Effects of exercise on breathing and heart rate
A lot of exercise can also affect your respiratory and circulatory system, because your heart gets bigger due to aerobic training, it is now a better pump so more blood can be circulated around your body per beat than before. This also means that your resting heart rate decreases. A sign of good health is whether you have a low heart rate. The average is 70BPM (beats per minute), if you are unhealthy then your heart will have to work harder to pump blood all around your body which makes heart attacks more likely.
Effects of Training
In this section I will explain the effects on the body that I will expect to see when my Personal Exercise Plan has been completed over the 6 weeks.
After completing my PEP my muscles should change in size and strength due to the exercises I have chosen.
The muscles should grow larger with the exercise because the muscle fibres in the muscle will get fatter. Muscles are built from fibres which are either fast twitch or slow twitch. The strength of the muscle should also improve with exercise, by doing exercises with heavy weights and few reps the muscle strength will be increased. If I changed the exercise to many reps with a light weight then my muscles will gain more endurance. But as I am a goalkeeper then I will not concentrate as much on the endurance training.
Changes to Vital Capacity and Tidal Volume in the lungs
From completing my 6 week training routine I should be able to see changes in my Vital Capacity and Tidal Volume.
VC= Your Vital Capacity is the maximum amount of air that can be forcibly exhaled from your lungs.
TV= Your Tidal Volume is all the air inhaled and exhaled in a minute.
With training the respiratory system I will expect to see an increase in both of these factors. These increases are down to the lungs as training on my respiratory system will make them bigger so I will be able to inhale and exhale more air per breath.
SV = Stroke Volume is the volume of blood pumped out of the heart during one contraction. Due to exercise this should increase as your heart will be stronger, therefore it will be able to pump a larger volume of blood around the body.
CO = Cardiac Output is the amount of blood which is pumped from your heart each minute. This can be worked out by multiplying your stroke volume with your heart rate. This should also increase with exercise, by the same reasons as your stroke volume increases, as your heart is stronger.
Recovery rate = Your recovery rate is the amount of time it takes you to fully recover after exercise. The fitter you are the shorter your recovery rate is. As I am a goalkeeper I will not be concentrating on this too much as it is not that important, although for an outfield player it is very important.
SPORT Principles of training
The main principles of training are shown in the acronym SPORT, by using these in my PEP I should end up with a successful training programme. The different sections are:
S= Specificity
Specificity means that I will train specific muscles used in my sport. This could include exercises and drills that relate to moves and skills I need in football as a goalkeeper. I will specify flexibility and muscular strength as these are the two components most vital for my sport.
P= Progression
Progression is when you gradually increase the amount or intensity of your exercise. This will improve your muscles as you are increasing the amount of work they do. An example of progression is starting week 1 with a 2 mile run once a week then progressing to a 3 mile run in week 2.
O= Overload
Fitness can only be improved by doing more than you usually do. This is called overloading. You must be careful though as if you do too much training you will end up injuring yourself. An example is doubling the distance of your runs or doubling the weight of your weights.
R= Reversibility
Reversibility occurs when you do not train . As your muscles are not being worked they will begin to weaken. All the improvements you have made from training will be reversed. For example if a sportsman becomes injured and is unable to train they will lose their work. So that reversibility does not affect me I will have 3 training sessions per week.
T= Tedium
Tedium is when you become bored with your training, this is because your training plan does not have much variety and you end up doing the same exercises. To avoid tedium I will include a variety of exercises so my PEP is not boring.
FITT Principles
When using overload I can use the FITT principles of training which are:
F= Frequency
Frequency is to do with how often I should train. I will include 3 training sessions a week in my personal exercise plan; this is a sufficient amount as I am not a professional sportsman who will probably train around 5 times a week. By doing 3 sessions a week I will also minimise the chance of reversibility as I will not have a large gap of time when I am not exercising. To make sure that my PEP is well set out I will not have to exercise in 2 consecutive days, for example I will train on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
I= Intensity
Intensity is based on how hard you push yourself whilst doing your training. It is measured by MHR (Maximum Heart Rate) for example a 3 mile run at 70% MHR. As I progress through the training programme the intensity of my exercises will increase. For the first week I may start working at 65% MHR which is not too hard however by the 6th week I will be working at 80% MHR which will be working my body very hard.
