I will be working mainly on strength and power as a result of my tests; I will mainly work on my upper body as it provides most power but also my legs as I have a weak kick.
Principle of Progression
To avoid injuries you should start off slowly and work your way up. Your body takes time to react to the increased demands on it.
You will notice the biggest improvement early on in your programme. The fitter you get the harder it is to gain further improvement. I will be using the principle of progression but I will probably start of with the same weights etc. but just increase the amount of repetitions I do instead of increasing the weight etc.
Principle of Overload
Fitness can only be improved by doing more than you usually do i.e. overloading your body systems. People can improve their fitness by basing their programme on FITT i.e.
Frequency: how often you exercise?
Intensity: how hard you train?
Time: how long you work for?
Type: the type of exercise you do?
I will be using the principle FITT in my exercise programme. This is a very effective method.
Principle of Reversibility
This is why you need to keep exercising about three times a week or you will lose the benefit from the session before. If you sustain an injury and are out for a long period then when you start training again you will have to start at a lower level than you were at before.
You lose your fitness 3 times faster than it takes to build it up, so 6 weeks of training will be lost in just 2 weeks of no training.
Principle of Tedium
My training programme must be varied to avoid tedium- boredom. By using a variety of different training methods we will keep our enthusiasm and motivation. We 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.
You may be able to change where you train and when you train. To avoid overuse injuries, simply vary the way you train. For example, shin splints can be avoided by running on grass rather than on hard roads.
Overtraining
Training more than you usually do will make you fitter, but it has to be done in moderation. Your body can’t handle too many sessions if you don’t eat and sleep enough.
Aim
Targets
The aim of my programme is to develop my performance as a swimmer in an effort to reach my full potential. My programme has been designed with achievable targets in mind. Throughout the programme I will mainly work on strength and power due to my current fitness and the importance of this in my sport, swimming. By the end of the 6-week period I hope to improve my muscle strength and endurance, also my speed and reaction times.
Programme
Seasonal Factors
The time of the year that I will be doing my programme will be in the pre season preparation part of the year, this means that I will be training in preparation for close following competitions. Here most athletes focus on fitness for their sport, I will be doing strength training at a fast rate to also try to improve power. During this time you should already have done a lot of aerobic training in the out of season preparation period for general fitness.
Personal Factors
I also need to take into account personal factors. If I have an injury or if I’m not in the right state of mind this may affect my performance.
Types of Exercise
I have mentioned briefly the types of exercise I will be doing in my programme. The general factors I will be working on are Muscular Endurance- This is the ability for muscles to maintain and repeat contractions without getting tired, and, Strength- This is the amount of force a muscle can exert against a resistance.
These can be broken down into more specific areas of fitness: Power Or Explosive Strength- This is the ability to do strength performances quickly, and, Speed Of Reaction- This is the time taken between the presentation of a stimulus and the onset of movement. I have chose to include these types of exercise in my programme following the results I achieved in my fitness test, also for my sport, swimming, strength and muscular endurance are very important to pull you through the water. The type of training I will be doing is circuit training.
Circuit
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Bicep Curls. This is to work on my biceps to get a stronger pull through the water.
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Lunges. Works the quadriceps to build up strength for a strong push of the wall after a tumble turn or a backstroke start. This will also strengthen my legs muscles improving my weak kick.
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Abdominal curls (centre). Works the abdominals which help to give you propulsion in the short bas strokes i.e. breastroke and butterfly.
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Heel Raises. Works your gastrocnemius.
Cardiovascular Exercise- skipping. Improving stamina and increasing the heart rate
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Box Press up. You need a strong upper body to pull yourself through the water. The prime movers here are your pectorals, triceps and deltoids.
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Lower Leg Raise. Works my abductors.
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Upper Body Raises. Works your erector spinae.
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Back leg raises. Works my gluteals adding to the muscular endurance in my leg that I am trying to improve.
Cardiovascular Exercise- Triangle 8 lap run. Improving stamina and increasing the heart rate.
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Bench Dips. Works your triceps.
10) Upper Leg Raises. Works my adductors and my quadriceps.
11) Abdominal Curls (sides). Works the abdominals which help to give you propulsion in the short bas strokes i.e. breastroke and butterfly.
12) Pec Dec. Works my pectorals, trapezius and Deltoids. This is working your upper body and improving shoulder strength.
