MODULE 1

Physical Activity on a Continuum

Physical activity is movement carried out by the skeletal muscles that
requires energy. Different types of physical activity can vary by ease or
intensity. Physical activity is essential to health and confers wide- ranging
health benefits, but exercise is necessary to significantly improve physical
fitness. Examples of physical activity include walking to and from school,
taking the stairs instead of elevators and escalators, gardening, doing
household chores, dancing, and washing the car by hand. Physical inactivity,
by contrast, implies a level of activity that is lower than that required to
maintain good health.

Exercise is a type of physical activity that requires planned, structured,

and repetitive bodily movement to improve or maintain one or more
components of physical fitness. Examples of exercise are walking, running,
cycling, aerobics, swimming, and strength training. Exercise is usually viewed
as an activity that requires a vigorous-intensity effort.

Principles of Training
Improving performance is not just about training more – competitors
need to follow a carefully planned training programme. This programme must
be systematic and take into account the demands of the activity and the
needs, preferences and abilities of the performer. There are a number of
principles that performers and coaches must follow if they are to fulfil their
potential.

Individual needs

All training programme must consider the individual needs of the

performer. Before designing a training programme, you need to ask the
following questions about the individual:

 What is their initial level of fitness?

 How old are they?
 Are they male or female?
 Why do they want to train?
 What is their aim or motivation?

The answers will help you to tailor the training programme to the individual
needs and abilities of the performer.
Types of Principles of Training

When planning any training, you have to apply the principles of training. The
principles can be easily memorized using the mnemonic, SPORT.

 Specificity you must do specific types of activity to improve specific

parts of the body in specific ways.

For example,
if you’re training for a weightlifting competition, it’s no use going swimming
every day.You need to concentrate on strength training for your arms and legs.

You need to train specifically to develop the right..

muscles – if your sport requires a lot of running, work mainly on your legs.
type of fitness – do you need strength, speed, stamina or a combination?
skills – you need to practice any relevant skills like kicking, serving and
passing.

 Progression means gradually increasing the amount of exercise

you do.When a performer first starts exercising, their levels of fitness may
be poor.
If a coach increases the training too quickly, the body will not have time to
adapt and this may result in injury. Slow and steady progress is the best way
forward.

For example;

 if you were training for a 10 km run, you might start by going for two 30
minute runs a week.You could then increase the time you run for by 3
minutes each week.

 if you were creating a training programme for a novice skier, you would
not start them off on a really steep, difficult run.

Gradually increasing the frequency, intensity and duration of fitness sessions

is an important factor in developing an effective training programme.
In terms of type of training, progression should be based on the principle of
moving from easy activities to difficult ones.
Overload Fitness can only be improved by training more than you
normally do. Unless the body is subjected to increased demands,
improvements in physical fitness will not be made.If a physical fitness
programme is to be effective, it must place increased and specific demands
on the body. If training levels remain the same, then the programme will only
be maintaining the participants level of fitness, not improving it.

FITT principle
There are four ways to achieve overload in an exercise programme. They
can easily be remembered using the mnemonic, FITT.

Frequency – how often you train.

Intensity – how hard you train.
Time- how long you train for.
Type- the kind of training you do

 Frequency
How often you should train depends on what you wish to achieve.
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence suggests that to
maintain health, you should do 30 minutes of moderate exercise 5 times
a week.
However, if you wish to become an intermediate or elite competitor in
any sport, you will need to train much more frequently.Elite rowers often
train twice a day!Training is best done regularly, rather than at random
intervals.

I
 ntensity refers to how hard you work during your training sessions.
 A good way to measure intensity is to monitor a performer’s heart rate.
The harder you work, the faster your heart beats.

Aerobic respiration – means respiration ‘with oxygen’. When exercise

is not too fast and at a constant, steady rate, the heart can keep the
muscles fully supplied with oxygen.

