The first week I paid very little attention to how I did these exercises. I did them in a totally random order. I did not consider which exercise should not be done one after another e.g. I did press ups and then skipping. Both of these exercises require me to use my arms i.e. once I had done the press ups my arms were tires and I did not perform as well as I could have on the triceps dips. I can back this up by comparing the results of triceps dips from week 1 to the results of triceps dips from week 2. Also my performance in week 1 may not have been my best because I had not done most of the exercises before.
There were also a few things that may be thought to be dangerous. Firstly there were a couple of people wearing chains; these may have got caught in their or other people’s clothes or even in equipment e.g. a skipping rope. Some of the equipment was not put away properly. This could have hurt people who may have used the equipment next or damaged the equipment. Another thing that may have caused an accident was the fact that since people were doing different exercises the gym was crowded and the positioning of certain stations was inappropriate. The skipping was being done next to where the running was being done. There were to places to do the running so people got confused and this also wasted space. People who were taking lay up shots and jump shots kept on hitting each others balls by accident or even on purpose. Some people were walking under the basket so could have been hit by the ball.
I forgot to note my resting heart rate, my heart rate after training and my recovery time. The second week I was advised by my P.E. teacher to do the exercises in a certain order where I would not tire out certain muscles and then use them straight away. I was also told to record my heart rate at the beginning and at the end and also to note the time it took for me to regain my resting heart rate. Here is the order that I came up with and stuck to for the next three weeks.
I will begin by doing skipping this uses mainly leg strength and a little arm strength. This is for building up my overall stamina. Since my legs will now be tired I decided to do an exercise that did not need too much strength from my legs. Press ups require a lot of arm strength. This will develop my deltoids and biceps. My arms will now tired so I decided that next I will do running between ropes this is a very short activity and requires little strength however I have put it in my circuit to improve my reflexes as I would be dodging ropes. I could transfer this skill to basketball when dodging players using hindsight I believe it would have helped me a lot more if I dribbled a basket ball while running.
People were still leaving equipment lying around however no one was wearing any jewelry and the stations were better situated. I noticed that I had improved on most of my activities just by rearranging the order that I did them in. I noted my heart rates this time but I am unable to make a comment on them because I did not do this the first week. The third week was very much like the second week but more people were leaving equipment unattended. This week I set my self higher targets believing that I could overload my body to reach them. This worked and I met most of my targets even though I had raised them quite a bit.
My resting heart rate was not really correct because I had just played football therefore that had an affect on my heart rate but my recovery time had improved. The fourth week everyone started off alright but then most of the boys started to use equipment i.e. basketballs that they were not supposed to be using. Although this meant that we did not have to share equipment it disrupted who had basketball as one of their stations. This week I thought that since I had improved a lot I should try to maintain last week’s achievements. Surprisingly I did better on most of them than I had expected.
All of my resting heart rate, heart rate after exercising and recovery time had improved a lot. This shows that I am fitter than I was when I started training. Overall I think that I improved the most on the press ups. It is a relatively common exercise yet I was not very good at it to begin with. However as I started to practice it more and set myself a reasonable target and overloaded my body to meet the target I gradually improved by a lot. Seeing the success of this training program I intend to keep training in a similar manner. I believe that introducing more and calcium to my diet will also help as calcium helps build and strengthen bones.