Physical Education Fitness Log

SMARTER goals

S – Specific

This Programme is specific to my personal goals regarding what I want to achieve. I play badminton and so would like to achieve a better power-shot and would also like to increase the level and distance that I can run. Therefore the exercises included in the fitness log are specific to these goals. My attention is specifically concentrated on the areas most needed to be developed.

M – Measurable

I measured my strength before the fitness programme which will act as a standard and will be compared against in intervals throughout the log. This will help me for the fitness log for my GCSE’s, so that I know whether I need to overload myself more, increase intensity, duration, or decrease my intensity.

A – Agreed

I am happy with the training programme, the time-length of each session and the areas that I will focus on. If I was not happy then I may not fully apply myself in some aspects of the programme and therefore could become disheartened when I do not begin to see the improvement that I may expect. The acceptance by both parties – my parents and I - gives me ownership and confidence of my performance, and will entice me to continue, in order to avoid disappointment. By agreeing with my parents, I will feel inclined to continue, otherwise I may be ridiculed by people for not being tenacious in what I say.

R – Realistic

My goals are ambitious, but attainable, and give me focus during my fitness log that are accomplishable.

T – Time Related

The Programme is initially 12-weeks long. At the end of the programme there will be a series of tests, which will allow me to see the progress that I have hopefully achieved. In the long term, this programme can be changed and continued if I wish to continue pursuing the log. I also must perform tests in intervals throughout the log in order to maintain motivation and enthusiasm to achieve my goals.  

E – Enjoyable

The programme will include warm-up, resistance machines, and cool-down each with a choice of exercises. Therefore there will be variation, which reduces tedium allowing me to enjoy performing my log. Any exercises that I find uncomfortable and painful, which could then reduce my enjoyment in participation, will be removed.

R – Recordable

At the beginning of the Programme I completed a selection of tests. This will then be completed again during the programme and at the end of the 12-weeks. Therefore my progress can be recorded and tracked.

Principles of Training

I have followed the principles of Training throughout this circuit-training programme.

Specificity

The type of training that I do should be specific to the sport and I.  Therefore the exercises that I include in the programme should be specific to the goals that I want to achieve.  One of the goals in my programme is to improve muscular strength in my upper body so I can apply more force in scrums in rugby. Therefore when I perform the upper body exercises I use a heavier weight, and complete fewer repetitions. However when training my lower body, I use less weights and complete more repetitions as this is to improve muscular endurance and muscular tone. The weights that I use are also specific and personal to my own capability. For the strength exercises I use weights at about 80% of my maximum and for the endurance exercises I use weights at about 40% of my maximum.  

Progress

Over the 12-week fitness programme, I will demonstrate that I have progressed through overloading and specifically focussing on the necessary muscles for my goals. I will ensure that progress is recorded so that if there are any anomalies or, I feel I am not pushing myself I can always edit my fitness programme to better suit myself. Progression, must also occur organically, beginning slow, and eventually becoming more intense. This avoids sustaining an injury, and being mentally dissuaded from continuing the log.

Overload

By putting your body under additional stress, fitness can be progressed and increased. The extra demands that the body is put under will cause long-term adaptations that will then enable us to work efficiently at a higher level of performance. Continuing to overload will prevent fitness from plateauing, and will adjust to the higher level of physical ability required to reach the demands. I will therefore train in the target zone of each goal I set, then slowly increase the duration or frequency at which I do the activity. If performing weight lifting, and the intensity at which I can lift is no longer high, I will set another goal to overload myself again.  

Reversibility

The effects of training are reversible. If exercise is stopped or reduced in intensity, deterioration will set in. This can happen as quickly as one week after reducing intensity. As my goals are to tone up, and increase upper and lower body muscle composition, several weeks of training, then pausing could cause atrophy, meaning gained body mass will turn into waste fat. This will cause adverse effects in my running, as my cardiovascular endurance would also decrease. Therefore it is essential to avoid Tedium.

Tedium

In order to reduce tedium within my programme I have tried to incorporate variety. This will hopefully reduce boredom and increase enjoyment. If I get bored, I will not want to participate in the programme and therefore will start to see the effects of reversibility (mentioned above). I have decided not to have a set order of machines used, but to work roughly within the guidelines of my goals. I will also include an enjoyable warmup and go for a short jog to cool down, as well as an interesting diet which will reinforce my log.

