GCSE training program for a right midfielder in football

GCSE Physical Education (Sport & Coaching)

GCSE training program for a right midfielder in football.

I have chosen to base my training programme on football. I will specifically focus on the position right midfield because it is wear I play for my football team. This position requires a lot of effort as the players must defend as well as attack and must also be a key part of moving the ball around the field.

I feel that the four components of fitness I will need to focus on are muscular endurance, agility, skill levels and aerobic power. I feel that I would need muscular endurance because what im expected to do is stretched over 90 minutes so my body/muscles need to keep going at medium to maximum efficiency. Agility is needed in my role as my body/muscles must have the ability to turn quickly to connect with passes and to outrun opponents. My level of skill is fairly important in my position as when I come up against more challenging opponents a combination of agility and skill would be needed to get past them. For example a simple sidestep over the ball would usually send the opponent the wrong way while you hook the ball away from his/her direction with your other leg. I believe aerobic power is necessary for my position because of what is expected for us to do. This position requires the player to be able to run, defend, attack and create goal opportunities. To do this the players body/muscles will need to keep going and keep performing tasks involving the whole body.

In this project I will measure 2 pieces of skill that I sometimes use in a game to overcome opponents. My first skill is a simple dummy step over. To measure how I have improved/deteriated I will perform 10 stepovers in a single session. I will then record how fast I performed this task and get an onlooker to give me a performance rating out of 10(this person will be kept the same). I will do this 5 times throughout the session(once every week.

My second piece of skill will be free kicks. I will aim for a spot in the goal and see how many of my shots hit the target. I will record my results in a table then convert this into a graph. I will do this once a week and have 10 shots. I will do this 5 times a week.

To measure my fitness elements I will:

Muscular endurance- I will see how many press ups I can do in 1 minute. This will be easy to monitor and I will be able to spot improvements easily.

Muscular power- I will see how far I can jump with my legs together in a standing still position. This also will be easier to monitor and improvements will be easy to spot.

Agility- I will perform the Illinois agility run.

Speed and anaerobic power- I will carry out a 100m sprint as this not only measures my speed but tests my anaerobic power as well.

Aerobic power- I will perform the 12-minute cooper run each week and make comparisons.

I personally would like to achieve improvement in the majority of my tests as it is good exercise and is beneficial to my health. It also is good competition with yourself to see how far you can push yourself.

Principles of training

The principles of training will be present in my training program. Specificity is my skill components. These are suited for my position and help me in my role. Progression hopefully should occur throughout my training program due to overload but I must be careful not to stop my exercises otherwise reversibility may occur. I will show their use by at the end of my training program, comparing my fitness from the beginning of the training program to the end. While training I will be careful not to injure myself and I will also be careful not to do too much to avoid injury incase my body isn’t ready.

Warm up

Relax your muscles
* start with your neck. Work it around in a clockwise motion, then lift it up and down then left to right.

* Move down to your shoulders and elbows. Rotate your arm, again in a clockwise motion and then move your lower arm back and fourth.

* Now rotate your hips first to one direction then to another for about a minute.

* Now the most important part of the stretches for a footballer, the legs. First start with your quadriceps. Lift your foot behind your hamstrings and align your knees. Hold for ...

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Warm up

Relax your muscles
* start with your neck. Work it around in a clockwise motion, then lift it up and down then left to right.

* Move down to your shoulders and elbows. Rotate your arm, again in a clockwise motion and then move your lower arm back and fourth.

* Now rotate your hips first to one direction then to another for about a minute.

* Now the most important part of the stretches for a footballer, the legs. First start with your quadriceps. Lift your foot behind your hamstrings and align your knees. Hold for about 10 seconds and then do the same with the other leg. Now move to the hamstrings and gastronemius. The leg you are stretching should be resting on the heel with an outstretched leg. The other leg should be bent and the foot should be placed just behind the other foot. The knees must be aligned and next to each other. Finally rest your hands on your stretching legs quadriceps and push down.

Raise your heart rate

Go for a short run. This will increase the blood flow around the body resulting in more oxygen being supplied to your body.
Try to keep moving and try to refrain from standing still. This will cause all your stretching to go to waste, as your muscles will start to seize up.

All of the above is needed because it prepares the body for the activity to come. The nervous system is stimulated which makes you more alert and aware, preparing you psychologically. It also reduces chance of injury due to the increase of body temperature, relaxing muscles and making them easy to contract and relax. If a warm up isn’t carried out tendons and muscle fibres remain tight and a higher risk of injury is present.

