Personal Exercise Plan

Muscular Endurance: Strength/Weakness

Justification: When batting my muscular endurance is a strength because I can use the muscles in my arms lots of times without getting tired like when bowling, but I can use my leg muscles in this way so my muscular endurance is strong in my arms but weak in my legs.

Cardio Vascular Endurance: Weakness

Justification: This is weak for me because I cannot exercise for a long period of time meaning that I cannot continuously bowl or field for a very long time without stopping.

Body Composition: Strength/Weakness

Justification: When batting my body composition is quite useful because I can use my body to be able to pull different shots but when bowling my body may slow me down, meaning that my pace will be much lower.

Types of Training:

Continuous Training:

• Continuous training includes any activities that require you to continuously train without stopping for a long period of time. It is used to improve cardiovascular endurance. Examples include jogging or swimming.

Interval Training:

• This is training that involves periods of work followed by periods of rest. It includes repetitions and sets along with short bursts. Examples include sprinting and swimming.

Fartlek Training:

• Fartlek training (Speedplay) is a combination of fast and slow running. Sometimes it can resemble interval training. It requires you to train at different intensities, and sometimes other factors vary such as the speed and distance. Examples usually include a mixture of sprints and jogs.

Circuit Training:

• Circuit training involves carrying out different activities to avoid exercising that same muscle at set-out stations. Activities are carried out at a station for a certain time before moving onto the next station. For example, one station could be for sit-ups and the next station could be for shuttle runs.

Weight Training:

• Weight training is a form of training that uses resistance by actual weights or by the number of times that the weight is lifted. This can improve your muscular strength or muscular endurance depending on the type of weight training done. For example high repetitions with low weights will improve your muscular endurance, but low repetitions with high weight will improve your muscular strength.

Other types- Cross Training:

• Cross training is a mixture of training often used to break up monotony of a single type of training. It can also help to reduce stress.

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Principles of Training:

S.P.O.R.T. Principle:

Sport:

• This is where we base our training around one particular area or, one specific muscle or muscle group. This influences how we train because we have to base all out training methods around this area

Progression:

• This is where the training activity we are doing gradually increases in intensity or difficulty, due an increase in distance or speed. Etc.

Overload:

• This means doing a little bit more work each time as you get stronger

Reversibility:

• When you take time off your training, you lose muscle. You lose money much quicker than you gain it, so you have to continue your training, otherwise you will have to do several weeks training to make up for the muscle you have lost in one week. This means when a training plan is created, you will have to train regularly.  

Tedium:

• This is where you need to vary the activities you do because otherwise you will become bored. So the training we plan out will have to include lots of different activities.

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  Another Method that can be used to develop our fitness:

F.I.T.T. Principle:

Frequency:

• This is how many times you do the exercise in a week to improve your fitness. The more times you per week you train, the higher your fitness level is likely to be.

Intensity:

• This is how hard you train in order to improve your fitness level. To improve your fitness, the intensity that you carry out the exercise must be able to take your pulse rate into the target range. Intensity could be the amount of weights you use, or the speed you train.

Time:

• This is the  that the exercise must be to improve fitness. This should be at least 20 minutes a day to benefit from the training and improve fitness.

Type:

• This is the sort of training that you do. The wider the variety of activities the more your general fitness increases, but if you are specialized in one activity there should be less of a variety in training. The variety also helps to keep the training more interesting so you are more likely to benefit if this happens.

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Strengths and Weaknesses:

First Physical Factor:

• The first goal I will try to achieve is my muscular endurance because this is the most important factor for an all-rounder, so I will benefit more if I train this the most.
• I will try and achieve this using mainly weight training, but also some other methods. This is because when using weight training I can follow a routine that will help me exactly to improve muscular endurance, whereas the other activities will also help to improve other factors so improving muscular endurance will not be the main outcome. I can lift weights using a high number of repetitions but with low weights. For example I could lift a 5kg weight with repetitions of 30 times to try and improve muscular endurance. I will then use overload and increase the number of repetitions I do to try and increase my muscular endurance.
• I will judge whether I have achieved this goal by using a fitness test and my own personal judgement. At the end of the six weeks I will take another test that will measure my muscular endurance such as the press-up test or the abdominal curl test. If my score has improved from before then I know that my muscular endurance has improved. I can also judge the amount by which I have improved in the test to try and work out how much my muscular endurance has improved. My personal judgement will also help here because I would have an idea of how much my muscular endurance has improved over the six weeks. I could both tests to see which parts of my body has improved its muscular endurance because the press-up test will show if my biceps and triceps have mainly improved and the abdominal curl will show if my abdominal muscles have improved in muscular endurance.

