For my GCSE project I am going to organise my own 5-session fitness programme for my chosen sport of Netball Circuit training is a good way to organise your muscle training. A circuit usually has 8 to 15 stations. You do a different exercise at each station. Circuits can also be used to improve your skills at a specific sport. You practice a skill at each station. This is my circuit. The purpose of this training programme is to improve my skills, strength, endurance and my aerobic and anaerobic respiration. It will consist of a lot of repetition and hard work.
My overall aim is to improve my fitness by considering the following training principles: Specificity Training should be specific. This means that it should concentrate on the specific needs of the performer. Lifting weights, for example, will increase muscle strength, but it will have little effect upon aerobic capacity. Not only should training be specific to a particular sport, but it should also be specific on those parts of the body that contribute most to the sport. If upper body strength is required, then concentrating on the arms and chest will be needed. If both speed and endurance is needed, then exercises should be devised with this in mind. In netball both is needed.
A specific programme could be designed for a person returning from injury. If the muscles of one leg are recovering from a strain or pull they cannot be worked as hard as those of the leg that has not been damaged. Lower levels of stress should be put on recently repaired body tissue. However, by carefully designing a programme, which is specific to the recovering part of the body, effective rehabilitation should result. Progression- A training session should always be within the capabilities of the individual. Although stress should be placed on the body systems for the training to be effective, too much stress too soon can cause injury.
If the overload of the body systems is increased at a steady and attainable rate, then improvement can be monitored easily and progression noted. However, it must be remembered that the body adapts and will begin to find the harder programmes less demanding as time goes by. Thus, the overload must be increased, otherwise progression will stop. Reversibility- Just as the body adapts to greater stress, so it will adapt to less stress being placed on it. If training stops for a period of time, fitness will be impaired. It should be noted that body adapts to lower stress far more quickly than it does to higher stress levels.
Anaerobic activities are affected less than aerobic ones, as they do not need vast amounts of oxygen. The aerobic capacity of muscle deteriorates very quickly. If the muscles are no used they begin to atrophy: this means that they waste away and become smaller and thinner. Weaker muscles are more prone to injury. Overload- This is the term used to describe activities that impose demands on the body, which are greater than usual. The over load principles aim to put the body systems under repeated stress. If excessive demand is placed on a muscle then more fibres would be prepared to work; if excessive demand is placed on the body’s aerobic system it will produce more red blood cells- more oxygen can be taken up and it is used more effectively.
It is possible to increase aerobic activity, muscular strength and flexibility by using the overload principle: Overload can be attained in three ways: 1) Increasing the intensity of the activity- this might mean that we have to run faster, lift heavier weights or stretch further during training. This builds up over a period of time. 2) Increasing the frequency of the activity-this means that there should be more training sessions with shorter rest periods between them. 3) Increasing the duration of the activity- this means that the length of each training session should be increased progressively. I will organise a fitness circuit and will choose one other training method from the following: interval training, Fartlek training and long continuous training.