1. Principles of Training.
There are five key principles of training:
Specificity
Progression
Overload
Reversibility
Tedium
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Specificity
“ Training for a specific sport, training in a specific way or training a specific body part to function in a particular way.” Making your training relevant to the activity you do so you can improve.
E.g.
Katherine Grainger trains specifically for rowing. Much of her training will take place in a rowing boat or on an ergometer, replicating the type of activity that she does during a race. Katherine will focus on training the major muscle groups used when rowing; quads, hamstrings and gastrocnemius.
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Progression
“Gradually increasing the load placed upon your body to allow continual improvement to your body to occur.”
If an athlete always trained at the same intensity then little benefit would be gained once the body had adapted to the increased training load.
To allow continual improvement to be made training must be made gradually more difficult.
This is why an athlete who has been training regularly for a long period of time will have a harder training programme than an untrained person who has just joined a gym.
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Overload
“Placing extra demands on the body so it has to work harder than normal, thus allowing the body to adapt (improve) to the loads placed upon it.”
Overload is based on thresholds of training and the F.I.T/D. principle.
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5. Thresholds of Training
Long term benefits of training:
M.H.R. = 220 – age
Anaerobic
Zone
Aerobic Zone
Zone of no benefit
Heart wall gets thicker.
Blood vessels gain elasticity.
85% MHR
Heart gets bigger.
RHR drops.
Blood volume increases.
More capillaries around muscles.
60% MHR
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6. “The number of times a person trains each week.”
Frequency
“The number of times a person trains each week.”
The more often a person trains, the more often their body is stressed.
This leads to a quicker gain in fitness.
The general population should exercise at least 3 times per week.
Top athletes need to train more frequently than this.
Recovery is also important; not enough recovery time will lead to overtraining and overuse injuries.
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7. “How hard the exercise is.”
Intensity
“How hard the exercise is.”
Pulse rate is a good indicator of the intensity of exercise.
60% – 85% (m.h.r.) is the ideal training zone, the fitter the person the higher in this zone they should train.
To help monitor this people can use heart rate monitors.
Weight trainers also use percentage calculations to work out their training thresholds.
They work out their maximum lifting weight on each exercise.
70% of this is then lifted to improve strength.
30% of this is then lifted to improve endurance.
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8. “The length of the training session.”
Time / Duration
“The length of the training session.”
The length of training session is linked to the type exercise / improvement that the athlete requires.
A sprinter may train in many short bursts of 10 – 30 seconds over an hour.
A marathon runner may train continuously for 1.5 – 2 hours at a time.
For general health benefits people should aim to train for at least 20 minutes, after completing a warm up, with their heart rate in the training zone.
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9. “ Benefits gained by training are easily lost.”
Reversibility
“ Benefits gained by training are easily lost.”
If an athlete does not train then the benefits that they have worked hard to create will be lost.
To maintain the benefits created by training the body still needs to be overloaded.
Endurance is lost three times quicker than it is gained.
Reversibility can happen either when you are injured as you can not train or at the end of a season when you are meant to be resting.
Keywords:
Atrophy – Reduction in muscle size through lack of training.
Hypertrophy – Increase in muscle size due to the effects of training.
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Tedium
“If exercise is boring, people will not want to take part –leading to reversibility.”
Exercise / training should be varied to maintain interest.
Small achievable goals should be set to give a sense of progress / achievement.
Training with a partner or team mates is a good way to avoid tedium.
If you do a lot of running, change the route you run.
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11. Type of Training - Circuit
“A series of different exercises completed using different parts of the body, working on each exercise for a specified amount of time”
Circuit training can be adapted to work on many different aspects of fitness; strength, speed, stamina, flexibility.
The circuit should be organised so muscles are not worked on consecutive stations.
Benefits
Easy to accommodate large numbers of people, keeps training varied, can work more than 1 aspect of fitness at a time, individual targets can be met.
Limitations
Requires a degree of space, not really suitable for training on your own, circuit activities need to be varied to avoid tedium.
Squat thrusts
Dips
Crunches
Skipping
Star jumps
Press ups
Shuttles
Back raises
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12. Applying SPORT to a Circuit
How can you apply SPORT to a Circuit?
Specificity – making the Circuit relevant
- a footballer could add a ball to their shuttle runs.
- a rugby player could add Press Ups to increase their upper body strength to help them when making tackles.
Progression - Making your circuit gradually harder. Working for 30 seconds / resting for 30 seconds on your first session. Second session increase work time to 40 seconds / rest 30.

13. Overload - Applying FIT to your training.
Frequency - increasing how often you do the circuit. Instead of doing one circuit a week, you could do two.
Intensity – Knowing how hard you are working so that the training is benefitting you. Use a heart rate monitor to ensure you are working in the correct training zone. See slide on Thresholds of Training

14. Time / Duration – increasing your workload so that you are working particularly hard. Increase work time to 6o seconds and decrease rest time to 15 seconds.
Reversibilty - if you are injured (depending on the injury) you can still take part in a circuit, avoiding the stations that can cause more damage to the injury. If there was something wrong with your arm, then you could still work on your legs and core.

15. Tedium - if you are bored with your circuit, then you may not work as hard as you could. To make it more interesting, you can change stations but still work the same muscle groups. You could take burpees out and add in astride jumps.