Specific – You must chose the correct part of the body for the sport you are doing, and only work that part of the body.
Progression - Your body takes time to adapt to the demands placed on it. So you should build up your exercise levels gradually, or progressively.
Overload – You must work your body harder than usual and over time it adapts to meet the demands
Ways to overload
- Increase frequency of exercise
- Increase intensity of exercise
- Increase time of exercise
Reversibility – Improvement on fitness do not last forever. The harder you exercise the fitter you will get. However if you stop training completely, your fitness will return to the same state as it was before you started training.
This happens in the ratio of 3:1 - so if you train constantly for nine months, if you stop, three months after your fitness will be the same as it was before you started.
Time – the amount of time the training/ exercises are going to last.
Out of the main components of fitness, golf requires three of them.
Power – a combination of strength and speed. This is so I can get the maximum distance from a correctly executed golf shot.
Co-ordination - the ability to move body parts, both, quickly and smoothly. So that when I take my back swing it comes down and hits the ball instead of missing it completely.
Timing – ability to react at the right moment. Everything that is meant to move moves at the correct time e.g. the Elbows breaking at the right time in the back swing and follow through.
I will also use the Principle of FITT.
This reference to
F I T T
Frequency
Frequency is a key component of the FITT Principle. Remember that it's important to know why you're exercising and what you want to achieve before rushing into any exercise program.
Adjust the number of times I will exercise per week to reflect my current fitness level, the time you realistically have available, your other commitments like rugby and coursework, and the goals you've set for yourself.
• Intensity
This is an extremely important aspect of the FITT principle and is probably the hardest factor to monitor. The best way to gauge the intensity of your exercise is to monitor your heart rate.
If you don't want to borrow a heart rate monitor, simply count your heart rate over a 15 second period. All you need is a wristwatch that has a "seconds" display. Feel for your heart beat by either placing your hand over your heart or by feeling for your pulse in your neck or on your wrist. Count the beats over a 15 second period and then multiply by 4. This will give you your exercise heart rate in beats per minute.
• Time
The time you spend exercising is also an important part of the FITT Principle. The time dedicated to exercise usually depends on the type of exercise undertaken.
For example, it's recommended that to improve cardiovascular fitness you'll need at least 20 to 30 minutes of non-stop exercise. For weight loss, more time is required; at least 40 minutes of moderate weight bearing exercise. However, when talking about the time required for muscular strength improvements, time is often measured, as a number of "sets" and "reps." A typical recommendation would be 3 sets of 8 reps.
• Type
Like time, the type of exercise you choose will have a big effect on the results you achieve. That's why it's important to know what you want to gain from your efforts.
For example, if you're looking to improve your cardiovascular fitness, then exercises like walking, jogging, swimming, bike riding, stair climbing, aerobics and rowing are very effective.
Muscles often work in pairs, which work against each other. These are called antagonistic pairs.
The muscles in the upper arm control the bending and straightening of the arm. The two muscles, the biceps and triceps are working against each other. When the biceps contracts it gets shorter. It pulls on the radius and thus the lower arm is raised and the arm bends. The triceps muscle is relaxed.
To straighten the arm the reverse happens. The triceps contracts straightening the arm, while the biceps relaxes.
Antagonistic muscles can be found all over the body. In the iris of the eye there are two sets of muscle. There are radial muscles, which radiate from the pupil like spokes of a bicycle and there are circular muscles. The radial muscles make the pupil of the eye wider, while the circular muscles make the pupil smaller.
The Warm Up.
This is very important because it gets blood flowing around the body around the rate it will be flowing when you exercise and it most importantly loosens the muscles before they begin working. A Warm Up it vital because it helps prevent injury by having the muscles prepared for exercise before they actually do the exercise.
There are three main parts of a warm up
- The Pulse Raiser
- Muscle Stretch
- Joint Immobilisation
Muscle Stretch and Joint Immobilisation are very important in golf.
For my warm up I am going to use a section of the gym and split it up as follows.
Side bends.
This stretches the Oblique
Muscle and also help stop a
‘Stitch.’
Tricep stretch.
Trapezius stretch.
Biceps and Lower Back Stretch.
I will place my arms horizontally in line with my shoulders and turn my upper body round using momentum from the lower back and the moving of my biceps backwards.
Many of these stretches can be seen on the First Tee box at every golf club. People often stretch the lower back, shoulders and arms on the first tee of in the locker room.
Because I am focusing on my upper body, specially my arms and shoulders, I am not doing any leg or lower body stretches.
The Cool Down.
This is used to help your body to recover after vigorous exercise.
It is just as important as the warm up.
I will keep active; in other words, keep moving my muscles for five minutes after training to allow my muscles to cool-down. It is very important to properly stretch the muscles that I used in the weights training.
For my program I will be using weights training because it will result in
- Increased strength and muscle tone.
- Increased heart and lung efficiency.
- Increased flexibility, mobility and coordination.
- Reduced risk of high blood pressure.
- Provides an outlet from work or other stressful elements.
To insure my Workout is successful I need to be working inside my Anaerobic Threshold.
My resting heart rate is 64BPM.
My Max Heart Rate is 220 – My Age. (205BPM)
This mean that my Anaerobic Threshold is
The amount of time it takes you get from your Max Heart Rate to your Resting Heart Rate is called your Recovery Rate. We expect that over the course of our training program that our Recovery Rate will become less the more we work. In other words, the more fit you are the lower your Recovery Rate should be.