T= Time
Time is the length I will train for during each session of my PEP. It can vary from sprinting for 10 seconds to jogging for an hour. Time will be used in my exercise plan as I will increase the length of time spent on each exercise as I progress through the 6 weeks to show progression.
T= Type
There are different types of training, continuous training, fartlek training, circuit training, aerobic training and interval training, I will mainly use circuit, interval and aerobic training as these will be of most help to me. Fartlek and continuous training both contain a lot of running, which will not be useful to me as I play in goal. However I will use aerobic training as it will help me with my flexibility and agility, whilst interval and circuit training can use many exercises which I can choose myself. This will also lessen the chance of tedium occurring.
Phases of a training session
In any training session there are 3 important parts which must be included, they are:
- The training activity
- The cool down
These are vital as they are the best way of preventing injury. I will include all 3 sections in my PEP, the training session is obviously when I will be doing my exercises to improve the specific areas of fitness, however the warm up and cool down are both as important.
Warm up
My warm up will last for around 15-20 minutes, firstly I will warm up my muscles by jogging a short distance, like 400metres. This will also raise my pulse and loosen the muscles. The next part of the warm up is the stretching of the main muscle groups. E.g. quadriceps, biceps, triceps, hamstrings. I will pay special attention to my upper body muscles so they are warm and loose to help me stretch for the ball. This is followed by another short jog at around 50-60% MHR so as no lactic acid is produced. It is important that I move onto the main exercise as soon as possible after the warm up as my muscles will still be warm.
The training activity
The training activity is the main part of a session. For me it will basically be my PEP, this will be made up of circuit training, interval training and aerobic training as I explained earlier. Because this PEP is specifically designed for improving my health-related fitness there will be no exercises which will concentrate on improving skill wise. However some diving routines may be used in aerobic training to help my flexibility.
Cool Down
The cool down is aimed at prevents soreness by keeping the circulation so that more oxygen reaches muscles to clear the lactic acid away, loosening tight muscles so they won’t get stiff later. Although the cool down may not be considered vital it is just as important as the warm up and should last for around 10-15 minutes. My cool down will be very similar to the warm up. It will begin with a 200 metre jog and then stretch all the major muscle groups to be sure that all lactic acid is cleared from my muscles.
Now when I write my instructions for each session when the warm up and cool down are to be included I can just write follow description.
Also for flexibility I will create a plan that can be followed whenever I need to improve my flexibility, here it is:
- 20 catches of football from seating position, ball must be thrown at head height and requires me to dive for the ball.
- Stretch all the major muscle groups, spending 10 seconds on each muscle.
- Stand at one side of goal then dive for ball which is thrown towards the opposite side. Repeat this ten times for the left hand side and 10 times for the right.
- Stretch all the major muscle groups, spending 10 seconds on each muscle.
Evaluation
Overall I think that my PEP was a success, it was designed to improve my personal fitness and I can see the difference it has made to me. My heart rate whilst at rest has lowered a bit and although when exercising it increases, the time taken for it to return again to normal is much less. As when I am playing football I am in goal I do not get very tired however from completing me PE lessons I have found that I can work for a longer period before lactic acid starts to affect my muscles. This is proof that the muscular endurance and cardiovascular endurance training has worked. I also feel more flexible now when I am diving for the ball, I think the fact that during my flexibility work out I did stretches in-between helped me as at no stage did my muscles feel tight. I also don’t feel as stiff after a football match now as warm up and cool down more than before, The PEP has taught me that these two parts of a training session are still very important.
Throughout the six weeks there was no point where I had become bored of doing an exercise, this shows that due to the variety of exercise tedium has not come into my plan which is good.
A bad part about my PEP is that although it was specifically for a goalkeeper I think that maybe I should have cut down on the amount of jogs and bike rides as they will not make a big difference to my performance as a goalkeeper. This is something which I could work on if I were to make another exercise plan for a goalkeeper.
Apart from that though I think that this was a success as I now know how to improve certain parts of my fitness and by completing the PEP my fitness has also improved.
