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Frequency, how many times a week I will train to achieve my aim. I will train once a week. If I wanted to overload, I would train about 2+ times a week.
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Intensity, how hard I should exercise. For each station, I will do a specified number. For example, I will do 20 sit ups, and 10 press ups. I will choose this according to my fitness levels and take into account my strengths and weaknesses. To overload, I could increase the number of times I had to complete the circuit, or the number of things to do at each station.
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Time, how long I exercise for. The time is unknown as the point of the programme is to improve the time I take to exercise, so this will not be taken into account
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Type, what kind of exercises I should use. I am using the following stations; sit ups, press ups, shuttle runs, burpees, step ups, and skipping. These all work on different parts of the body and will improve my overall fitness in all parts.
Goals, Strengths and Weaknesses
By completing my 6 week exercise programme, I am hoping to achieve a higher level of fitness, which will help me in the team sports that I play; netball, rounders.
My strengths are that I have a lot of power and strength, which is useful for me in my main sport which is karate, but a weakness I find is that I cannot play a sport for a long time. I get tired very quickly if I do not pace myself properly.
My main weakness would be running, as I can easily complete short distance runs, but for runs which take more than 3/4 minutes to complete, I find I get short breathed and I find hard to sustain a decent running pace. I am hoping to improve my fitness so that I will be able to run for longer without get tired so quickly.
Fitness Tests
Fitness tests are used to find out the level of fitness that you are currently at. Different fitness tests will test different fitness levels for different things. I did 4 fitness tests:
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NCF abdominal curl conditioning test: tests the local muscular endurance of the abdominal muscles of the athlete
To undertake this test you will require :
- Gym mat
- NCF abdominal curl conditioning test audio tape/CD
- Tape recorder or CD player
- Stopwatch
- Assistant (To time and hold your feet down)
Follow the instructions on the tape/CD. Athletes are required to perform as many sit ups as possible, keeping in time to the bleeps from the tape/CD. The assistant records the time from the start of the test until the athlete can no longer keep in time with the beeps or when the sit ups aren’t performed correctly.
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NCF Multistage fitness test (bleep test): Tests cardiovascular endurance
- Each 20m is called a shuttle
- Shuttles are repeated a number of times within a level
- With each level, the time between the beeps is shortened
- There are normally 20-15 levels
- This test was developed by the National Coaching Foundation
Needed:
- Firm surface with lines marked 20m apart
- Functional CD/Tape player
- NCF Tape/CD
- Measuring tape
- Marking cones
- A way to record your results
How to carry it out:
- Mark 20m area with comes
- Instructions are given at the start of the tape which also identifies the signals for a change of pace.
- Athletes must run slowly from one line to the next
- The pace must be judged as to put on foot on or beyond the line as the beep sounds
- If the athlete arrives at the 20m mark before the next beep, they must wait to hear it before proceeding
- When the athlete can no longer keep up with the bleeps, by arriving at the line after the beep, they withdraw.
- They are allowed 2/3 attempts to regain the pace before giving up completely.
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Harvard Step Test: Tests cardiovascular endurance
Needed:
- Gym bench (45cm high)
- Stopwatch
- Assistant
How to carry it out
- Step up on a standard gym bench once every 2 seconds for 5 minutes
- Have someone to help you keep to the required pace
- Record pulse rate after completing the test 1 minute, 2 minutes, 3 minutes
-Using the three pulse rate your level of fitness can be determined as follows:
Result = 30000 ÷ (pulse1 + pulse2 + pulse3)
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Illinois Agility Run: tests agility
Needed
- Flat surface
- 8 cones
- Stopwatch
- Assistant
- The length of the course is 10 metres and the width is 5 meters.
- 4 cones can be used to mark the start finish and the 2 turning point. Each cone in the centre is spaced 3.3 meters apart
How to conduct the test
- Athlete lies face down on the floor at start point
- On the command of the assistant, the athlete jumps to his/her feet and runs around the course as implied.
- The assistant records the total time taken to complete the course when the command was given to start.
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The Cooper 12 minute run: tests cardiovascular endurance.
Needed
- Measured track (400m marked every 100m)
- Stopwatch
- Assistant
How to conduct
- The test compromises how far an athlete can run/walk in 12 minutes. The assistant should record the distance to the nearest hundred metres. As we didn’t have a 400m track, we used our school playground, and we ran laps around the netball courts for 12 minutes. (1 lap = 3 netball courts)
To avoid injury in any of these fitness tests, a warm up was done before the tests, and a cool down to finish off.
