I have been assigned the task of creating and undergoing a 6 week personnel exercise programme. A personnel exercise programme or PEP is routine of training sessions and workouts that are specifically designed to help build on a specific aspect of personnel fitness. The aspect can be anything such as football skills, power, strength, speed, stamina, swimming (stroke enhancement etc.). In this personnel exercise programme I will be creating a workout routine based on a time period of 6 weeks. Throughout this 6 week period I will perform the tasks that I have set myself and then evaluate the sessions. The workout routine will be based upon an aspect of personnel training that I have chosen to work and improve on.
I have not chosen a direct aspect of personnel fitness to work and improve on in the PEP; instead I have decided to base my workout routine for the 6 week period on circuit training. Circuit training is a method of training where many aspects of personnel fitness can be worked on and improved with constant practice. Circuit training usually has 8 – 15 stations. A station is an area/aspect of the training programme that covers an aspect of personnel fitness such as speed, endurance, aerobic and anaerobic fitness, muscular strength, power etc.
I have chosen circuit training because it covers a wide range of areas of personnel fitness, and will therefore make my PEP more meaningful as it will not only help me improve one area of personnel fitness but multiple areas. It is also good because it can be focused on certain sport such as basketball where skills such as jumping, throwing, sprinting etc. can be practiced, worked on and improved. Before the personnel exercise programme can be made, I must carefully go through the main principles of training to help me plan a good programme that will be manageable and that will produce good results.
There are two main sets of training principles, one is S.P.O.R.T. and the other is F.I.T.T. All the letters in both words/sets represent one training principle of which I will describe below: S.P.O.R.T.: Specificity is making sure you know exactly what you are going to do individually and what your activity is going to be. Progression is to build up the amount of training done as the time period progresses. e.g. If 5m is run in the first week, then 10m can be run in second week, 15m in the third etc. Overload is making sure that one does not push themselves too far by exerting too much pressure on them during training. If difficulty is met then the training sessions must be changed in order to meet the trainee’s capabilities.
Reversibility is when the body weakens due to time off from training therefore the trainee has to first get back to their cardiovascular level before they can get back to where they left off (before the break). This is because the body looses muscle faster than it gains at a ratio of about 3:1. Tedium is making sure that any of the training sessions are not too long as this can be an overload. Also it is for making sure that any of the sessions are not boring as this can put the trainee off resulting in a less effort put it therefore a bad result. F.I.T.T.: Frequency is for how often you do the exercise (be it an individual set or the whole session) Intensity is the difficulty of the exercise: it could be the amount of weight, or the speed the trainee moves.
Time is the duration of the exercise: for general improvement of fitness, this should be at least 20 minutes a day. Type is for what kind of exercise is performed during the workout. This can vary depending on what you want to do to keep the workout interesting, and to work different muscles. There is also another important principle of training that does not come under S.P.O.R.T. or F.I.T.T. This is training threshold. Training threshold is a percentage of your maximum heart rate during cardiovascular training. This percentage heart rate should be the level that the heart works for in order to strengthen the heart. To find out what one’s training threshold is, age is subtracted from 220 to provide the figure of maximum heart rate (for the person in concern).