Sarah Howley
I will be taking part in a fitness training programme to try and improve my hockey skills and overall fitness. By using this circuit, I can observe how my fitness improves throughout the programme. This is important as I need to know whether or not the test is working and how I could change it accordingly if it wasn’t helping me to progress in my chosen activity. I will perform these tests once a week over a period of 8–10 weeks to find these results and thus my progress. Hopefully, I will also be able to build up my stamina. I will know if this happens as I will be able to perform a larger amount of exercise at each station. I will be required to measure my resting pulse rate then after all of the stations have been completed; I will need to take my pulse again every 1 minute until it is back to my resting heart rate. My pulse rate all depends on my aerobic capacity. The greater my capacity is, the lower my pulse rate will be at the end of exercise. Also, it will return to normal more quickly.
The type of training I will be doing is called to circuit training, which is designed for a specific sport, in my case hockey. I have 8 stations where I will exercise and practise new skills. I will carry out a different exercise at each station for 30 seconds. Circuit training will improve my muscular endurance, cardiovascular endurance, aerobic fitness, muscular strength, and my speed and agility. It is important that each station works a different muscle group so that one group does not get over worked and cause damage. Circuit training is a training method which I feel will prove very good on improving my endurance and stamina. In the fitness tests I expect there will be a lot of difference when it comes to things like strength testing because of the gender related hormones produced by different sexes. Men have bigger muscles than women because they have higher testosterone levels and women are more flexible than men because they have less muscle. Oestrogen is responsible for the extra body fat on females and testosterone is responsible for the bigger size and muscle mass of males. This in return results to the fact that the basal metabolic rate is higher in males than in females because males lose heat through skin more easily than females. The body type of someone is also considered to be very important because someone who is an endomorph (someone with a stocky build) won’t be able to play hockey as well as someone who is a mesomorph (someone with a large muscular body) because around their heart they would have a lot of fat, which means that it wouldn’t be able to pump as efficiently as it would if there was less fat so the heart could pump more blood around to the muscles to move. Most people who play hockey would be mesomorph as they are muscular and have a lot of strength. The other components of fitness are balance, co-ordination and reaction time. As I am going to use a circuit training programme for my fitness tests, I will have 3 stations, which concentrate on these components. In hockey, balance is when you maintain the correct position when perhaps dribbling, which will be one of my stations, as this will improve my dribbling skills in game situations possibly when aiming to get past an opponent. Co-ordination is being able to move smoothly and accurately. It is important in hockey as you need to move around easily in the hockey match. Also, hand-eye co-ordination needs to be practised. I can do this by practising ‘keepy-upys’, where you bounce a ball on the end of a hockey stick, which will improve my reaction time. Reaction time is the time it takes to react to something. It is very important in hockey as you have to react very quickly to the things around you in a game situation. Strength relates to the ability of the body to apply force and strength is also the maximum force that can be developed in a muscle or group of muscles during a single maximal contraction. Strength is needed so the person can pass the ball and also shoot. Speed is the ability to put the body parts into motion quickly, or the maximum rate that a person can cover specific distance. Speed is important as it helps get past or ahead of defenders and score goals. Flexibility is the range of movements around a joint. It is determined by the elasticity of ligaments and tendons. For example, in a game situation, if someone intends to hit the ball to you but it goes in slightly the wrong direction, you would have to stretch to retrieve it. This is why flexibility is important. Body composition is the component parts of the body in terms of the relative amounts of the body fat compared to lean body mass. When looking at body composition, the following things can be looked at:
