The fitness training project is about me as an individual performing a circuit with different exercises all relating to one sport which I have chosen to do. The circuit training is done over a five week period and I have to record my results and any progress or difficulties I have stumbled across. The sport I have chosen to use for my circuit training is football for a number of different reasons. I enjoy playing football and I seem to have a natural interest for the sport. I have been playing football for a long time and I have seemed to have mastered a few techniques.
Fitness is the ability to meet demands of the environment. There are two different types of fitness, general and specific. I am going to explain both types of fitness in more detail. It is important that you are fit rather than unfit, if you are fit you can cope with the demands and the activities without getting too worn out.
General fitness relates to everyday use of your body. There are several different aspects. Stamina or endurance – this is the ability of the body to keep on going without getting too tired. It is made up of Cardiovascular endurance and muscular endurance. The two are related because your muscles will fatigue easily if they do not receive enough sufficient oxygen. Strength, flexibility and speed are also the other aspects of general fitness. General fitness keeps you healthy and it prevents accidents from occurring. We all require a minimum level of general fitness, to cope with the demands of everyday life.
In some areas of sport specific fitness is required where there is more skill involved. Ice skating is a sport where more skill is involved. These different aspects build up specific fitness. Power, agility, balance, co-ordination, speed of reaction and timing. The circuit will help in different ways, to get me prepared to play football, and build my endurance and stamina. The circuit training would help me to organise my muscle training, and help me get fitter over the five week period. I will also become more organised and I will be able to play football with confidence. Each week I will have set a target for myself which I will have to beat the following week in a limited period of time. This will help build my confidence and I will be building up my self-esteem.
The circuit would also help improve my skills in football, EG. Passing and shooting, I will hopefully be more accurate before the five week period ends. If you want to get fitter or improve your skills at your sport, training offers you a programme of exercise to help you reach your fitness goals. It is based on four different principles. The Principle of specificity- each exercise has an effect on your body. You have to select which part of you body you want to exercise EG. If you want toned biceps you will have to lift weights, but it won’t affect you abdominal muscles. You also have to choose the right exercises, and the training programme must be designed to suit you.
Principle of overload- to improve fitness you have to overload it to make it work harder than usual. You can overload your body using three different methods.
The principal of progression- Your body takes time to get used to the increased demands on it. So you should build up you exercise gradually, or you will be risking torn muscles or other injuries, which could set you back to the beginning where you started. If you exercise at a constant level, your fitness will remain at the same level. So it is important that you slowly increase your exercises. The Principle of reversibility- this is unfortunately the down side of exercise, if you stop exercising your body will loose it’s fitness and fall back to level one. The muscles that are not used will atrophy (waste away)
There are a number of safety aspects involved when performing your circuit training. You have to make sure that you are in an open space, and it is not overcrowded, so there is less chance of an accident occurring with a fellow pupil. You have to make sure that there is an adult in charge so if any difficulties do occur, the adult would be there for any necessary precautions, and deliver first aid. My intentions for the circuit would be that it would keep me fit, and gradually increase my stamina and fitness level. I would also be better at playing football because the circuit training would have helped increase my skill and accuracy. I have to do the circuit training over a five week period, five different times. After the five week period I will still carry on with the exercises in my own time, and take my body to the limit. I would have liked to progress enormously over the five week period and I would like to see myself fitter and more skilful.
Warm up- It is important to warm up and cool down because every training session has a warm up, the activity and the cool down. It is important to do a warm up because a warm up prevents you from major injuries because it makes your muscles more flexible. A warm up is light exercise for preparation purposes for the main activity. A warm up prevents you from major injuries, this is because it warms your muscles and make them more flexible. Stretching also decreases the chance of obtaining an injury in the main activity. It helps stop muscles, tendons, and ligaments get strained or torn. The next objective is to prepare yourself mentally, with an exercise relating to your sport.
Cool down- the cool down is equally as important as the warm up. The cool down helps your body to recover after vigorous exercise. Without the cool down the lactic acid would remain in your muscle cells for a longer period of time, and stopping suddenly after vigorous exercise could make you faint. After the vigorous exercise you can start off with gentle exercise such as jogging. This is very effective because it clears the lactic acid away faster from the muscle cells, and it keeps your circulation going at a steady speed. After vigorous exercise your muscles often get tight, if you finish with some stretching you can prevent this from happening.
If you are running in a marathon it is vital that you perform the warm up and cool down. When you are warming up for the marathon, the best thing to start of with is light jogging. This will increase the flow of oxygen to the muscle cells where it is required, the warm up will also make the muscle cells more flexible so you are less likely to tear or damage muscle tissue. It is just as important that you cool down because after vigorous exercise such as running a marathon, your muscles build up excessive lactic acid, if it isn’t removed quickly with a cool down you could suffer from cramps. Stretching prevents this, it removes lactic acid from muscle cells, and it also helps loosen your muscles and prevent stiffness.
It is equally as important to cool down as it is to warm up. Cooling down helps circulation going and gets rid of lactic acid faster which build up in the muscle cells, and if it is not removed fast enough you could suffer from cramps, when you breathe in oxygen it gets rid of the lactic acid. The cool down helps loosen your muscles and prevents stiffness.
My chosen sport-
The sport I am relating to my circuit is football, I will have six different stops in the circuit where I will be performing different exercises relating to my chosen sport. At each circuit I will perform as many reps as I can in 1min, and after that have a 30sec rest before moving onto the next circuit. The different exercises I am going to be using in the circuit are sit ups, star jumps, step ups, shooting, passing and squat thrusts. I have chosen these different exercises because they all relate to my sport and they warm me up and cool me down. For each different exercises each time I am using different muscles all over my body, this is a good thing because the exercise isn’t concentrated in one area.
I do the sit up when it works my abdominal muscles whereas if I perform the step ups it will target my leg muscles. The passing and shooting is the main activity for me in the circuit because it is relating back to my chosen sport, football. I can also increase my accuracy and skill in these areas. The exercises that I have chosen their benefit to my sport is that they target most of the muscles I would use in the sport. It would also help me increase my accuracy and skill towards football.