As you can see from my graph, overall from the first week to the seventh week there is a slight improvement. However my scores seem to be varying during the 7 week period. However I do feel that my score being so high in the final week was because I myself was much more determined to score highly in the final week. Below is a line graph to show how my performance increased or decreased as the 7 week period went on.
Evaluation
As mentioned above in my analysis I feel that I have made an improvement overall in both my performance and fitness level, which is what I set out to do. The improvement can be seen in my graph, which shows that my test scores at the end of each week improve from the opening week to the final week. However there were slight variations in between. I also feel that my training plan should have been spread over a longer period of time, ideally 9-11 weeks, this would give a much better reflection as to improvements that I make. However in this case it was not practical to do the training program for so long.
It can be seen on my graph that from week 1 to week 2, my test score decreased, this could have been due to me missing 1 day In this the opening week, because of me taking a day trip away, I missed one of the training days, this might have been the reason that my score decreased slightly on this occasion. Also on the Thursday of week 1, after doing my swim I felt a severe cramp as I got out of the pool, I thought that I had fully recovered from this, however felt a strain in my calf, the following day and a very slight strain was still there on the day of the cooper run test.
However for the majority of my training program an improvement can be seen, also for the majority, the improvement can be seen on a week-to-week basis. I think this is because my body becomes used to the exercise it is being put through and copes better with the exercise, I felt less fatigued after the sessions as the weeks went on, this is also a sign of a better fitness level. I thought that my training plan was set up very well overall, because there wasn’t a single occasion were I felt the activities became tedious, had the activities become tedious it would certainly have affected performance.
After the first few days after starting my training plan, I felt very tired, and certain muscles were aching, however it was an unusual positive feeling, and although it was a very tired feeling it actually felt good. Gradually as the weeks went on I felt less and less tired after each session, and toward the end of the 6th week I was beginning to not feel very tired at all, had I done the plan for longer it would have been at this stage where I no longer felt tired, I introduced something to progress the program, either make the runs longer, or the swimming sessions longer, or just something which was a bit more demanding because in order to improve you must continue to overload your body. My program was designed specifically for cardiovascular endurance or stamina and all the events included are included because they deal with cardiovascular endurance and improve it! This is very important, when designing a training program it is important that all the components included within it are specific to your particular sport or the particular thing you wish to improve.
The next thing was that you must continue to progress in a training program! After a certain time of the same amount of training your body will become used to that amount of training and able to cope with it, there for you should make sure that if you get to this stage, you increase the work load so you continue to improve. In my investigation, I never reached this stage, due to my training plan only lasting 6 weeks, had it been for longer, I would have been forced to increase the work load of things in order to keep on progressing.
Leading on from “progression” is overload, which means that you must keep overloading your body in order to improve. So when your body becomes used to a certain distance run, you should increase the distance to overload your body. Again due to the program only lasting 6 weeks, there was no need for me to employ this into my program, but had the program lasted longer, I would have needed to increase running distances, swimming distances and repetitions in order to continue to overload my body. I had to be careful of reversibility, when doing my training plan, reversibility is when you reach a certain point and no longer improve when this point is reached the body is no longer improving and the training program becomes useless! It is at this stage you should use “progression” and “overload”. However as mentioned before my training plan didn’t last long enough for this to have effect.