Cool down

Once my activity has been completed I will simply just remain moving. I will do this to gently bring my body back to its normal state. I need to do this because when you stop exercising the heart is still beating at a fast rate. If you stop suddenly the muscles are not pumping the blood back at the same rate and this can cause the blood to ‘pool’ in the veins which means waste materials like lactic acid are not being removed. This can cause stiffness and soreness.

My results for my training program.

What were the conditions like?

In week 1 the weather was nice and hot and exhaustion was quite frequent amongst us. The grass was dry and not very slippery. We had to drink plenty to carry on with the training. In week 2 it was again very hot and the conditions were the same as the week before. Week 3 was again hot and conditions were the same as the week before. Week 4 was a little bit cooler and was easier to train in, as there was a cool breeze. The grass was a little bit slippery. Week 5 was wet and miserable. The grass was wet and slippery. It was hard to train in these conditions.

Muscular power.

To measure muscular power I will start in a standing still position with my legs straight and next to each other. Then I will jump and measure the distance cleared. (Measured from back of heel)

I believe this part of my training program went well and at the end there is a 16cm improvement over when I started. These results show an increase in my muscular power. However there were some anomalies in this area. Week 3 shows a significant drop in the distance I jumped. This was due to an injured knee I had. My last 2 jumps were the same due to the weather. It was hard to land without slipping up and the coldness created a negative feeling, which lowered my motivation.

Muscular endurance.

To measure muscular endurance I saw how many press ups I could do in 1 minute.

This area of my training program went very well. I surprised myself at how many press-ups I could do. I had a total improvement of 11 press-ups over my first attempt, which again shows an improvement in my muscular endurance. I did not improve greatly in my final attempt over weeks 3 and 4 because of the weather. The grass was wet and slippery and it was hard to keep my legs still and straight as they kept sliding backwards.

Agility.

To measure my agility I performed the Illinois agility run.

I am disappointed with this area because I have shown no improvement over when I started. My fastest time was 26.98 seconds in week 2. In total there is a 0.56 second drop in my final weeks time compared to week 1. This is a shame because with weeks 2,3 and 4 I was showing gradual improvement. When I performed the run in week 5 the grass was slippery and I had to slow down when approaching the cones otherwise I would slip and even when I was running on the straights my feet were slipping. Despite these results, which show no increase in my agility, I do believe this training program has increased it and I would have performed better if the conditions had improved.

Speed and anaerobic power.

To measure this I will simply perform a 100m sprint each week and compare my results. This is good for both of these fitness components because it not only tests how fast you can run for speed but also tests your ability to put your body parts into motion quickly and to sustain high intensity efforts.

The problem with 100m is the time it takes to complete it will always be close to previous runs due to its maximum effort requirements. This makes it fairly hard to notice improvements because each run may be basically the same. Despite this my results do show an improvement. In week 1 I ran the 100m in 13.12 seconds whereas in week 5 I ran it in 12.41 seconds. There were a few different factors in week 5 than there was in week 1. For instance the weather was completely different and the ground was wet. So, because of that I wore my football boots so I would have more grip. This may have contributed to my faster time. In weeks 3 and 4 my times were near enough the same with only 0.10 seconds separating the two.

Aerobic power.

To measure my aerobic power I will perform the 12-minute cooper run each week and then make my comparisons.

This area of my training program was the hardest. As I performed this activity last my body was already tired from the tasks before. My results show a steady improvement through weeks 1,2 and 4 with week 3 being just a little bit less than week 2 but still higher than week 1 so improvement is still there. When it came to week 5 though it was raining which helped cool me down while running and I found it a lot easier to run and didn’t get so tired like weeks 1 to 4 when it was hot and I became tired quite fast.

Skill elements.

Step overs.

To measure this skill element for football I recorded how many good stepovers I could do in 1 minute. I chose this skill element because it helps football players get past the oppositions players.

This skill element wasn’t too hard due to the fact that I play football and sometimes do this trick. When I started I went fairly slow but as I got further into the minute I started to speed up and get into the flow a bit more. There is an improvement according to my results but I don’t feel that my ability in this area has really improved. I think that a difference of 8 doesn’t really make much of a difference. Overall I think I have maintained a good step over rate and that my results are good.

Free kicks.