Cardiovascular Exercise- Back to back sprints. Improving stamina and increasing the heart rate.
Cool Down
This is to help your body to recover after vigorous exercise.
I will start off by doing a gentle jog. This helps to keep my circulation going. So more oxygen reaches my muscles and lactic acid is cleared away faster.
I will finish with a similar stretching to my warm up; this will loosen my muscles and prevent stiffness. Muscles often get very tight after exercise.
It is important to do a cool down or you will suffer the next day.
Fitness Tests
The Bleep Test
This measures your maximal oxygen consumption. This is the maximum volume of oxygen you are able to use when exercising. The larger the value, the fitter you are. This test measures the efficiency of your aerobic energy source.
A larger person will generally consume more oxygen than a smaller person because he or she has lager muscles. I ran 50 laps with a level of three and improved to 56 laps and moved up a level.
Grip Strength
Squeeze dynamometer as hard as possible and read the dial. You require a handgrip dynamometer, this measures strength. I scored an average of 34 for both hands classifying me as above average. This is one test I wanted to improve on as it tested my muscular strength and I successfully did that moving up to an average of 36 for both hands.
Sit- up Test
Lie on the ground and move elbows to knees, see how many you can do in 30 seconds. This test is for muscular endurance. I scored 19 which is average and I was disappointed with it. After 6 weeks I went up to 24 sit-ups which is a high score.
Sit and reach Test
Sit on the ground with your legs straight and push a ruler forward as far as possible. You must be able to hold it for a few seconds. I was able to push it 25cm
Standing Broad Jump
Stand with your feet together behind a marked line and jump forward as far as possible. You measure from the back of the person’s rear foot. This was a weak exercise for me. I scored 160cm and after 6 weeks I went up 15cm.
Five Metre Shuttle Run
This test works out your speed. You run 10x5m as quickly as possible. I was able to get 19.94 secs and improved to a time of 19.43, both times were above average.
Stork Stand
This test is to question your balance. You stand with one foot bend and touching the other legs knee and a stop watch is started when you rise on your toe of the other foot and see how long you can hold yourself up. I scored a disappointing score of 6.51secs which is a low score but was able to improve it slightly to 14 secs.
Alternative Wall Toss
The alternative wall toss is when you have 30secs to throw a tennis ball at the wall and catch it again as many times as possible and it tests your co-ordination. I achieved a scored of 20 which is below average and only improved by 2 which still classified me as below average
Illinois agility run
You run the circuit shown below. You have to start on your chest. You have to go down the line back up to the top of the cones around the cones and back again then down to the end and up to the finish. My score in this discipline was 18.94secs and I made a minor improvement of 18.27 secs.
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Monitoring Circuit
Resting Heart Rate
Your heart rate or pulse is how many times your heart pumps in a minute (usually). The lower your heart rate generally the fitter you are, this is true because if your heart rate is low then you have a stronger heart beat than average. Your resting heart rate is your lowest i.e. before any exercise. Exercise raises your heart rate as your body needs more oxygen so your heart needs to pump faster to deliver it.
My resting heart rate is 59.
Recovery Rate
The quicker you recover the fitter you are. Some people time how long it takes their heart to return to normal, if it gets less then they are getting fitter.
Monitoring
The exercises are not aerobic; therefore monitoring your heart rate would not be beneficial as it does not tell much. However, after the cardiovascular exercises my heart rate should be taken to give guidelines of the effort I am putting in, if I find it easier I will use less effort and have a lower heart rate. I will also assess how I feel after each set. The exercises should become easier and I should be able to increase the weight or repetitions, this will be shown in my results.
Principles of Improving
F I T T- Frequency, Intensity, Type, Time.
To improve at any physical activity you need to put these principles into practice.
Normal week of Exercise-
Monday- swimming 5- 7pm
Tuesday- none
Wednesday- swimming 5.45 -7.15am
Thursday- none
Friday- circuit programme (inside school), swimming 5.45- 7.15am
Saturday- swimming 7- 8.30am
Sunday- swimming 9.30- 11am, Land training (circuit work) 11.30- 12.30am
A typical Training Session
1 x 400m freestyle
1 x 200m I.M.
4 x 75m freestyle kick
8 x 50m sprints in I.M. order
1 x 400m freestyle
2 x 200m freestyle } x 4
4 x 100m I.M.
