PE coursework

GCSE Physical Education (Sport & Coaching)

The Introduction: -

Age: - age matters when doing physical activity, but varies on the sport you are doing. For example a gymnast would usually peak, at which they perform the best in there early teenage years and as they grew older into their twenties they would digress. But for a rugby player they would peak in their late twenties, early thirties. I was testing strength and suppleness at the ages of 14 / 15; it is expected that people of our age group will do relatively well, in comparison to someone who is much older or much younger, because of the average peak age of this activity.

Gender: - Gender can affect performance in sport just as much as any other aspect because depending on gender can affect whether a person is suited or not for the sport, also in many unisex sports either gender can perform better that than the other. For example, weight lifting, mostly this is a predominantly male sport because men tend to be stronger that women. Also in the larger porting events, men and women don’t compete against each other because man and women with obtain very different results. In out fitness programme gender is of no importance, as male and female will be doing the same activities.

Current fitness level: - Your current fitness level can affect you performance in physical exercise as if you are very unfit it can cause damage or injury to your body. My current level of fitness, in my opinion is quite average, as I maintain a high level of exercise throughout the week. I am a competitive hockey, netball and tennis player and so keeping fit for those activities is hard but needs to be done. My strongest area of fitness is strength and suppleness but I have chosen to carry on improving this because in netball it is very important to be able to make strong moves around the court and strong passes. I also need to be very agile to be able to move around the court, get away from my opposition and also mark them effectively when the other team is in possession of the ball.

Health problems and injuries: - Health problems and injuries obviously have an effect you performance during physical activities. It can affect your performance in many ways ranging from slightly to a lot depending on the nature of the chosen sport. By this I mean if you have a long-term injury it can affect your play as when you have recovered finally you may not be as strong and have to start back at basics to regain the strength in that area. But if you just have a small injury or an illness, for example a cold you won’t need to start again and will just be able to pick up from where you left off. I do suffer from asthma, although it isn’t really that bad I do have to make sure I carry round an inhaler just in case. Also just before we started this fitness programme I sprained my ankle quite severely and therefore as you will see later I didn’t’ take part on a couple of the exercises because it was important I didn’t stress my ankle in any way whilst on the way to recovery.

Your lifestyle: - Your lifestyle can affect your performance during physical activity in many different ways. Ways in which your lifestyle can affect you performance are: -

Environment – Whether where you live or train is a suitable place for the sport you have chosen to take part in.

Travel – Whether you are able to travel to where you need to be when required, for example if you are attached to a sports club you may need to be able to travel up and down the country to play sports fixtures. This may take a lot of time and effort and can result in making the chosen sport too expensive and not accessible.

Cost – Whether or not you can afford to do your chosen sport, if you are attached to a club you may need to buy a kit/uniform and these may be expensive. For example if you belong to a pony club you may need to pay extra for lessons, new tack, uniform, shows entry fees, travel, rent of horseboxes…etc.

Diet – whether or not the diet you eat is an appropriate for the sport you choose. You need to a eat a varied diet to keep healthy and different sports require different amounts of each type of food and this can affect your performance if you eat the wrong things or the wrong amounts.

All of these aspects are important for the development in a sport. My lifestyle is very much suited for my chosen sports and therefore I am very much acquired to comply with the demands of my chosen sports.

Involvement in physical activities – if you enjoy physical activity or are keen to improve or succeed in what you do then you are more likely to succeed in improving in your performance. I take part in all school sporting activities, compulsory and if I am available then I try to contribute to sports fixture against other schools in the local area. I also take part in out of school sporting activities for example I go swimming a few times a week and I play out of school tennis, netball and soon hockey as well.

Components of fitness: -

The components of fitness we are all going to improve are strength, suppleness, stamina and speed. We had the choice of which two we would like to improve, we had the choice to do both strength and suppleness or stamina and speed. There were specific exercises for each so that the target was met. All of these components are important to the success of a performer. These components must be worked on and either improved or certainly maintained in order to keep the performer at the top of their abilities.

There are also other components of fitness that performer’s require in order to be successful in their chosen sport. These include:

Agility – it means that a performer is able to or can vary speed and direction with skill or pace, improving a game or physical activity.
Muscular endurance – It means whether or not a performer’s body can cope with frequent straining and/or for long periods of time.