Second Physical Factor:

• The second goal I will try and achieve is to improve my cardiovascular endurance. This is because it is quite important for an all-rounder and I am severely lacking in this factor compared to the other factors.
• I will try and achieve this using mainly continuous training, such as long distance running. This is because I can use the overload principle and run a longer distance each week meaning that I will be able to exercise my entire body for a longer period of time which will be useful for me in an actual match of cricket. This method will also benefit me in another way because it also slightly helps to increase muscular endurance, so I will be improving my muscular endurance greatly through both training methods.
• I will judge whether I have achieved this goal by using both a fitness test and my personal judgement. I will take a test that measures my cardiovascular endurance such as the Multi-stage fitness test, which does this through measuring my VO2 max (maximum oxygen intake). It my score improves from before I will know that my cardiovascular endurance has improved. The difference in the level that I get will also tell me by how much I have improved. My personal judgement can be used because I will be able to feel the difference when I get to the stage where I dropped out last time. If my cardiovascular endurance has improved at that stage I should feel much less tired.

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Action Plan:

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Warm Up:

A warm-up is done for three main reasons: to prevent injury, to improve performance and to prepare psychologically for the event.

Pulse raiser:

• This should be a cardiovascular warm-up. This is because it will help to gradually increase the pulse rate towards the pulse rate that is needed for the main activity.
• The pulse raiser for continuous training should be five minutes on a treadmill at a very low intensity, being much lower than 40-50% of maximum heart rate. It can be a brisk walk or a very slow jog.

Stretching:

• This is done to loosen up the muscles, so that there is less chance of getting an injury, especially when the muscles contract.
• Because this is stretching for continuous training, the muscles in the lower part of the body like the hamstring, calf and quadriceps should be stretched more than the muscles in the upper part of the body.
• Below are two examples of stretches that can be done to stretch some of the muscles in the lower part of the body in your legs.

Warm-up Finish:

• This is done so that the pulse stays at a high rate before you start and it helps you to prepare psychologically for the training.
• It will be a quick sprint on the treadmill for about 10 seconds working between 70-80% of your maximum heart rate.

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Evaluation:

• Having followed my six week training log I found that both my cardiovascular endurance and my muscular endurance have improved from before I started the training.
• This is because I used the training principle of overload a lot in my training and so at the end of each week, I increased certain factors such as the distance for continuous training and the number of repetitions for weight training. This helped me to be able to train at a harder level than before so my fitness improves.
• As a result of training I had felt that I was improving, but I was judging this improvement in different ways. For my cardiovascular endurance, I recorded my time the first time I done this session in the week and the next time I done it again I checked if my time was lower, which means that I must have improved. I did the same for muscular endurance and checked the time that I finished each session in. I also judged it based on my personal judgement by seeing how much I thought my cardiovascular and muscular endurance had improved by.
• After these six weeks of training I decided to use the training principle of progression and so I chose another six weeks of training where I would improve these factors again, but this time I will make it slightly harder so that my fitness improves.
• Regarding my performance during this training schedule, I felt that I have done extremely well to complete this to my potential and I felt that both my cardiovascular endurance and my muscular endurance have improved. However I felt that my muscular endurance has improved more than my cardiovascular because during the six weeks I had had more sessions training muscular endurance than cardiovascular endurance, and the continuous training I did for my cardiovascular endurance also helped to improve my muscular endurance, although this was mainly in the legs while the weight training was for the arms.
• At the start of each week it felt very hard as I had used the principle of overload to try and improve my fitness, but by the end of each week I was able to perform very good in the sessions as my improved fitness helped my body to match the demands of the activities.

• I have also included another action plan and a training programme showing a week’s worth of training. This is because I have used progression to create another harder training programme that I can use to help improve my fitness in those factors: cardiovascular endurance and muscular endurance. However I have also decided to improve some other factors as well this time so that my health-related fitness factors would be as good as possible enabling me to play as good as possible.

