Skill specific trainings
For detailed specifics, such as scores, weights lifted etc consults section 4; the diary.
3) Method of achieving goals
It is initially important to assess where I am now as the action plan is about to start. I consider myself a sporty person with athletic build qualities. In the Christmas period I wa lucky enough to be tested on the beep test, as part of basketball training, I got a personal best, scoring 13.6, this in accordance with score sheets for my age shows I have excellent lung capacity and stamina, Strength wise my shoulder press and bench press are letting me down, the circumference of my chest and bicep are; 39 inches and 13 inches respectively when tensed. I am able to lift in the region of 75Kg on the bench press. My strength and weaknesses sheets can be consulted at this point if there is any doubt as to what I aim to achieve and improve in the space of time allocated.
Strength training.
I intend to follow my schedule as above and to warm up in accordance with my weight training warm up drills.
Unfortunately I am not a member of a weight training gym, so I have designed my plan to utilise the equipment I have at home, these being free weights, stability ball and weights bench. These are the exercises I intend to incorporate into my personal workout, I have included details on how I perform them.
Shoulders
Lateral raise
- Stand with your feet shoulder width apart, with your knees slightly bent. Hold the dumb bells in front of your thighs, palms facing inwards, for full range of movement.
- Keeping your elbows slightly bent, breathe out as you lift the dumb bells up and out to the side, as you bring your arms up, imagine you are holding jugs of water and at the top of the movement you’re about to pour them out, bringing your arms round half a rotation. Return to the starting position.
Seated lateral raise on swiss ball (alternative to above)
Perform as a normal lateral raise as above, but by using the stability ball, you will be working on a less stable base which works your core muscles and joints to keep you stable.
Standing dumb bell press
- Stand with your feet shoulder width apart with your knees slightly bent . Hold the dumb bells above your shoulders, palms facing forwards elbows bent 90 degrees.
- Raise your arms above your head, pushing up through the movement and breathing out as you lift, keep your elbows unlocked as you lift and slowly return to the starting position. Repeat.
Chest
Swiss ball dumb bell chest press
- Lie face up on the ball making sure it supports your head and shoulders. Tuck your chin in, keep your back straight and your feet shoulder width apart, with your knees bent 90 degrees. Hold the dumb bells at chest level, arms bent 90 degrees with your palms in an overhand grip.
- Push the dumb bells straight up, keeping your palms facing forwards and your elbows slightly soft. Return to the start and repeat
Chest press
Exactly the same as above but on a stable base, ie. Workbench. Can also be done with one long barbell
Dumb bell flyes
A) Lie the face up on a flat bench, feet wider than shoulder width apart and your chin tucked into your chest. Bring your arms together above you at chest level, keeping your elbows slightly soft and your palms facing inwards
B) Lower the dumb bells to the side keeping your arms bent until your elbows are level with the bench. Return to the start and repeat.
Back
Alternate dumb bell row
- Rest your right knee a bench and your left foot on the floor, and keep a soft knee I your standing leg, with the dumb bell in the left hand use your right arm to support yourself by holding onto the bench, pull your stomach in, keep your back straight, tuck your chin in and drop your left arm down by your side.
- Pull the dumb bell up towards your body, bending your elbow to 90 degrees, and keeping your arm close to your body. Making sure you keep your chin tucked in, squeeze at the top of the movement, and return to the starting position, repeat and change sides.
Biceps and Triceps
Seated dumb bell curls on a swiss ball
- Sit facing forwards on a swiss ball, back straight, knees bent at 90 degrees and feet shoulder width apart, arms hanging straight down by your sides, palms facing towards the ball.
- Lift the dumb bells to chest height, rotating your palms as you lift, so they are facing towards your chest at the top of the movement. Make sure your elbows are bent 90 degrees. Keep your back straight and don’t lead forwards. Return to the start and repeat.
Standing barbell curl
A) Stand with your feet apart and your back straight, knees slightly bent, hold the bar in an underhand grip with your hands just brushing the outside of your thighs. Look straight ahead.
B) Keeping your wrists straight and your pelvis in, curl the bar towards your chest keeping your elbows close to your body. Return slowly to the start position and repeat.
Tricep dips (gym exercise)
A) On parallel bars, lift yourself up onto the bars angling your lower body away from you. Make sure your elbows stay close to your body, keep your head up, don’t lock your arms and cross your legs at the ankle.
B) Lower your body down by bending your elbows to 90 degrees, keeping your arms by your side. Return to the start and repeat
Chin-ups
- Stand beneath the bar reach your arms up towards the bar, jump enough to grip the bar tightly with an overhand grip.
- Keeping the body as loose as possible, pull yourself up until your chin is level with your hands, hold then gently lower back to starting position, and repeat.
Abs and lower back
Medicine ball crunches
- Lie face up on a swiss ball making sure its under your core and shoulders. Use two dumb bells twice the weight of what your lifting to anchor your feet. As you lean back, hold, hold the dumb bell under your chin. Make sure your head and upper back are touching the ball. Your feet shoulder width apart, knees bent 90 degrees, with the dumb bell below your chin, tuck your chin into your chest.
- As you prepare to crunch up, first of all put your tongue on the top of your mouth, tuck your chin in and nod your head before flexing your torso. Tip your chin first before moving into a sit up position. Crunch up slowly until the dumb bell is resting on your pecs. Pause, carefully return to the start and repeat.
Reverse swiss ball crunch
- Lie face up on a mat with your legs bent 90 degrees over a swiss ball. Keep your arms and palms down on the floor, reaching down towards your feet.
- Gripping the ball with your feet and legs, slowly lift your knees towards your chest by lifting your pelvis off the floor. Return to the starting position and repeat.
Lower body
Dead lift
- Stand over the barbell, feet slightly apart, with your left hand in an overhand grip and your right hand in an underhand grip, bend your knees, keep your body aligned and face forwards.
- Pull the bar up until your legs are straight, making sure you keep your back and arms straight and your knees and elbows soft. Return to the starting position and repeat.
Dumb bell lunges with box
- Stand with your right leg on a box and balance on the toes of your back foot. Keep your back straight and with a dumb bell in each hand have your arms by your sides, palms in.
- Bend your leading leg 90 degrees, making sure your knee doesn’t go beyond your toes. Keep your body weight on the heel of your leading leg. Make sure you keep your shoulders back, your chest out, your arms by your sides and your back leg bent at almost 90 degrees, but not touching the floor. Return to the start and change legs.
Barbell squat
- Rest the bar on your shoulders (never your neck) with your feet slightly wider than shoulder width apart, keeping your knees soft. Place your hands in a wide overhand grip. Look straight ahead.
- Squat down in a controlled motion, keeping your back straight and head level until your knees are almost bent 90 degrees. Make sure your knees don’t extend forwards of your feet, then return to the start making sure you don’t bounce. Repeat.
Skill related
Skill 1) +15 foot jump shoot, specifically stance.
Drills
These are designed to continually be done over the course of the programme so that a motor programme is eventually developed and stored in my long term memory, so the process will no longer be cognitive. Leaving me valuable time to focus my attention on other aspects or stimuli from the environment.
Skill two.
Pushing the ball up the court.
These initial drills are designed to extend the players percept ional skills of where the ball is with out actually maintaining visual contact with it.
Progressing onto this exercise brings into play the idea of an opponent, and pressure to keep the ball from him.
This next drill is designed to make guards such as my self run with the ball from the wings up the court.
This drill known as the “Lakers” drill is designed to push the players limits. The player ie. Me must run up the court in control of the ball in as few a bounces as possible, the target is 3 bounces then a lay up that must be scored. This can be done according to my coach, although sceptical I intend to aim for this target. The secret is to push the ball way in front of yourself and run to catch up with it, not bounce it directly in front of you so it bounces up behind you or prevents progress.
Tactic
Coach has leant me several videos and books on the tactics of basketball so I can rehearse visually in my mind and try to gain a better understanding of what I am trying to achieve. Every training session coach has agreed to help myself and the team become more proficient at space hunting, and specifically the “one two” passing combination, these include drills as listed below.
Record of implementation of action plan
I have decided to display and record this information in diary form.
Method of evaluating action plan.
Unfortunately due to technical problems with both the digital camera and camcorder, it hasn’t been possible to use either, thus I am relating or showing the information either in table form or as peer or coach analysis.
The best way of evaluating my action plan I feel is to compare my initial targets and goals with a check list of completed or not.
Skill 1: start percentage 50%
Final percentage averaged over 10 sets of 10 from specified distance is 70% in practice, dropping to around 55-60% in a game situation (although this is not as accurate as I did not shoot 100 shots in the game)
My coach also wrote statements which he has allowed me to quote him by, thus I will be including these where appropriate.
“Jonathan has worked exceptionally hard on all aspects of his game, largely due to the increased goal of the PPP for his coursework. It has also helped bring on his peers and has added a change of atmosphere to the training sessions. Initially his shooting wasn’t particularly poor, but I felt he wasn’t reaching his percentage potential, and often some of the sure shoots that he would be expected to score were being missed, after discussion with Jon a while back we identified that he was preparing incorrectly for the shot, so I put together some drills and practices, that I believe he has wrote about, and has been practising at training, unfortunately Jon did not play against the Birmingham Bullets this week due to fitness issues. However previous to this when we played Derby storm, I noted Jonathans improvement in posture and shooting technique, this was mirrored by his shooting percentage in the game. Recently in training his shooting percentage has increased, and increased to somewhere in the region of 70% I would imagine, this is excellent for his age group, hopefully with continued effort and an ever growing partnership Jonathan can further add to this and raise the percentage in the game, well done Jon”
Table of shoots scored on the Wednesday training session of every week and the game on the Saturday
Thus I generally felt that I had attained my original goal, they key now is to further improve, namely in a game situation and try and make it as consistent as possible.
Skill 2) This table shows how many times I attempted the “lakers” drill in training, how many bounces it took me, and what the end result was.
As we can see from the table I didn’t actually meet my goal completely, however I successfully made it down the court in 3 bounces with two steps for the lay-up. Towards the end I found I could do this more consistently but still with no basket. However I could quite competently score a basket, by taking just one more bounce. This is an acceptable compromise as one more bounce does not hinder progress by a great deal and allows me to score the points, as its no use giving up time and energy if I’m not scoring at the end, which is ultimately what the game is about.
To improve, I am going to continually work on this drill along with my team mates having seen the devastating effect a highly organised, quickly executed fast break can be. I will do this by applying a programme or schedule for myself to follow post the PPP to help focus upon my weaknesses in the game.
Tactic)
I believe this is the area where I excelled the most. How ever we found this the most difficult area to score as its so broad. The original idea that I suggested in my SMARTER plan was to record passes etc and record how many I received and played. This just wasn’t practical, thus I opted for the opinion of my coach Richard Parker and the captain of my team and England, Richard Garside.
Richard Parker; “Again due to Jonathans willingness to learn and will to succeed, not only myself and Jonathan but other team players and parents noticed the increased awareness that Jonathan had gained. After continued positive feed back, Jon’s confidence was high and we all saw a different side to his game in the later weeks. His turn over to success pass ratio was extremely promising; he very rarely misplaces the ball. His movement is far better than before, although I would like to see a further gain in this area, as I still believe he has more to show. Overall though, Jonathan’s offensive movement has become more varied and greatly improved benefiting not just Jon, but the whole team.”
Richard Garside; “Recently we have all noted Jon’s increasing levels of attainment on the floor, he is becoming better all the time, we all now know when Jon is playing as he creates so many more opportunities than before, keep it up.”
Common tactics I tried
Strength)
This is perhaps the area that I knew the most about from the beginning, looking at the target I set myself of 90Kg I believe I attained this, again near the end, but that was to be the case with all of my goals. Having reached my target I want to further improve, although I don’t believe I can continue to improve at this rate, I believe I did so at such a rapid rate, because of the Creatine. From Men’s Health Magazine they quote “being able to bench press one and a half times his own body weight is considered excellent” I would like to aim for this target in the future, it means bench pressing another 30kgs to make it 120 Kg, this is a fare way off, but with the help of coach and my peers and focused training I believe I could reach this by the end of the year.
I did notice the difference it brought to my game of basketball, as I mentioned in the diary, I felt a threat on the court and was able to physically command the ball and the space I wanted better, this made for an all round better performance.
Thus I believe my attainment in this area was particularly agreeable, proving that specific goal setting training, ie. My action plan was and is successful
Evaluation of action plan
Initially I want to visually display how effective the action plan was by crossing the SMARTER guide lines with the 4 areas I was working on.
Y=Did meet/agree original idea (was effective in original state)
N= Did not meet/agree with initial idea (was not effective)
As the table shows I had very few problems, thus I deem that the action plan was a success combined with the results of attainment.
Looking at the less effective areas
- Measurable tactic.
As I mentioned earlier I initially thought I would ask my dad to record how many passes I received and how many I successfully passed on etc, thus gaining an idea of my attainment. The fact is that the tactic I set was specific, ie breaking the forward movement down into one two passes, but I found this easy, after a few practises I was much better and concentrated my space finding and creating..
This is impossible to measure in table form etc, as there is so much variance as to what a player or even the marker considers space making or creating as. It cannot be defined easily. This is why I felt the need to get my coach’s and captains analysis of what I was doing on court, as I could not use a camcorder to capture a game, however I did try and illustrate what I was trying to achieve with the diagrams.
Realistic skill 2
I was optimistic to say the least when Coach initially presented me with the idea of covering the court in 3 bounces and scoring, but I wanted to push myself. Although in hindsight I can agree that in the time I was never going to be able to achieve that, I still believe it was the correct choice at the time as it pushed me on, I am a positive person and well motivated and like a challenge, so when I wasn’t succeeding near the start it simply spurred me on to complete it.
Enjoyable fitness component
I have to be honest, I really did not enjoy working out this regularly in my home with no atmosphere etc, I prefer to be running, in the outdoors. However I appreciate the work has to be put in and I don’t particularly see it as a hindrance, as I know it has to be done. However in the future to improve I want to exercise either with colleges or at a gym where there is an atmosphere etc, rather like when I to boxercise classes.
Overall I believe my action plan was a complete success it has brought on my game considerably, I believe it was so successful because I was specific, I had good facilities to utilise and a very high level of coaching available to me.
The way I learnt which was the key to my success
I believe it is largely due to my coach Richard parker. After researching I realised how and why he was getting us to do certain drills. For example the drill concerning jump shots; He went over this literally tens of times, reinforcing it, known as repetition of a skill drill. Because he;
1. Arranged it to represent a game situation in a structured environment
2. The structure allowed behaviour shaping
3. Performance took the shape of trial and error
4. And he applied reinforcement to me after the drill had been done.
When I was resorted back to the cognitive stages of learning, i.e. correcting my stance, he often used “observational learning” as a method of getting me to understand and retain the information, because it added me with a visual model or what I was trying to achieve. Aided by the training sessions that I was doing, ie. Plentiful, short sessions, well suited to learning discrete tasks such as the jump shot.
At the associative stage, coach continually demonstrated and set me up in a structured environment. Finally towards the end of the training the movement went back to being autonomous but performed technically better than before.
I also believe the mental rehearsing I continually practised aided me, because it allowed me to cognitively think about the Kin aesthesis of the movements and desired outcome.
I also believe the success or rate of, was partially to do with me. I have been performing and playing sports all of my life and I tend to be proficient at any sport I play, because I have natural abilities such as balance, co-ordination and explosive strength. Thus I believe I had positive transfer throughout my learning. As well as being exceptionally determined, both intrinsically and extrinsically.
Strength wise I believe the success was due to the motivation of myself to continually train and be committed to my goals, but also with the added intake of protein and amino acids provided by the Creatine.
Improvements either made or for the future
As discussed earlier I made one or two changes for example the way I recorded the tactic. However I found the exercises and drills to all be of great benefit and found no need to change them.
In the future, I would try and change the environment upon which I worked in, and continue to train in this manner. I found the breaking down of what needs to be done via the mesocycles etc very beneficial, as it kept me on target. The training is not over I have my long term goal set as the Crystal palace hoop fest and I intend to go there being able to bench press 120Kg , run the court in 3 bounces, score 70% in a game shot wise and be spatially aware.