Purpose and aim of the programme: -

I am a quite serious and competitive netball player and so the aspect of fitness I have chosen to improve is strength and suppleness. I play goal defence or goalkeeper meaning that I need to be agile and strong in both my play and my decisions. For goal defence I need to be able to move easily around the court. I need to be agile to follow my goal attack and make strong interceptions of the ball. I also need to make quick passes and dodges, especially at the centre pass. Speed is useful on the court and in game play, however strength and suppleness is just as or even more important as you need to be able to move freely, and with good intentions and strength, to make sure you can carry out your movements. It would be no good to you if you can make good doges but your muscles were not strong enough for you to make them, causing you either injury or a failed movement. It can be more important on the court to stamina and speed because the netball court itself is not that large and there isn’t much continuous long distance running involved with the nature of the game. You need tactics and to be able to move agilely and with strength. Strength and suppleness is the key to good court play in netball and therefore that is the reason why I chose to try and improve it. By choosing this aspect it means that I will be carrying out the U.S navy test and I will be carefully planning and carrying out the test and recording my results every week.

Password

Confirm Password

I agree to the terms of service and privacy policy

The amount of exercise I already do in an average week is average, but I still which to improve this, and to increase my daily/weekly amount of exercise. My average week in relation to amount of daily/weekly exercise is as follows: -

50 minutes of games lessons within school a week. (Taking part in netball, hockey, athletics, rounders…etc.)

I walk on average a mile a day, sometimes with 10 minutes walking and 10 minutes running at timed intervals.

I go swimming on average about once or maybe twice a week for an hour ...

This is a preview of the whole essay

50 minutes of games lessons within school a week. (Taking part in netball, hockey, athletics, rounders…etc.)

I walk on average a mile a day, sometimes with 10 minutes walking and 10 minutes running at timed intervals.

I go swimming on average about once or maybe twice a week for an hour and a half.

I play tennis for an hour once a week.

I walk around school every day.

I walk my dogs for an hour every day.

Through this programme I hope to improve my strength and stamina and I will try hard to obtain the results hope to achieve. My physiological view of the programme will affects this because if I am more motivated one week than the next then it will affect my results and they will become less accurate. As this fitness programme is only a temporary one and isn’t going to be a regular occurrence in my everyday life, the results won’t show a vast increase in results every week it will only differ slightly. The programme will of course mean that I need to maintain my current lifestyle the same as much as possible. I will need to keep the level of physical exercise more or less the same as well as my diet and any other things that will affect my results greatly in order to obtain more accurate results.

The Plan

Principles of training

The principles of training consist of these factors: -

S ~ Specificity – This means the specific outcome of a certain exercise. E.g. Sit-ups improve the stomach muscles.

P ~ Progression – This means to build up the length and difficulty of your exercises progressively over time. This stops injury from occurring and helps to improve physical fitness gradually and over time.

O ~ Overload – This means when you work a certain area of your body harder than you usually would. It will cause your muscles to adapt and therefore you will adapt. The three main things you would overload on are frequency, intensity and duration. (FID)

R ~ Reversibility – This means when you do a period of exercise over a certain time and then you stop. This is reversibility because the reverse affects can start to happen. Also if you are ill or injured and cannot take part on physical activity your fitness levels will drop.

T ~ Tedium – This means when a physical activity becomes boring you need to maintain motivation so that the exercise doesn’t become boring and repetitive. You need to keep well motivated so that don’t get bored.

These principles have been applied to our fitness plan in the following way: -

S ~ Specificity – Specific component of fitness, specific area of a game, specific skill.

P ~ Progression – To develop fitness and skill, you need to progress in developing your training

O ~ Overload – by increasing how hard we work 25, 35, 45 seconds for two weeks each. (FID)*

R ~ Reversibility – avoiding injury and illness.

T ~ Tedium – avoid boredom; we introduced music and other ways of keeping motivated.

*FID – Frequency, intensity, duration. These are all thing in which we need to overload on.

SPORT is how we can plan our training and make sure that we will improve. We first of all need to choose a specific game and a specific component of fitness to improve on. Then we need to make sure that we progress and develop out training. Then we need to make sure we overload or we won’t improve. Then we need to make sure we don’t get bored and we need to find different ways in which we can motivate ourselves.