Further Action Plan:

• This action plan is relevant to the new physical fitness factor that I will try to improve in my new training programme.

Weekly Evaluation:

Week One:

• I felt that both my sessions of weight training went well as I was able to complete the repetitions and the number of sets accordingly without great difficulty.
• I felt that first session of continuous training was very hard and so it did not go as well as I had hoped. This is because I misjudged the intensity that I was supposed to work at so by the end of the session I was very tired.
• I used the principle of overload to increase the number of repetitions in my weight training and the distance that I ran for the continuous training sessions for the next week. This could also be classified as progression because I had evaluated my cardiovascular endurance and muscular endurance by the end of the week and I had repeated the programme but this time making it slightly harder using overload. I also used specificity because both of these training methods specifically helped to improve cardiovascular endurance and muscular endurance.

Week Two:

• The increased distance in my continuous training went really well as I was able to finish it and I could feel that my cardiovascular endurance had improved.
• I had increased the number of sets in the weight training as I had found the previous repetitions and sets too easy. The sudden increase in both the number of repetitions and the number of sets I did meant that it made the session extremely difficult, but by the second session of the week I was able to carry it out.
• I tried to incorporate as much of the principles of trainings as possible such as individual needs by choosing activities that I know I would be likely to carry out, overload and progression by making the next week harder so that I train harder than normal to improve these fitness factors. This time I made sure that it was planned so that I was taking rest on the appropriate days and training for the right length of time on certain days. By planning it out it also made sure that other principles of training were also included such as FITT, regularity, moderation.

Week Three:

• I was able to complete all the sessions of the weeks very well as I figured that the training had helped me to improve these fitness factors slightly.
• However, the first sessions of both types of training: continuous training and weight training was always the most difficult as I had used progression to make the next week harder so these sessions were harder than last week’s, but the final sessions of each in the week were much easier as I had used overload which meant I was training harder than normal so both my cardiovascular endurance and muscular endurance were improving.
• I had followed the same principles of training as the previous week, particularly of overload and progression which are for the same reasons as before of improving these fitness factors.

Week Four:

• By this point of the schedule, the things that went well and didn’t go so well were the same as the use of overload and progression meant that I constantly kept on finding that the first sessions of each types of training session was the one that I struggled with but by the time of the final session of the week I was able to complete it with much less difficulty than before.
• I had followed the same principles of training as the previous week, particularly of overload and progression which are for the same reasons as before of improving these fitness factors.

Week Five:

• By this point of the schedule, the things that went well and didn’t go so well were the same as the use of overload and progression meant that I constantly kept on finding that the first sessions of each types of training session was the one that I struggled with but by the time of the final session of the week I was able to complete it with much less difficulty than before.
• I had followed the same principles of training as the previous week, particularly of overload and progression which are for the same reasons as before of improving these fitness factors.

Week Six:

• By this point of the schedule, the things that went well and didn’t go so well were the same as the use of overload and progression meant that I constantly kept on finding that the first sessions of each types of training session was the one that I struggled with but by the time of the final session of the week I was able to complete it with much less difficulty than before.
• As well as following the previous principles of training mentioned I also included tedium this time. This is because I thought that it would be very important as by the end of the six weeks I would be very bored by constantly doing the same schedule so for the final day I included a match of cricket.
• This match would also give me another advantage as I would be able to test out my improved fitness factors in a real match situation, and I will be able to see if I have improved as an all-rounder in cricket.

Review of the Whole Programme:

• It was very important to identify my strengths and weaknesses because this helped along with the graph to decide which two are the most important physical factors I must train in order to improve as an all-rounder.
• I then chose the two factors I needed to improve and made an action plan based on how I would improve this.
• Following the training programme was very hard as I had not followed a training programme like this before so I had to motivate myself to carry on with the programme every day. The lack of variety did not help my motivation as by the end of the six weeks I had almost learned what I was going to every day as it always followed the same order but with different distances and different number of repetitions. I could have improved this by including another session based on improving these two factors that would change every week. This would have helped to make my training programme and so it would have been much easier for me to motivate myself to carry out the training programme.
• My method of evaluation was quite good as I had used lots of different methods to try and see if these factors had improved. By using more methods I made sure that the evaluation was more reliable and more likely to be correct.

Bibliography:

• GCSE PE for Edexcel- second edition