Red line = Week 1
Blue line = Week 2
Green line = Week 3
Black line = Week 4
Pink line = Week 5
Before we started we worked out our Resting Heart Rates. This is the amount of times your heart beats per minute and is measured in B.P.M or Beats Per Minute. Mine is 64 BPM.
This table shows my heart rates during my exercise programme. We took our heart rates every week and recorded them as follows.
We have taken our times as soon as we finish exercise, after 1 minute, after 3 minutes and after 5minutes.
After each week I wrote down how I felt.
Week 1: this session was nice to get started with. It was not to difficult but from it I know that a lot of progression will be needed.
Week 2: this week was harder than last week and afterwards I was starting to feel small pain in the areas I need to train, arms, lower back, Abdominals.
Week 3: I have clearly chosen my levels of progression correctly because again I am feeling tired and sore after the exercise.
Week 4: This week was very difficult because I had a rugby match on Saturday and one on Wednesday, this meant I was already very tired going into the program.
Week 5: Again I had rugby so I was tired before I started. However the program seems to be working because today we did our post-test scores and at a first glance I am very happy with the scores.
Before starting our P.E.P we measured certain factors of our strength. These are pre-test scores. Because I was always going to build up strength I did not need to take part in endurance or speed test. I measured my strength by testing
- How many press ups I could do in 1 minute
- How many sits up I could do in 1 minute
- How many reps of 30kg I could deltoid press
- Bicep curls with 10kg dumbbells
Here are my results for my pre-test scores.
After we had completed our programme we again tested these different exercises to see if we had improved on our previous results. These new results are called our Post-test results. In theory if these results are better and we indeed are ‘stronger’ then our programme has worked and is successful.
Here are my post-test scores.
As you can see from the tables I have improved on every one of the exercise I tested. I will now show this in graphs.
Here is a graph showing all my Heart Rates. This will show whether my recovery rate has increased or decreased.
In this section I am going to evaluate three main sections of my coursework, Planning, Performing and Monitoring.
Then I will give a final evaluation of how I thought the P.E.P went.
Planning.
It was only after the pre-test that I could start planning my program because there was no point in wasting time building muscles that are adequate. This is the part of the Principle of Training called Specificity. This means that you should make sure you are working the muscles that you need to be working. In other words there is not a lot of point in me doing exercise for the legs, when the legs are not overly used in golf. This will only tire me out and waste time.
After I have now completed my exercise program I think my planning went very well. After doing all the exercises each week I found my muscles were sore, this must mean that my program was working and affecting the muscles it need to affect.
I don’t think my program was too easy or too hard. I think it was perfect.
I don’t think that changing the order of my exercises would have helped it much because they were all for the upper body so my upper body was going to be working the whole time. I also noticed after every week my recovery rate was decreasing.
Performing
I think that I applied all the Principles of Training correctly.
Specific - I chose only exercise that would affect my upper body, the aim of the program being to build up my muscles and physique for a good and strong golf swing.
So I picked only upper body exercises and focused on the deltoids, biceps, triceps and lower back. In other words all the muscles used in a golf swing.
Progression
As you can see from the five week table at the back of this piece of coursework I often used the same weight but different amount of reps. However I did increase the weights I used quite a lot from Week 1. By Week 5 I was working with weights up to 20KG more. However even with the weight increase I think the program was very manageable. There was no point when I had to stop and say, ‘That’s too much, I can’t do it.’ Nor was there any point I finished an exercise and thought, ‘That was easy.’
The only problem I encountered while doing my program was that I had a lot of rugby matches and badminton training. This meant I was quite tired before I even started.
I felt that my program kept me busy for the whole time we were given each week and so I didn’t get bored, like you would at a gym. I was working against the time because sometimes I would have to wait to get on a machine or use a different piece of equipment.
Monitoring.
All you need to look at are the tables showing my pre and post test scores to see that I chose the right exercise and worked on the right parts of my body. Those tables clearly show that in every test I was able to perform more repetitions of the exercises after than I could before.
Luckily after my first week of the program I did not feel as if my program was going to be impossible, so I did not make any modifications to my exercise program at all.
I think the order in which the exercises were performed is not very important to me, because all my exercises are for my upper body in golf, so it will be working the whole time. This may be important for someone doing rugby, for instance, if they want to build their whole body they will have to space out their exercises so one part of the body doesn’t get too overworked and eventually injured.
After each week my muscles felt tired and sore, which means that the program was working and I was getting stronger, then the post-test proved that I was getting stronger.
Final
Overall I am very happy with the outcome of my P.E.P because I have become stronger, which was my Aim.
I think that this was the best possible outcome with the time we were given to complete this coursework and the resources we were given to actually do the exercises with.
The only problem was that the exercises could not always be done in the correct order because other people were using the equipment.
I am very happy that I have met the aim of this coursework and think I have done it in a well-structured way.
I am also pleased that my post test scores were in fact better than my pre test scores, thus meaning I have become stronger and can now hit a more powerful golf shot. Without this happening the exercise program would have been wrong. Also from doing all the tests and exercises I have found it easier walking around the golf course as I am now less tired after a round.
I have done other small tests that were not included in the P.E.P and have found that I am in fact stronger and can lift more weight on different machines in the gym. I have also noticed a few yards distance increase at the Driving Range. This was a test I did, I hit the ball in a controlled, powerful way before the program and when I measured again after the program I was consistently hitting the ball five yards further.
Form looking at all my graphs of Heart Rate and Recovery Rate I have also found out that my Rates have decreased, so the program has worked because this is what I wanted to happen because the quicker your recovery rate, the fitter you are.
I am very happy with how the whole piece of coursework went and am glad that I have met the Aim of the P.E.P.