The exercises

The circuit

I took part in the U.S navy test, which consisted of eight different activities, which would later on help me improve my strength and suppleness. These activities were: -

Press ups
Sit ups
Ball passes
Straight leg lifts
Burpees
Half squats
Dorsal rises
Straight arm lifts

However due to a long term injury to my left ankle I did not take part in the burpies and the half squats as this would put too much stress on the already injured part of my ankle.

Press ups – These work the biceps and the triceps, and slightly the lower abdominals and lower back muscles.
Sit ups – these work mainly the abdominals but also the lower back slightly if not done correctly.
Ball passes – these work the triceps and biceps but also they test speed and coordination of the hand and the eye.
Straight leg lifts – These work the leg muscles and also the lower abdominals.
Burpees – I did not take part in these exercises because I had damaged my left ankle and the doctor advised me not to take part in this particular activity, as it would prolong my injury.
Half squats – I also did not take part in these exercises because I had damaged my left ankle and the doctor advised me not to take part in this particular activity, as it would prolong my injury.
Dorsal rises – These work the abdominals and the lower back muscles. Also the legs and the arm have to work very hard for this exercise.
Straight-arm lifts – These test the triceps and the biceps.

We will be doing the circuit that includes these exercises for 6 weeks. Each week we will carry out repetition of these set exercises. For the first 2 weeks we will carry out repetitions for 25 seconds, then for the following two weeks we will carry out the repetitions for an extra 10 seconds meaning that the total time for repetitions is 35 seconds on each activity. Then finally for the last two weeks we will carry out the repetitions for 45 seconds for each activity. We will continue to move around the different stations of the activity and carry out the correct amount of repetitions until we have completed the set time for the week and we have corrected valid and correct results.

As well as recording out results for each activity station we did on week one and week six we will also record our heart rate and then out recovery rate. Your recovery rate is the rate at which your heat beat returns to normal. It tends to be the quicker your heart rate returns too normal the fitter you are. Also the slower your heartbeat is at resting the fitter you tend to be.

Before the fitness programme we will be carrying out a round of the U.S navy test to determine our pre-test results. And then afterwards we will be carrying out the same test in order to see how much we improved over the duration of the fitness plan.

Safety

Safety aspects: -

Safety is the most important factor in doing any type of physical activity and I have made sure that I have prepared myself and my surroundings so that they are as safe as the possibly could be. I have taken every aspect of safety into account all of the safety flaws that could be around me. For example I need to make sure that I am wearing all of the correct clothing and footwear, all my jewellery is off and that my hair is tied back. Once I have made sure of all of these things I could begin to make sure that my surrounding environment is safe. To do this I needed to make sure the weather conditions were ok. As we were doing it inside in a sports hall the weather didn’t need to be taken into account. Then I checked that all the equipment I would be using was safe and then I could continue will my training.

Another aspect of safety I needed to take into account was my warm up and my warm down. These are very important because with it being aerobic exercise it helps in the process of preparing the body both mentally and physically before major exercise to reduce the risk of injury.

Firstly we need to warm up and increase our heart rate. This prepares the body for physical activity and makes sure that your body can cope it does this by raising your heart rate and your body temperature by 1-2 degrees and may consequent in a light sweat. It also warms up all your muscles to help prevent injury. There are a few ways in which we can do this for example we could go for a light jog or a brisk walk. All this contributes to pre venting serious injury whilst the physical activity is taking place.

Then you need to stretch out all your major muscles to prepare them for physical activity and prevent serious injury.

Few important stretches are: -

* Hamstring stretch

* Calf stretches
* Quadriceps stretch
* Triceps stretch

* Shoulder stretch

The hamstring stretch is important because if we didn’t do this then when we got into doing exercise and we pulled or snapped out hamstring we would be in a lot of pain and it would stop us from doing any sporting activity for a long time.

This picture shows us how we stretch the hamstring from a sitting position. It is important to hold this stretch for 15-20 seconds in order to make it effective. If you have previously damaged this muscle you may want to repeat this stretch 2 or 3 times to make sure that it is well and truly stretched.

The calf stretch is also important because if we don’t warm it up and then stretch it will become tense and this may cause damage or discomfort during sporting activity. If this muscle snapped or pulled you would be in a lot of discomfort for many weeks and then you would need to rebuild up the strength that it would have lost.

This picture shows two ways in which you can stretch the calf. Both of these pictures show the transfer of weight onto the bent leg in order to feel the stretch on the calf muscle. This will make sure that the muscle is stretched and prepared for physical activity and prevent most injuries. To make this stretch effective you need to hold it for 15-20 seconds and if any previous injury has been specifically to the calf muscle you may want to repeat these steps more than once.