Warmup

Warm up is defined as: “Preparation for physical exertion or a performance by exercising or practising gently beforehand.” A warm-up is vital because it will improve your performance and help to prevent some injuries. The purpose of a warm-up is to increase the temperature of the muscles, which in turn will benefit the speed and strength of the muscular contraction.

In a warm-up, your muscle fibres improve their elasticity. This is because as the muscle temperature increases, the flexibility of your muscles also increases. Therefore you have a greater strength of contraction. There is an increase in muscle temperature due to the increased flow of blood through the blood vessels and to the muscles. This happens because as you warm-up, your Heart rate and stroke volume increase which increases the volume of blood pumped from the heart to the muscle. This increased Heart rate increases the temperature of the muscle fibres. The increase in temperature increases the speed of contraction of the muscle fibres due to an increased speed of nerve transmission to the muscle fibres.

I have interestingly decided to perform an unusual form of warming up. Inspired by  I intend on doing a ‘primal’ prison workout, which requires no apparatus, just open space and yourself. It is an intense pre-workout, which will not overstrain your muscles, or ligaments, but contributes to building muscles, which is necessary in short amounts of time. The idea can also be performed at home when you cannot go to the gym, which helps avoid reversibility if you have a reason for not being able to attend the gym. The prison workout involves the most primal of exercises, including: Burpees, Tricep Dips, Pull-ups, Squats, Planking, and Push-ups. The beauty of the pre-workout is that they focus on all four keys areas of the body: chest, biceps, core, and quadriceps. They are also not strenuous enough to cause the pulling of muscles, and can be adapted to make more difficult. For example, handstand push-ups, wall-squats, or diamond push-ups – all beyond me at the time of this log. The warm up also allows for variation – one of my major training concerns – as there is not enough time to do all the warm ups, so I can do different warm ups from week-to-week. Furthermore, I can compete against other gym attendees, by doing as many press-ups for example in thirty seconds, or do a pyramid set, by doing declining sets from 10 to 1.

Cool down

The body needs to be given the opportunity to readjust to a normal resting state at the end of exercise [homeostasis]. A gradual reduction in intensity of activity after cessation of exercise allows the body systems to recover as efficiently as possible. As well as helping the body return to its normal resting state, it also helps to slow down the decrease of metabolism and decrease the cardio-vascular and respiratory rates. A cool down can also:

• Aid faster dissipation of waste products, including removal of lactic acid, which inhibits muscle action, it lessens the potential for delayed onset of muscle soreness.
• Assists in preventing muscle soreness caused by spasms/involuntary contraction with the inclusion of active stretching activities.
• Reduces the chance of dizziness or fainting by encouraging venous return thus preventing venous pooling at the extremities.
• Encourages the lowering of blood levels of adrenaline; such adrenaline levels can place strain on the heart if allowed to remain high.

My cool down will consist of:

• 2 Minutes on the treadmill in the gym, set at level 9 and each 15-second reducing by one level. I will then finish by doing light mobility exercises, such as alternating ankle touches, trunk rotation, and arm swings.

Workout

These are the main workouts I feel would benefit me, prior to starting the fitness log. I have broken them up into three main groups: chest & biceps, back & triceps, and shoulders & abdominal. These are the main groups I want to work on throughout the fitness log. However, during the fitness log, I may choose to change some of these workouts, for example, if I feel a certain workout is uncomfortable, not effective, or if I see someone else performing a better workout, these are reasons I may change the routine. For my legs, I will use the leg extension on its own, as there aren’t many other leg workouts available in the gym. Other than that, I will go running, as a part of my four sports. For each exercise, I aim to do 6-10 repetitions or too failure in each set, and perform a superset of 3 sets, on the highest weight possible. Between each set I have a 60 second break, then move onto the next set. Once 3 sets is done, I move onto the next exercise and repeat. This should take about an hour, meaning I only focus on one area, i.e. back and triceps in each session.

Chest & Biceps

• Dumbbell Bench Press
• Assisted Pullups
• Dumbbell Flyers
• Dumbbell Shoulder Press
• Seated Concentration Curls
• Hanging Leg Raise

Back & Triceps

• Overhead Dumbbell Extension
• Cable machine pushdown
• Wide grip Lateral Pulldown
• Close grip Lateral Pulldown

Shoulder & Abs

• Dumbbell Upright Row
• Dumbbell Shoulder Press
• Cable shoulder Press
• Abdominal Rotation Machine
• Crunches with Sit-up Frame

Recordings

From the beginning of November, 2015, I attended the gym every Monday, Tuesday, and Friday lunchtimes. I attended consistently up until Christmas. However, after the New Year, people swarmed to the gym, and I wasn’t achieving anything. Therefore, I decided to attend the gym every Monday and Wednesday evening after school. This also gave me increasing time to recover, as a go running every other day, go to rugby every Wednesday, and play badminton on a Monday. Also the lunchtimes were only around 30 minute sessions, which is perfectly fine for a long-term recreational fitness log, but considering the number of exercises I wish to include, and the results I wish to see, after school sessions give me this opportunity. To make things easier, I have decided to only record my results every three weeks, otherwise there would be around thirty tables. Also the results wouldn’t change much within one week.

November Monday, 9th – Biceps, and Chest

The first three lunchtimes attending the gym were exciting, and I quickly understood the exercises. I decided not to do the assisted pull-ups or hanging leg-raise, simply because I don’t possess that upper body strength required. However, I did try one, and I utterly failed. The four different exercises felt comfortable, and I felt as if they were working the biceps and chest well. I did start by performing the Dumbbell Flyers incorrectly, by extending my arm to far back, meaning I struggled then to raise my arm back up. I was informed to not abduct my arm as far, and to hold the dumbbell at the extended position for a few seconds to increase the intensity. By the end, my arms were inevitably fatigued, and so I only did six repetitions, and on 8Kg. By doing press-ups at home and a continuing the gym, when I record next in two weeks, I hope to do 8Kg and two sets.

November Tuesday, 10th – Back, and Triceps

The back and triceps were much easier to work on, as I mainly used the cable machine, unlike working on the chest and biceps which involves only dumbbells which are much more difficult to control. Therefore, I completed more sets, and more repetitions. I also had less breaks in between each set, because I felt more confident and motivated to keep going. Next time I will increase the weight in kilograms of the cable machine, as they are very easy to do. I want to have the highest weight possible, and lower repetitions.

November Friday, 13th – Shoulders, and Abs

I had already performed dumbbell shoulder presses on Monday and so I decided to push myself by doing 10Kg – it was surprisingly easier than I had expected and I overloaded myself, creating more of a burn. Today I particularly felt that I pushed myself – my shoulders and abdominals burned when I left. I decided to do crunches until fatigue, as there is it takes a lot of repetitions to overload, so I didn’t count, but just did them till necessary. I also felt the abdominal rotation machine was particularly uncomfortable, so I might decide to change that.

November Monday, 30th – Biceps, and Chest

I have decided to exchange my shoulder press with cable bicep curls, as I noticed that the shoulder press was already being done every Friday, and Monday’s were more about Chest and Biceps. Also, the bicep curl cable machine and concentration curls work well interdependently in order to bulk and tone the biceps. It also works to increase intensity and overload the arm muscles. I have also somehow managed to achieve a lot more sets recently. I have not noticed any significant changes as of yet though, other than I have pushed myself further recently.

December Tuesday, 1st – Back, and Triceps

Not much has changed since Tuesday, 10th, other than I made a couple of alterations, mainly to just push myself that little further. So far I am happy with these workouts. I have corrected myself on the lateral pulldown, by keeping my back straight, and ensuring my body is fully forward, against the leg placement, to ensure I don’t make the machine easier. I have also tried to do alternating, in front, and behind the head lateral pulldown, to increase the intensity on the triceps. Lastly, I have attempted to do tricep dips in the gym just too additionally add more variance to the fitness log, by placing two benches a meter apart, however, it is rather inconvenient and so I didn’t add it into my log.

December Friday, 4th – Shoulders, and Abs

I eventually realised the abdominal rotation machine just wasn’t for me. To replace the benefits of such a machine, a decided to do planks at home – as it’s easy to do in spare time – and in the gym, before and after the workout. However, I prefer doing it at home in my own time, as it is time consuming and not exactly orthodox in a gym. I have also moved up the weights of the dumbbells for the last 2 weeks to 12.5Kg in effort to develop muscles quicker and again, overload myself. With a relatively small defined list of exercises on Friday’s, it’s easier to do more sets and repetitions.

I only did one more week, before the Christmas holidays. I didn’t attend the gym over the holidays, however, I did continuously maintain my fitness, by going running every other day (when I could, as it rained a lot) for a 4.22 mile run. I also did fartlek training, in my fields behind my house which both attempted to counterbalance my gluttony over the Christmas period. I also did the prison workout (see Warm-up) to avoid atrophy (see PoT – reversibility) and losing any increase in muscle size. This involved planking, and crunches – for abdominals – and press-ups and squats for arms and quadriceps respectively.

After the Christmas Holidays, my motivation for attending the gym and running did decrease substantially, due to examinations duly approaching. My appetite also decreased, but I still went to rugby training, and did home workouts between revision sessions.

        However my mojo for personal fitness was restored after the examination period and my timetable went back to the norm as before the holiday. I noticed however, that many more people had decided to attend the gym, and so I decided to incorporate extra sessions after school on a Monday, and Wednesday. This benefited, as it meant I wasn’t compressed for time pending the end of lunch, and they additional benefit of not smelling in school!

January Monday, 18th – Biceps, and Chest

This was a particularly intense session, especially after not going to the gym in 3-4 weeks. It was fun though to be back in the gym, and I decided to add in the bench press, as there was no one occupying it. It work the pectorals in particular and I feel it was definitely a good addition to the fitness log. I kept all the weights the same, but the sets fluctuated slightly, decreasing the dumbbell exercises, in exchange for the bench press, otherwise it would be too much.

January Wednesday, 20th – Back, and Triceps

I have really upped the weights and sets with the surplus time, and pushed myself beyond what I would normally. I have not changed the usual workouts, but had I lot bigger breaks between each workout. I also struggled to play rugby that night!

January Friday, 22nd - Shoulders, and Abs

I definitely feel I have improved since beginning in November, as the weights I have used have increased significantly, and my sets have generally increased. I ambitiously attempted to do 15Kg on the dumbbell shoulder press, and managed one set. I feel doing 15Kg on most of the dumbbell exercises would definitely be a good milestone to achieve. I also attempted to do an assisted pull-up, which I managed to do four. I have researched how to do pull-ups, and have decided to do half pull-ups – putting a chair beneath – to keep pushing off, which would increase the shoulder and bicep muscles necessary to do regular pull-ups. I will add the exercise in all gym sessions, as I feel this is important to achieve pull-ups.

        For the final week I did the same routine, as well as doing a session on Thursday, in order to re-test on Friday all my Fitness of Components and One-rep Max’s in the gym. I did the exact same weights and sets on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. On the Friday my recordings are shown below:

Evaluation

From the table, I can see I have made significant progress. The shoulder press hasn’t made as good progress as the chest press, therefore I haven’t paid as much attention to the shoulders, and I could use more time, or workouts to specifically target these group of muscles. I have also not reached my target of 10 pull-ups, which shows I didn’t begin trying to do pull-ups early enough in my fitness log.

Overall, the fitness programme has been a success, because there haven’t been any major flaws, and also I have felt much more confident about attending a gym and completing a fitness log. The programme has given me a good foundation as to where to start when re-doing the fitness log, but for a long period. Another positive outcome is that I didn’t find the training log tedious, and actually found it to be a fun experience with the goals in place.

I have been unable to re-test to record my progress, and so am unsure whether the fitness programme has been effective. Regardless, I have decided to continue the fitness log, not as a part of the GCSE lesson plans, but in my own time, to avoid reversibility. One of my goals was to improve my muscular endurance in the lower body. I have decided to alter one of the exercises to include the treadmill as I feel this would be of benefit to my cardiovascular endurance, and to get rid of the bicycle, as I feel this makes me lazy, and not overload as much as I should. I feel this is a necessary alteration, and I hope to see some improvements over the following weeks.

Health & Safety

In this fitness training programme there are certain areas that need to be managed carefully in order not to become a health and safety hazard. Health and safety factors that should be considered and taken into account are as follows:

• It is important that the difficulty of the fitness log is pitched at the correct level for the performer. If the level of performance is targeted above my capabilities then I could result in injury from trying to work at a level, which is beyond my ability. Weights that are too heavy can lead to direct injury to the specific muscle group.
• A personal health and safety note to myself, was that I was using the lateral pull-down wrong. I was taught the correct method of using the machine so I could refine the technique. Bad technique can lead to muscle damage, and furthermore, no improvements to the muscles.
• Plenty of liquid should also be consumed before, during, and after exercise to prevent dehydration.