Speed is the ability to move all or part of the body as quickly as possible. For our bodies to achieve speed, we have to supply energy to our muscles very quickly. The muscles then have to contract in the shortest possible time. We use our anaerobic energy supply system for speed work.
Over my six weeks of training I will have 3 sessions a week, which will be about an hour long. They will consist of different things and they will not be continuous days, as my muscles will need time to rest so I will need rest days between my training sessions. I will also have to make my training sessions safe and not to go over the top with my training sessions, as this will exhaust me. I do other sports in my free time so some of the training programmes will differ from week to week depending on if I play sport.
The principles of my training programmes will come from S.P.O.R.T:
Specify
Progression
Overload
Reversibility
Tedium
Specify: all types of training must be specific or suitable for what you are training for. That is why I am finding activities that will improve my speed rather than something I am not trying to improve like putting fartlec training into my week, as this would improve my training and not my speed. I will have to remember that different activities can be manipulated to improve my speed.
Progression: The training that I have chosen and the amount of overload I am including. I must increase the amount of work gradually otherwise I could do some serious damage to myself. I must remember to increase the work levels otherwise I will never improve I will just stay at the same level.
Overload: This is the principle of making the body working harder in order to improve certain aspects. I will have to get past my normal workload to improve my speed. I can improve this in the following ways:
- Frequency – needs to be increased. For example if I were only doing two training sessions a week I would change to three. It would be unadvisable if I was to change from 3 to 4 sessions a week as my body would not have time to rest, I will just change the difficulty of the training programmes.
Reversibility: It is very pointless to do a training programme if straight after it I am going to stop and let myself reverse all the things that I have just improved so after my training programme I will continue to do some exercise in the week.
Tedium: My training must be different from each time do it to avoid tedium. By using a variety of training methods we will keep our enthusiasm and motivation.
- I can follow a long work out with a short one a hard session with a relaxed one or a high-speed session with a long slow one.
- I could change where I train and what time I train
For every training session I will need a 10-minute warm up. This is absolutely essential in any sport you do:
- It prepares the body for the activity to come. It increases the blood flow through the muscles, which means that it improves their ability to contract quickly. It also stimulates the nervous system, which make you more alert and aware so this will be essential to do to improve my speed.
- It reduces the chance of getting an injury. It does this by warming the muscles up hence the name warm up. The muscle fibres and tendons are more likely to be damaged if you do not warm up properly.
As I am trying to improve my speed I will use short busts of energy. That means that we will use the creatine phosphate system when training for this.
This system is very important when I need bursts of explosive speed e.g. running a 100m race. Sprinters, throwers and team players need to develop this energy system, which is exactly what I need to do. After a burst of activity (during my training, after each activity) I will need to rest to allow my body to refill their creatine phosphate stores.
Percentage of Body Fat
The estimated body fat on me is 17.9% this is done my a calculation on the internet where I have inputted my skin fold which added up to 43 mm. The body fat weight on me is 22.3 lbs and the fat free body mass is 103.7 lbs. The average man has 15 to 17% body fat so I am just over the average, which means that this could be slowing me down.
The following table shows what percentage of body fat a sportsman has:
By looking at the chart the people that need at look of speed have a maximum of about 15% body fat so I know that I will get my body fat down to about 16% which means either losing weight or turning that fat in to muscle which means that one of my training programmes will have to be weight training.
TESTS
To determine if my training programme works I have to do some test to see how fast I am at the moment which will then be tested again at the end of my training programme to see if my speed has improved.
The test I did was as followed:
I also tested my weight training it is as follows:
In my first training programme I will do circuit training which will I will do:
Sit-ups
Press ups
Pull ups
step ups