To measure my accuracy in free kicks I had to aim for the top right hand side and see how many of my shots out of ten went in that side. I took my free kicks 18 yards away from the goal and placed the ball 3 metres away from the middle towards the left.

This area of my training program went very well but it is hard to notice an improvement. In week 5 I scored the most goals so far but missed more free kicks than week 2 and 3. I do believe I improved my free kick ability and my results show that I scored 2 more goals than when I started.

Evaluation

Planning the programme

I believe my planning section of this piece of coursework went fairly well. The activities I chose to perform I believe were very specific to my sport. I believe that the activities I chose for skill elements were extremely specific to my sport. Free kicks for example would only help a footballer, as they are part of the sport. The activities I chose for my fitness elements are also very specific to my sport. I chose muscular endurance, muscular power, agility, speed, anaerobic power and aerobic power. All these fitness components will help me in my sport because they are all factors that are needed to take part in football at a high level of play. The level at which my training programme was pitched was at a high level due to the fact that the exercises I performed were very strenuous and really pushed myself to my limits and were definitely not easy. The principals of training were present in my training programme. Specificity was present in my skill components as I needed to make my activities relevant to the sport and specific area of the sport. I also made sure that I monitored my progression and reversibility to see whether or not I had improved in my levels of fitness. Also to find out if overload was present in my training I will check my results and see if there have been any improvements. I am glad I chose to monitor the principles of training as they are very important in any training activity.

Performing the programme

When I started my training programme I made sure that I referred back to my planning so that I did not make any changes to what I originally stated I would be doing. I knew that to improve in my fitness levels (progression) I would need to push my body further during my training period (overload). Based on this I knew that that the principles of training would be present during my training. My training programme was very easy to manage as I kept the day the same each week and had a schedule that contained the order in which I would perform the activities. I believe the order of my activities was I smart choice by me as I started with the less tiresome activities which acted as a continuous warm up and then went on to the more strenuous activities which I found a lot easier to perform than if I just went into these activities first. So based on this I was very pleased with the order of my activities and I believe that it helped me to perform better in my activities. My choice in activities I believe was very beneficial to my sport as in each fitness/skill element the activity I performed was specific to the area and would help me in my sport. Overall I believe my training programme went very well and I found it good in the sense that my fitness had clearly improved and I was now more fit but I did not enjoy the fact that I had to do this programme in the six weeks holiday. Despite this I am happy with the outcome of my training programme.

Monitoring the programme

During my training programme no alterations were made to my original plan as I thought this would make my training programme complicated. When I monitored my training programme I took into account a lot of factors so I could write about these in my final write up. I took into account factors such as weather and floor conditions (slippery/dry) so if there is an anomaly in my results I can write about the conditions and put this anomaly down to that. In the first few training sessions the weather was extremely hot and I found myself becoming more tired a lot faster than usual. I took the weather into account in my final write up and for activities such as the cooper 12-minute run I found I performed better in rainy cold conditions. This is just one comparison I made in my final write up but there are more times when changes in my results are due to the conditions present at that time. This showed me that when a training programme is performed these factors need to be taken into account to ensure that the sportsperson or individual training will have the best results possible. I believe the order of my activities was I smart choice by me as I started with the less tiresome activities which acted as a continuous warm up and then went on to the more strenuous activities which I found a lot easier to perform than if I just went into these activities first. I am pleased I did this as I believe it enabled me to get the best results possible with what I had to work with.

Final evaluation

Overall I think my training programme was a success. My programme was easy to manage and it all went smoothly throughout the training period. I suffered no injuries except from the one (my knee) but this didn’t really affect me too much. The training programme has given me a new found interest to see how fit I am and it has motivated me to do more activities in general to keep up my levels of fitness and it also plays a big part in a healthy lifestyle as keeping fit improves your body shape, helps with the relief of tension and stress, helps you to sleep better, reduces the chances of getting illnesses and disease, giving you a physical challenge to aim for, toning up the body and the muscles which leads to an improvement in posture and increases your basic levels of strength, stamina and flexibility. I am extremely pleased with what this training programme did for me as before I started the training programme I was fairly fit but now after the training programme I can feel a big increase of my fitness and this also is a strong motive to keep exercising. I can definitely say that progression has occurred and I believe this is due to the fact that I pushed myself a lot during the training programme, as I wanted to see a noticeable increase in my fitness. This training programme has had a good effect on me and I am definitely going to keep exercising and keep up a high level of fitness.