Anaerobic respiration – means respiration ‘without oxygen’. If the

exercise is fast or intense and done in short bursts, the heart cannot
supply oxygen to the muscles as fast as the cells are using it.

Resting heart rate is the number of times your heart beats each

 minute when you're not active. The normal range is between 50 and
100 beats per minute.

Maximum heart rate (MHR) This is the average maximum number of

times your heart should beat per minute during exercise.

Maximum heart rate (MHR)

 in order to train the correct energy system, you need to calculate your
maximum heart rate (MHR).
 your maximum heart rate is the fastest that your heart can beat. It
depends on your age and can be estimated using the following formula:

Use this formula to calculate the maximum heart rate of: your age subtracted
to 220.

A. 16 year old 204 B. 24 year old 196

C. 53 year old 167 D. 67 year old 153

Intensity – training zones

If a performer wishes to train their aerobic system, they should train at

between 60% and 80% of their maximum.

If a performer wishes to train their anaerobic system, they should train at

between 80% and 90% of their maximum.
The precise percentage level you train at will be based upon your current level
of fitness.

EXAMPLE
 An unfit performer looking to improve their aerobic fitness would train at
60% of their maximum heart rate.
 A fit performer looking to improve their aerobic fitness would train at
more like 80% of their maximum heart rate.

80% to 90% of MHR – Training in the anaerobic zone increases strength and
power.
As you approach 90% of the performer’s maximum heart rate, training time
will have to get shorter and it will take more time for the performer to recover.
This is because anaerobic exercise produces lactic acid, which builds up in
the muscles. When there is too much lactic acid, the performer must stop.
60% to 80% of MHR – Training between these levels will improve a
performer’s stamina (or aerobic fitness) levels.
Lactic acid is not produced during aerobic exercise. Performers can train
aerobically for much longer periods.

 Time
Intensity will affect the time (or duration) of each training session. The
length of session required to achieve improvements depends on how hard a
performer is training.

To achieve improvements in aerobic fitness, you should aim

to spend at least 20 minutes per session in the target zone.

However, time will vary greatly depending on the activity the performer is
training for.If they are training for a marathon, they may need to spend several
hours at a time in the aerobic zone.
A sprinter, on the other hand, will need to spend relatively little time
actually exercising – their sessions are likely to consist of many short, high
intensity bursts with lengthy rests in-between.

 Type
If your aim is simple health related fitness, then the type of exercise you
do does not matter very much – it just needs to raises your pulse into the
aerobic zone for about 20 minutes.

You could even include activities like gardening, walking the dog or just
dancing round your kitchen!

However, if you are training for a specific event or competition, then the
type of exercise you do is very important.

Overload can be achieved by changing the type of exercise – for example,

you could lift the same weight but in a different way and using different
muscles.

Reversibility
Unfortunately, most of the adaptations which result from training are
reversible.This simply means that unless you keep training, any fitness gains
will be lost.

Fitness will be lost if the training load is reduced (meaning overload is not
achieved) or if a performer stops training, for example, if they are
injured.Coaches need to ensure that long periods of inactivity are avoided
when possible.

Endurance can be lost in a third of the time it took to achieve! Strength

declines more slowly, but lack of exercise will still cause muscles to wither
(atrophy).

Tedium
When planning a training programme, it is important to vary the training a
bit to prevent performers becoming bored.

If every training session is the same, a performer can lose enthusiasm

and motivation for training. You should include a variety of different training
methods or vary the type of activity.

Training for endurance events can be particularly boring. Tedium is

less of a problem in team sports.

Moderation

Moderation means achieving a balance between not training enough

and over training. Achieving the right balance is very important.

Without proper rest and recovery time, performers can become too tired
to train effectively and become stressed and irritable.

Even worse, over training can lead to injury. This can occur through over
stressing joints and tissues, or through poor technique resulting from
exhaustion.

REST - the period of time allocated to recover.

RECOVERY - the time required to repair damage to the body cause by

training or competition.