The quadriceps also needs to be stretched to make sure that the muscle is supple for game play. If this muscle gets injured it would take a long time to heal and would make any position uncomfortable so it is very important to stretch this muscle and all the others very well in order to keep in good health.

This picture shows the stretch from the lying down position. You need to tuck a leg in towards the body and hold for 10-15 seconds to find it effective and repeat if necessary.

The next muscle that is important to make sure you stretch is the triceps. This is important because it is a major muscle in your arm and you don’t want to damage it before you even start playing. You need to stretch this muscle to prevent in jury during physical injury.

This shows the muscle being stretched from behind the body and keeping the elbow parallel to the floor and you pull the arm across and down with the other free hand. You need to hold this for 10-15 second and repeat if necessary. This will help with the prevention of injury whilst taking part in physical activity.

The shoulder stretch will benefit the suppleness of the arms during both training and game play. This will help to improve the movement in your arms and will help prevent injury whilst taking part in physical activity.

The am needs to be pulled across the body and you need to be able to feel the stretch across your back. You need to keep the elbow parallel to the floor and pull until a stretching sensation crosses your back. You need to hold this stretch for 10-15 seconds and repeat if necessary.

After the physical activity has taken place you need to cool down by stretching all these muscles again and make sure you are feeling lose. By doing this you will make sure that the next morning when you wake up you won’t be sore or stiff due to the build up of muscle lactic acid. It also helps in the recovery of the muscles and heart rate and other tissue through the removal of waste products.

Performing

This is my heart rate after the first and fourth week of the fitness plan. As you can see my recovered rate was very much lower in the fourth week than the first week, showing that I had improved in my fitness.

This was my heart rate from the first week. It was quite high at the beginning but slowly decreased as the minutes went by. In totals my heart rate decreased by 13 beats per minute.

This I my heart rate after the 4th week and as you can see it has improved by quite a lot showing how I have improved in fitness. In total my heart beet decreased by 7 beats per minute. This is lower than the first week but it means that because my starting beat count has decreased by 9 beats per minute that I have gained in my fitness and my heart rate is overall lower.

Monitoring

This is the number of repetitions I did each week: -

(My table of results)

We recorded out results in a table so that we could see how well or how badly we did each week giving us a clearer picture if we were improving or not. My table of results is shown above.

These are the results of my test week by week. Unfortunately I was absent for session 6 and therefore did not get to complete my training. I also have coloured the activities that I didn’t do in purple. I didn’t do these stations because they would create more injury for my already injured ankle. My results show that I have improved as time progressed and therefore my training has served its purpose.

I took the results of each activity in each week and have put these onto a bar graph. On the first graph, the results for press-ups, sit-ups and ball passes are shown.

In the second graph the best results from straight leg lifts, straight-arm lifts and dorsal rises are shown.

In these graphs it shows the comparison of the results I took from the first and second week, the third and fourth week and finally the fifth and sixth week.

This graph shows how much I improved each week for press-ups, sit-ups and ball passes. It shows clearly that I steadily improve as the weeks progressed.

This graph shows how much I improved each week for straight leg lifts, straight-arm lifts and dorsal rises. It shows clearly that I improved as the weeks progressed.

Evaluation of planning and further planning.

Before I took part in the fitness plan, I learned a lot about what affects performance during physical activity. For example, I learned that gender, age, motivation, and cost all affect performance in their own different ways. I also learned a lot about things, which you cannot choose that affect your performance during physical activity such as your somatotype (the natural shape of your body). The three main somatotype are:

Mesomorph – people with the basic body shape are ‘Y’ shaped, well muscled with wide flexible shoulders, long arms and hands, narrow waist and lightweight legs. An extreme Mesomorph would be very well suited to become a goalkeeper in football.
Endomorph – People with the basic body type are short and rounded with a tendency to gain fat. They have short legs in relation to their trunks. An extreme endomorph would be very well suited to become a prop-forward in rugby.
Ectomorph – These people can be relatively small or extremely tall. They often have a long neck, a short waist and longer legs. An extreme Ectomorph would be very well suited to become a goal shooter in netball.

These somatotypes can affect ability in sport and depending on your somatotype it will affect in some way what sports you are better at than others. Knowing background knowledge such as this means that an effective and suitable plan was drawn up, and overall I think it was very effective.

