being too strenuous. I will finish off with a cool down after each session during the six weeks consisting of light stretching and slow jogging this is vital after each session to prevent injury.

During week two I will be doing basically the same circuits to see if my performer has improved but during these circuits I will begin to make them harder by increasing the intensity (e.g. running faster) increasing the frequency (e.g. having more stations per training session) and increasing the duration (e.g. making the training sessions longer).

During week three I will be incorporating interval, fartlek and continuous training, one for each day I have a session during the week. During this week I will be starting to make the demands of my training that bit harder so that my performer will begin to feel the pressure. I will have to make sure that I make these training methods specific to his sport, which is football.

During week four the training becomes really hard, I will start to do some aerobic and some anaerobic training, I will be undertaking exercises such as the bleep test, the cooper twelve minute run, sprinting tests and other various tests that raise the anaerobic and aerobic thresholds. My players fitness levels will become higher and these tests will help him during the game when he’s sprinting for the ball and when he’s trying to last the full game with his fitness levels still high.

During week five I am going to concentrate on the players sport, which in this case is football. Most of my training sessions for these three days will be involved with ball work such as practising heading, control, passing, shooting, skills, 1 on 1 situations, running with the ball. This will also help my player during match situations and get him focused on the forthcoming season.

During week five I will be undergoing some weight training with my player. I will take him in the gym and work on different parts of his muscles by lifting weights using the machines and free weights, I will concentrate mostly on the legs and the lower body because these are the muscles generally used in football, I will also be doing some upper body weights aswell. The effect of weight training on the body improves muscular strength, endurance, tone and posture. It increases muscular size, bone density and the metabolic rate.

This is a table to show how my schedule will be set out:

Bibliography- The materials that I have used over the course of this project are: