Football - The fitness training project is about me as an individual performing a circuit with different exercises all relating to one sport which I have chosen to do.

GCSE Physical Education (Sport & Coaching)

Mohammed Rafiq

Introduction-

The fitness training project is about me as an individual performing a circuit with different exercises all relating to one sport which I have chosen to do. The circuit training is done over a five week period and I have to record my results and any progress or difficulties I have stumbled across.

The sport I have chosen to use for my circuit training is football for a number of different reasons. I enjoy playing football and I seem to have a natural interest for the sport. I have been playing football for a long time and I have seemed to have mastered a few techniques.

Fitness is the ability to meet demands of the environment. There are two different types of fitness, general and specific. I am going to explain both types of fitness in more detail. It is important that you are fit rather than unfit, if you are fit you can cope with the demands and the activities without getting too worn out.

General fitness relates to everyday use of your body. There are several different aspects. Stamina or endurance – this is the ability of the body to keep on going without getting too tired. It is made up of Cardiovascular endurance and muscular endurance. The two are related because your muscles will fatigue easily if they do not receive enough sufficient oxygen. Strength, flexibility and speed are also the other aspects of general fitness. General fitness keeps you healthy and it prevents accidents from occurring. We all require a minimum level of general fitness, to cope with the demands of everyday life.

In some areas of sport specific fitness is required where there is more skill involved. Ice skating is a sport where more skill is involved. These different aspects build up specific fitness. Power, agility, balance, co-ordination, speed of reaction and timing.

The circuit will help in different ways, to get me prepared to play football, and build my endurance and stamina. The circuit training would help me to organise my muscle training, and help me get fitter over the five week period. I will also become more organised and I will be able to play football with confidence. Each week I will have set a target for myself which I will have to beat the following week in a limited period of time. This will help build my confidence and I will be building up my self-esteem.

The circuit would also help improve my skills in football, EG. Passing and shooting, I will hopefully be more accurate before the five week period ends.

If you want to get fitter or improve your skills at your sport, training offers you a programme of exercise to help you reach your fitness goals. It is based on four different principles.

The Principle of specificity- each exercise has an effect on your body. You have to select which part of you body you want to exercise EG. If you want toned biceps you will have to lift weights, but it won’t affect you abdominal muscles. You also have to choose the right exercises, and the training programme must be designed to suit you.

Principle of overload- to improve fitness you have to overload it to make it work harder than usual. You can overload your body using three different methods.

By increasing the reps or duration
By increasing the intensity of the exercise. How hard you work

By increasing the time, so you overload you body making it work harder.

The principal of progression- Your body takes time to get used to the increased demands on it. So you should build up you exercise gradually, or you will be risking torn muscles or other injuries, which could set you back to the beginning where you started. If you exercise at a constant level, your fitness will remain at the same level. So it is important that you slowly increase your exercises. The Principle of reversibility- this is unfortunately the down side of exercise, if you stop exercising your body will loose it’s fitness and fall back to level one. The muscles that are not used will atrophy (waste away)

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There are a number of safety aspects involved when performing your circuit training. You have to make sure that you are in an open space, and it is not overcrowded, so there is less chance of an accident occurring with a fellow pupil. You have to make sure that there is an adult in charge so if any difficulties do occur, the adult would be there for any necessary precautions, and deliver first aid. My intentions for the circuit would be that it would keep me fit, and gradually increase my stamina and fitness level. I would also be better at playing football because the circuit training would have helped increase my skill and accuracy. I have to do the circuit training over a five week period, five different times. After the five week period I will still carry on with the exercises in my own time, and take my body to the limit. I would have liked to progress enormously over the five week period and I would like to see myself fitter and more skilful.

Warm up-

It is important to warm up and cool down because every training session has a warm up, the activity and the cool down. It is important to do a warm up because a warm up prevents you from major injuries because it makes your muscles more flexible. A warm up is light exercise for preparation purposes for the main activity. A warm up prevents you from major injuries, this is because it warms your muscles and make them more flexible. Stretching also decreases the chance of obtaining an injury in the main activity. It helps stop muscles, tendons, and ligaments get strained or torn. The next objective is to prepare yourself mentally, with an exercise relating to your sport.

Cool down- the cool down is equally as important as the warm up. The cool down helps your body to recover after vigorous exercise. Without the cool down the lactic acid would remain in your muscle cells for a longer period of time, and stopping suddenly after vigorous exercise could make you faint. After the vigorous exercise you can start off with gentle exercise such as jogging. This is very effective because it clears the lactic acid away faster from the muscle cells, and it keeps your circulation going at a steady speed. After vigorous exercise your muscles often get tight, if you finish with some stretching you can prevent this from happening.

If you are running in a marathon it is vital that you perform the warm up and cool down. When you are warming up for the marathon, the best thing to start of with is light jogging. This will increase the flow of oxygen to the muscle cells where it is required, the warm up will also make the muscle cells more flexible so you are less likely to tear or damage muscle tissue. It is just as important that you cool down because after vigorous exercise such as running a marathon, your muscles build up excessive lactic acid, if it isn’t removed quickly with a cool down you could suffer from cramps. Stretching prevents this, it removes lactic acid from muscle cells, and it also helps loosen your muscles and prevent stiffness.

It is equally as important to cool down as it is to warm up. Cooling down helps circulation going and gets rid of lactic acid faster which build up in the muscle cells, and if it is not removed fast enough you could suffer from cramps, when you breathe in oxygen it gets rid of the lactic acid. The cool down helps loosen your muscles and prevents stiffness.

My chosen sport-

The sport I am relating to my circuit is football, I will have six different stops in the circuit where I will be performing different exercises relating to my chosen sport. At each circuit I will perform as many reps as I can in 1min, and after that have a 30sec rest before moving onto the next circuit.

The different exercises I am going to be using in the circuit are sit ups, star jumps, step ups, shooting, passing and squat thrusts. I have chosen these different exercises because they all relate to my sport and they warm me up and cool me down. For each different exercises each time I am using different muscles all over my body, this is a good thing because the exercise isn’t concentrated in one area.

I do the sit up when it works my abdominal muscles whereas if I perform the step ups it will target my leg muscles. The passing and shooting is the main activity for me in the circuit because it is relating back to my chosen sport, football. I can also increase my accuracy and skill in these areas. The exercises that I have chosen their benefit to my sport is that they target most of the muscles I would use in the sport. It would also help me increase my accuracy and skill towards football.

Current fit level-

My age is 15, height approximately 5ft 5 inch and my weight is 12lb.I am not a very fit person at this precise moment, but I am relying on the circuit training and my determination to get fitter before the five week period ends. In five weeks time I would like to see myself doing sit ups without much difficulty. I would also liked to have increased my skill at football and I should have lost some weight or got fitter.

What is circuit training-

Circuit training consists of what I think would be necessary exercise relating to my sport. In my circuit there are six different stations, where I will be performing different exercises. It is vital that you progress each time you perform an exercise at a station. This is because it increases your level of self confidence and you know you can reach a realistic target, which you have set for yourself, and it can meet your own demands. There is no point of setting yourself a target in competition with a world champion because you have to work at your own speed and intensity. It is also vital that you progress so your level of fitness keeps on rising, or it will drop and the circuit would be a failure.

A circuit is mainly judged my reps, this is because you are given a certain time in this case 1min. In this time you have to perform an exercise and try and do as many reps as you can, pushing your body to the limit. Then the next time you perform the circuit you will have set yourself a target to beat your old score in the same allotted time. So you would have to work even harder to reach your goal.

The advantages of circuit training are that it can make you fitter if you do it properly. It is up to you which different exercises you want to include in your chosen circuit. You can work to your own ability because circuit training is not a competition against others it is a competition against yourself, to try and beat the number of reps that you did last time. You can also use circuits to improve your skill and accuracy at a certain sport, and you usually gain a lot of confidence and determination because you have set yourself a goal to reach. If circuit training is done properly, after a couple of weeks if you are improving you should be able to tell that you are getting fitter, but if you stop circuit training your fitness level will fall back to level one. The only disadvantages of circuit training are that it needs a lot of space and it needs good planning or it can get overcrowded.

My circuit-

The one aspect I would like to improve on and keep on building on is my fitness level. I want to take my body to the limit, and become a fitter and healthier person, and I think that the circuit training programme can really help. There are six different stations in my sport and at each station there is a different exercise. The benefit of the exercises that I have chosen towards my sports are that the sit ups target my abdominal muscles, making my chest stronger and it is a warm up. The star jumps makes my leg muscles move and slowly the demand for an increase of oxygen begins. There is less chance of an injury occurring in one of my leg muscles because I have already trained that part of my body. The step ups provide a similar effect on my also body as the star jumps but more explosive energy is required and you have to carry out the step ups at a faster rate. The shooting and passing is related to my sport it alert. The squat thrusts also target my legs and again explosive energy is needed.