1 x 200m own choice steady
Evaluation
Before I started my personal exercise programme I carried out a number of tests to find out what level my fitness was currently at. From these test scores I could estimate the level to start each exercise in my programme. A practise run was done of the circuit a week before to make sure everything ran smoothly when I carried it out. This proved very beneficial as on the first day of the regime many of my class mates were struggling to finish two full circuits and some didn’t have proper record sheets to write down results.
When you are in the gym it is often helpful to change the type of exercise you are doing e.g. do a leg exercise, then an arm exercise etc. This is helpful as it gives the part of your body that you just used a chance to rest. My programme contains a lot of upper body work. This can make your body very fatigued if it is done in repetition, to avoid this the circuit had lower body work at even intervals during the programme.
I feel that the circuit could have been more specific to muscular power but the programme spaced the exercises well in an order which would give your muscles as much rest as possible making the performance optimal. Although this may be the case I still found that as the session went on fatigue started to kick in and this is inevitable with most programmes including a lot of power and strength exercises in it.
Application of Principles of Training
I feel that the programme I did demonstrated good use of the training principles. The exercises showed specificity as I concentrated on improving one aspect of my fitness. My programme also showed progression as I started off with a manageable amount of repetitions and would not cause an injury and progressed up after every 2 weeks. Overload is also used as you can see from the results recorded; I used this principle to improve. Tedium was avoided by differentiating week 3 with fartlek training.
Evaluation of Performing the Programme
The exercises that were included in the exercise programme were aimed to improve my muscular power. I think that some of the exercises were specific to the area of fitness which I was trying to improve. However, it did not show specificity to the sport which my programme was based on (swimming). This is because I am a competitive swimmer and do a lot of swimming sessions in the pool and don’t feel the need for any extra sessions, also it is quite difficult to design a power programme in the pool which exercises all your muscles.
I mentioned above that I train a lot for swimming. Every Friday we carried out our personal exercise programme and on Friday mornings I train for swimming before school. This training may have hindered my performance so it would have probably been more beneficial to me if it was done on a day when I didn’t train for swimming. This would give my body chance to recover.
Another hindering factor to my programme was the availability of the necessary equipment e.g. heart rate monitors. The gym that we used was in school and the facilities are limited, this caused some minor problems. However, I was able to finish my programme, despite these set backs and obtain a decent recordation of what I had done.
On a whole I found this programme very enjoyable. The programme itself provided me with motivation to do it well and record my achievements accurately, as I knew it would be beneficial to me for my GCSE grade. Another motivational factor which I found drove me on was the desire to improve. As I swim competitively I need to train hard and keep my fitness improving. If I improve my fitness I have a greater chance of winning which drove me to work hard on all the exercises.
Evaluation of Monitoring the Programme
After I completed my 6 week programme I read though the diary which I had recorded my programme in on a weekly basis. During the implementation period I changed the amount of each exercise I was doing. I did this to put the principle of overload into practise so I would improve. If the exercise became reasonably easy or I felt I could do more I stepped up the number of reps.
Improving your fitness doesn’t happen overnight and will happen at different speeds depending on your fitness before you start. As you lose your fitness approximately three times faster than it takes you to gain it, I decided to go to the gym privately once a week and do the circuit there as well as in school, this showed a greater improvement in my records and prevented me from loosing my fitness.
In my recording tables which can be seen above I have included exactly what exercise I did and how much of it I did. This shows how I progressed during the programme. I also stated the effects the cardio vascular exercises had on my body using my heart rate, listed in the tables above.
Final Appraisal of the Programme
Before I started this programme I carried out a number of tests to find out what level my fitness was currently at. From these results I found that my muscular power was quite weak in comparison to the rest of the fitness factors that I tested. As this was the case I decided to focus my programme on improving power. The original test for power was the standing broad jump which I scored average in, when ii repeated at the end of my programme I found that I had improved by 15cm. The programme was based to improve my fitness and swimming and lately I had a gala which was 50m races (sprints). Power is a great advantage in these short races and I improved all my personal best times suggesting my programme was very worth while.
This carrying out and writing up process has improved my understanding a lot. I know I could confidently design an event specific programme relizing better what to concentrate on and why.
As this programme has clearly benefited me in many ways I would like to carry it on. The programme itself can be adjusted for concentrating on different strokes and done more often and in different ways to get a different training effect. I will quite enjoy developing the programme and designing one which will hopefully benefit me in a similar way.