The Six Week Training Programme Circuit
This is the circuit that I will complete 3 times during one training session once a week for six weeks. There are 6 different stations, aimed to improve my fitness in different areas of my body. I will complete the circuit in no particular order, but to vary my results, I will start on a different station each week. E.g. Week 1: Start on Sit-ups, Week 2: Start on Shuttle Runs etc.
The Stations
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Sit-ups – These will build up my overall fitness. They will work on my abdominal muscles and also my leg muscles. They will help to improve my muscular and cardiovascular strength and fitness
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Burpees – They will build up my overall fitness. They work the leg muscles (calf and quadriceps) and will build up my cardiovascular and muscular strength and endurance.
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Skipping – They are a good way of building up cardiovascular endurance and muscular endurance. They build up the muscles in the legs and arms.
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Step-ups – They are a good way of building up cardiovascular endurance and the muscular strength in the legs. They mainly work on the calf muscles and quadriceps.
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Press-ups – They work on overall strength on the body as well as overall fitness. They will improve muscular strength in the arms
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Shuttle Runs – They are a good way of building up overall fitness, they will mainly work on the leg muscles; calf and quadriceps. Shuttle runs are a good way of building up muscular and cardiovascular endurance.
Heart Rate
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Resting – This is my heart rate before exercise. To find out my resting heart rate, I will simply just measure my pulse for 30 seconds and multiply it by 2 before exercise.
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Working – My working heart rate is my pulse rate immediately after exercise. My working rate should be significantly higher than my resting rate if I have been exercising a sufficient amount.
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Recovery – My recovery rate is the time it takes for my working heart rate to return to the resting heart rate at the beginning. After exercise, I will measure my heart rate every minute until it returns to normal.
Recording
I completed the fitness tests before actually starting my exercise programme so that I could see how I fit I really was and so that after my programme, after I completed the fitness tests again, I could compare my two sets of results and see whether I achieved my overall aim. My results are in the table below:
As you can see, I have an average level of fitness. I could have done better in the abdominal curl test, which shows that my abdominal muscles are not very strong, but my endurance levels are quite low because you can see that I didn’t get a very high level in the multistage fitness nor did I complete the Harvard step test. I think I did reasonably well in the Illinois agility and finally the Cooper run showed that I had a decent amount of stamina, but I could have done better.
Below are the results of my 6 week exercise programme. There are 6 columns, one for the date which I completed each circuit, one for the type of training, the time it took to complete and my resting/working/ recovery heart rate. For week 6, I did not do a circuit, but instead chose to do a training session of 20 minutes of continuous running on my treadmill at home. I did this so that I could compare my heart rates and see whether it affected my overall training.
As you can see, I did manage to improve on my completion time each week and towards the end of the 6 weeks, I managed to improve on my recovery rate, except the last week of continuous training for which I was working for much longer, which is what probably caused my recovery rate to be higher. On the next page there is a graph which shows the improvement in my times from week 1-5.
It is easy to see from this graph that each week, my time was improving and in a graph, it is easier to see how my results improved every week.
After the 6 weeks, I completed the fitness tests again, to see if I had achieved my overall aim:
I managed to improve all my fitness test results compared to the first time around.
Evaluation
At the first training session, I assumed that it would be fairly easy to complete the circuit 3 times as there were only 6 stations but I was surprised because it took more work and it took me quite a while to complete the session. However, by the 2nd training session, I was more prepared and ready and each week, managed to improve my time. Each week, I tried to vary my results by starting on a different station. On the third week, which was the week I began with Burpees, I improved my time greatly as Burpees take a lot of energy out of me, but by beginning with them, I could get them out of the way and concentrate on the other stations. Each week, I found that my recovery rate was generally the same, until week 4/5 when it was quicker, which showed that I was indeed getting fitter.
In the final week, I found that I became tired very quickly when I did the continuous training as I am NOT a long distance runner and I was not very good at pacing myself. I managed to run for about 5 minutes at a decent speed and then slowed down significantly.
Did I achieve my aim?
My final fitness test results were better then my first fitness tests results, which concludes that I did in fact manage to achieve my aim, and improved my overall fitness. To keep my fitness levels constant or improve, I would have to carry on with my programme so that I would not apply the reversibility principle. I felt that I did manage to achieve my aim and was quite happy with my overall results but I know that I would have to carry on training if I wanted to improve my fitness for a long span of time. If I were to do this programme again and improve it, I would just make it 6 weeks of circuit training because I simply found the continuous training too hard and I wouldn’t be able to complete it more than once in the whole programme. I would also increase the amount of things I do at each station in the circuit, e.g. more sit ups, press ups, etc.