I find that doing sit ups are difficult for me because I never do them, so over the five week period I hope I can do sit ups with confidence. Step ups and star jumps are fairly easy for me because no skill is required and nearly anyone can attempt these exercises and pass. At first the shooting was difficult, because I was not aware that the goal was going to be so small and there was a specific target or area where you had to shoot from. Passing was not difficult but minor skill was required. You had to pass to your partner quickly and accurately so you could receive the ball back just as fast. The squat thrusts were one of the most difficult exercises I have ever done because I have never done it before, and it looked a bit funny the first time I dine it, but I think I got the hang of it over the five week period.

Implementation-

Completed results sheet.

Evaluations – Weekly-

Week 1- this is the first time I have done any proper exercise in a long time. I got out of breath very quickly and I struggled. This indicates that I am not very fit. The squat thrusts were impossible to do because I have never done them before, my score was lower than my partners, but as I said before the circuit training is not a comparison with others. I had pushed my body to the limit. The things that I succeeded in were passing, step ups and star jumps. I was amazed at my own accuracy, another let down for me was the sit ups, at first I was rather slow but nearer to the end I picked up speed. Overall I think it didn’t go very well but I gave it 100%. Lets hope that next week I can succeed where I failed.

Week 2- things went slightly better than last week but still not to perfection, how I would like them to go. There were still a couple of things I would have liked to improve upon. Again I was disappointed by my results at the squat thrusts station, I was determined to get much higher than I had achieved in week 1. I only did a rep higher which slightly boosted my confidence but I wanted more. My shooting and passing seemed to have been developing satisfactorily as I had predicted, but the good thing for me was that I had increased the reps in every station through determination. Although the increase was not very large I was happy with what I had produced.

Week 3- I wasn’t very happy with my shooting today. My confidence is low because I didn’t build upon my score last week. It remained the same and I am disappointed. I wasn’t concentrating very well and my accuracy wasn’t as good as usual. I made a slightly larger increase in the number of reps I did at each station, excluding the shooting, than last week. I am happy to say that I as performing the sit ups and the squat thrusts satisfactorily from my point of view. My accuracy in passing is developing very rapidly and I am very happy with the result.

Week 4- I am happy to say this week that I have increased by more than 1 rep in each station. It was a very difficult task, but I think I did superb. My confidence is high. The squat thrusts and sit ups are developing slowly, but as I said I have done better than when I started out. I am also happy to say that I improved on my shooting by giving it everything I have got and not taking easy chances for granted. This week think I did terrific in all areas and I don’t have any complaints. The only thing is I have to try and build on my scores for next week. That might be a tough test, because I have already pushed my body to the limit.

Week 5- this week I have improved, but I am not happy with the improvements I have made. It was the last circuit training in my coursework, so I wanted to surprise myself. Everything progressed slightly, but I put more effort into the shooting and I got a good result out of it. I think I could have don much better t as I said before a small improvement was a lot for me because I had already given the circuit training 100% from week one. Altogether I am pleased about my progression over the five week period.

Nothing was hard because I knew I wanted to try something new that I usually don’t do for exercise or something that I don’t do that often. That is why I chose the squat thrusts so I could make myself a challenge. If I had another chance to do the circuit training again I wouldn’t change anything because I loved doing all the exercises and I think they all posed a challenge towards me, a challenge that I gave a good reply to.

My technique was simple because I gave every week and every station 100% and I tried to succeed each time.

Overall evaluation-

I enjoyed doing the circuit training a lot, because it raised my self confidence and I know now how to perform exercises which before I thought were impossible for myself. If I was to do the circuit training again I wouldn’t change anything. This is because the exercises were a challenge for me and something new and I enjoyed doing them.

Between week 2 difficulty. I had thought I and week 3 the progressions were not very high, and this posed a bit of a problem. For the good progressions I had given it all I had, so there is no reason why I shouldn’t be pleased with myself. I mastered squat thrusts and the sit ups as I said before I didn’t really know how to do them, or I hadn’t attempted the exercise in a long time. I think over the five week period I have got fitter, but I want to keep it up and get more fitter. So I have decided that I am going to do circuit training in my own time because I like it so much.

For the warm up I quickly jogged on the spot to get the circulation flowing faster. I also wanted to get my muscles warmed up so they became more flexible so I wouldn’t be risking a greater chance of injury. For the cool down I just stretched for a while and breathed in deeply. This also helped loosen my muscles and prevent stiffness.

If I compare week one to week 5 I can see I made a vast improvement, and I am pleased with the results I have achieved because I am not a very active person, and I don’t like exercise. I have become fitter than when I started out and I have gained more confidence.

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