The pre-test and the post-test were carried out to show a positive result to the fitness test. I missed the post-test but if you add up all my results from the weeks that I was there I started on the pre test with 126 and improved to finish with 141, so I improved by 15. So I feel that it was effective and the fitness test was very successful.

I think the style of the fitness test was very good and appropriate because the group of people taking part in the programme were very varied and there were both male and female students taking part, as well as people with different somatotypes. The activities that were chosen were good and gave both genders a good chance, as none of them were gender based. My results show that my improvement rate varied from ach different activity, for example I improved rather rapidly and dramatically on the dorsal rises, whereas on the sit-ups it was a slow start and then a sudden peak at the end of the programme. When the time increased in the latter weeks I found it very difficult to adjust myself and pace my self so as not to become worse than the week before. The plan was very much accustomed to what I wanted to improve. I don’t think I would need to adapt the fitness programme but I may gain more from it if I did the programme after I had recovered fully from my injury.

During the fitness programme I found it hard to remember the principle of training. The fitness plan did cover most things but it was hard to think what I was doing sometimes when I was planning for the lesson, and the fitness plan. I think that I was because the fitness plan only really worked the arm and leg muscles where it could have made more use of the stomach and lower back muscles. I also think the plan was more aimed at strength than suppleness and I don’t rally think there was very many exercises that accommodated the room for improvement of suppleness. One way in which I think the principle of training was almost perfect was tedium, because I never really got bored, there were different exercises to do and you were always changing, there was also music playing on one or two occasions so that keeps you going as you can find a beat that is suited for the exercise you are doing and then keep going till the end of the activity. We also only spent short amount of time on each of the different activities so as soon as you were became bored of the activity it was already time to change to the next one.

Evaluating my performance

My performance over the whole fitness plan generally was good, but I could maybe have obtained better results if I was completely recovered from my injury. I tried my hardest very week but was somewhat put off my the pain in my ankle in some of the more strenuous activities which meant that I wasn’t as focused or a s motivated as I could have been and therefore wouldn’t have obtained accurate results. Most weeks I didn’t find the exercises too hard but I don’t think that I pushed myself as hard as I could to achieve my highest potential. When I was motivated I feel it enhance my performance more and I overall preformed better than if I was less motivated. Because of my injury to my left ankle I think it affected my results and my pre-test results were more accurate than the rest of the results taken from the programme because I hadn’t hurt my ankle when we did the pre-test whereas fro the duration of the programme I had an injured ankle which handicapped me and I didn’t reach my full potential.

Evaluating my monitoring

The method we used for recording out results was I think a good one, it was an A4 sheet of paper with all the information we needed on it for the test and then the weeks and stations on one side. And then on the other it had a space for us to record how we thought the session went. Also it had a space so we could record our recovery rate and out heart rate, both resting and just after exercise. I made good use of the monitoring sheet and it has been very helpful to me. Writing on the back of the sheet how we thought that we had don’t that week was a good source of motivation and it really helped on the weeks where I wasn’t so motivated to actually see how I had felt the week before. Also recording all the results on one sheet week after week as motivating because it was interesting to see if we had improved or not and I if so by how much. I felt I felt more motivated by the sheet more one week to maybe the next, depending on how well I thought I did and how much I had improved by.

Final Evaluation

Overall I think the fitness plan was effective. I felt that it did what it was supposed to do and that’s all that really mattered. In my pre-test and post test I went up by 15 so I feel that I improved and it made me feel better about that aspect of fitness. I noticed a slight change in my netball playing of more strength than suppleness and I was quicker off the mark at a centre pass and also I felt I was quicker at dodging and either marking or getting free from the opposition. Looking back to see what I wanted to improve I think I have very much improved, and despite my injury I think I did very well to improve as much as I did. I enjoyed doing the fitness programme and being surrounded by friend when I did it I think that kept me motivated and it made it more fun than a chore. At the start I was motivated but as the weeks went on by I felt as though I wasn’t as motivated. And to improve the programme I think I would try to find another source of motivation to keep me going. Overall I have achieved what I wanted to get out of this whole experience and I have noticed a change in my game play. The only drawback is that I felt the programme was more specific to strength than suppleness and if I was to repeat the programme I would probably add in more exercises or adapt the existing one to make effective for both strength and suppleness.