- Strength – The ability to outmuscle your opponent for the ball.
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Balance – Being able to stay on your feet in any situation with control over your body.
- Co-ordination – Needed for judging the flight of a ball and when you are in control of it so that you always know where the ball is.
The thing in which I would like to improve is my strength. This is because for a footballer, you need to be strong and this is an area in which I am very weak. I will also work on my balance a little because sometimes I find myself falling over when running with the ball at speed.
How am I going to achieve this?
In order to improve my football skills and in particular my strength and balance, I will create a circuit with about eight stations designed to improve my overall skills in football. Over the six weeks the toughness and length of exercise will increase. My body will adapt to the training and my fitness level will slowly rise because my body will get used to the routine. I can do this by increasing the number of repetitions, adding more stations or even reducing the rest periods. My circuit will be completed 3 times a week and the results would be shown by measuring the heart rate of myself in a results table for each week. My circuit plan can be found on the next page followed by a diagram on the page next to that.
Table of my Circuit
Diagram Showing My Circuit
- Press-Ups – This will improve me upper body strength and this will be good in football because it will be easier to keep hold of the ball and knock people off of the ball with a better arm for a throw in also.
- Sit-Ups – This will improve my abdominal muscles and it is good for football because it gives your inner body strength and means that it will be harder to push you off of the ball.
- Bicep Curls – this will improve the bicep muscle on my body and this is again good for football because of the strength element
- Agility Runs – This will improve my running speed and my flexibility. This is good for football because the speed will help me get to the ball before my opponent and the flexibility will help me to move in odd ways to get around players and jump up and stretch for a header.
- Standing Jumps – this will improve how far I can jump and how high I can jump. In football this is good for heading as it shows me ho I can jump off the floor so my run and jump is going to be better.
- Shuttle Runs – This is good for flexibility and agility and stamina. For a football flexibility is needed to make sure no muscles are pulled easily. Agility is needed to change direction quickly in order to get away from the opposition.
- The Ladder – Good for practicing quick feet and movement. In football you need this to confuse the opponent and get past him.
- Dribbling Through Cones – This is good for agility and ball control. In football ball control is needed to keep hold of the ball and agility is good for turning quickly
My Circuit Heart Rate Results
How I did week by week
Week 1 – In the first week my heart rate worried me a little because at the start of the second session it raised and after the first session I expected it to be the same. This however was soon put to the back of my mind as on the third session it was back down to 68BPM and on the third session I found out that I had begun to improve my fitness because my heart rate after the exercise session was lower than the previous two sessions.
Week 2 – This week was another step closer to getting fitter as my third session of the week proved to be an improvement because my heart rate managed to stay the same as the second session. The after exercise heart rate showed me that I continued from the first week but the second session showed that I was not getting my heart rate back down to 71BPM. Like the first week I continued with the third session and I had been shown that I was not only back to where I should be but I improved yet again.
Week 3 – In week 3 I ended with an even lower heart rate of 66BPM. The second session showed me that my heart rate was one beat more than I expected but this has seemed to be a trend in my results. After 3 minutes of exercise I found my results worrying as I didn’t make any improvement at all and in the first two sessions I got worse and worse but luckily was back at 70BPM by the third session.
Week 4 – This was a disappointing week for me and I clearly was slacking in my programme. My heart rate before exercise stayed at 66BPM for the duration of the week and my after exercise heart rate was higher and this stayed like this, as at the end of the week my heart rate 3 minutes after exercise was 71BPM whereas the week before it was 70BPM.
Week 5 – After the first session of week 5 I thought that I must have reached my maximum fitness level because it was still 66BPM but then realised over the next two sessions I could still improve as I had heart rates of 65BPM. My after exercise results also finally improved from 71BPM to 69BPM. This was a pleasing week for me as I used the overload tactic to get my heart rate down.
Week 6 – Finally my six week training program had come to an end. Pleasingly I made a final improvement and my final heart rate before exercise was 64BPM. Another thing that made me proud was that my heart rate 3 minutes after exercise had also improved and that ended with a final rate of 68BPM. Overall I improved my fitness by 4BPM.
Safety Considerations
In planning the order of the various exercises I will have to make sure that I do exercises that won’t use the same muscle too much in a short space of time and I will have to make sure that stretches are done before any running as I do not want to pull any muscles. Before starting my training sessions I will need to complete a warm up for a few minutes which includes a pulse raiser such as jogging and then some stretches to make sure the muscles are stretched enough and prepared for exercise. Once I have finished exercising I will be required to complete a warm down to dilute the lactic acid in my body and to ensure that the body systems are back in normal working function. All of the equipment that is used needs to be laid out correctly so that I don’t get injured and am unable to complete the entire training programme. Long hair is a main safety point and if the person has long hair when doing any exercise then it should be tied back because if the face is covered by it then they are oblivious to the obstacles that are in front of them. No jewellery should be worn during any exercise in the circuit as it can endanger yourself and others around you. No chewing or eating is allowed because it could be swallowed without noticing and could potentially choke you to death.
Warm up – In My warm up is all about preparation, preparation so that exercise can be completed without injury or at least less chance of picking up an injury. My warm up will be simple and will consist of jogging and stretching all muscles that are about to be used.
Warm down – A warm down will be completed by me as it dilutes the lactic acid that has been produced whilst doing exercise. My warm down will just be a small steady jog that will gradually decrease to the speed of a walk whilst stretching muscles again to keep them loose.
Implementations
Specific – the right kind of programme to train must be chosen to ensure that it will be useful for your sport. If it isn’t then doing the training regime, fitness level will not be improved for that sport.
Progression – this is increasing your workload as training continues. To do this I could either do more repetitions of each station or reduce the rest period so I have less time to recover.
Overload – making the body work extra hard whilst training. To do this I would have to see if I can do the repetitions in a quicker time than I already did.
Reversibility – This is when or if you stop doing the circuit on a regular basis by cutting short the number of repetitions or lengthen the rest period. This stops you from improving your fitness level and your muscles will not increase their strength, whilst heart rate will not improve either.
Type/Tedium – this is when the body gets tired of all of the exercise. This can be prevented by making the stations either more interesting or less intense.
I will check for improvement by completing all of the exercises that I did in the “How fit am I” section for a second time and recording results as post test results, and then comparing them with my pre test results. Improvement should be made in every area if I have completed my circuit how I should have done.
Heart Rate
My heart rate is the key that tells me whether or not I have gotten fitter as it would have less BPM if I have improved my fitness level. As you get fitter your heart should, as a muscle, become stronger and be able to pump more blood around your body in one beat. This means that the BPM, as either resting heart rate or working heart rate will decrease if your heart can pump more blood around the body in one beat. Stroke volume will increase whereas recovery rate should decrease. I recorded my resting heart rate before I did any exercise so that I could get an idea of my natural heart rate and I recorded my recovery rate after three minutes of completing the exercises to see if I had fully recovered or not. By the end of the training programme I fully expected to find that my resting heart rate had decreased and that my recovery rate was also improving each week.