The training programme is now over and I will be evaluating my performance.
My overall goal was the increase my cardiovascular endurance in order to improve my footballing ability.
Below are my goals that I had set for myself over the six weeks in order to improve my cardiovascular endurance:
Week one: Run 5km over the two days that I am at the forest recreation ground (2.5km each day)
Week two: Run 6km over the two days that I am at the forest recreation ground (3km each day)
Week three: Run 7km over the two days that I am at the forest recreation ground (3.5km each day)
Week four: Run 8km over the two days that I am at the forest recreation ground (4km each day)
Week five: Run 9km over the two days that I am at the forest recreation ground (4.5km each day)
Week six: Run 10km over the two days that I am at the forest recreation ground (5km each day)
I feel that this cardiovascular fitness training programme has been very beneficial as my cardiovascular fitness has improved dramatically.
STRENGTHS
The main strength of mine through out this training programme was that I followed the training programme very clearly and strictly. I went to the gym on days that I was meant to, I went running on days that I was meant to and I certainly had rest days on the allocated days. I didn't have any rest days that weren't on the programme schedule and therefore this shows that I was commited and motivated towards this training programme.
Another strength of mine is that I improved my cardiovascular fitness over the 6 weeks that I participated in the training programme and therefore the training programme was beneficial and specific to what I wanted to improve.
I alos liked the ratio of the training days to resting days. I felt that I had enough resting days to make me feel fresh and ready for the following training session. I also liked the days that I was training on as I got to weekends free to do what I wanted on them and focused all of my training during the week.
The last strength of mine is that I stuck to the training session and completed it all. I feel that this was a big achievement as it was the first strict training session that I had ever done and I didn't think that I would stick to it when I started it. You can see that I completed the whole macrocycle as I have diary entrys for everyday over a period of 6 weeks and have a weekly evaluation for every week.
WEAKNESSES
The main weakness of mine was that I had to stick to some of the intensities longer and even lower the intensities at some points due to me not increasing my fitness levels as much as I'd have hoped by the time the higher intensities came in my programme. An example of where this happened was Monday week 6. I had to lower the intensity this week as I was finding it difficult and wanted an easy training session. In the future I will increase the distances to run slower so that I can adapt to them properly instead of increasing them dramatically and not being able to run the distances required.
Another weakness of mine is that on certain points in the training programme I lost motivaton and interest in the training programme and it became boring. In order for this to not happen in the future I will chose more fun exercises, such as swimming, to do to increase my cardiovascular fitness. I have chosen swimming as it is a good, enjoyable activity and it is a high intensity exercise as the water causes a force to act against you when you are swimming forward and therefore you have to work harder to get to the other end of the pool. Swimming is a very good cardiovascular endurance sport as it makes your heart work harder and therefore your cardiovascular endurance increases.
A prime example of this weakness of mine can be seen on Monday week four. Whilst I was running I became bored and was losing motivtion and interest. Therefore on Friday week four I integrated music into my training session by listening to music on my iPod whilst running; this kept me motivated and made the training session go a lot quicker than usual.
Another weakness of mine was that at some points on the running days I had to walk for a few minutes as I couldn't get my breath and felt very tired. However, after a few minutes I felt better in myself and was able to continue running like that training programme stated.
FUTURE RECOMMENDATIONS
The main recommendation for myself would be to continue with this training programme to maintain my cardiovascular fitness levels. I don't want to have done all of this work increasing my cardiovascular fitness levels for me to stop the programme and they decrease back to what they were like before I started the fitness programme.
Another future recommendation is to increase the intensities of the training sessions if they become to easy and I want to increase my cardiovascular fitness further. I should follow the patern that has been set throughout this training programme when increasing the intensities and that is to increase the intensity little bits every week. Do not increase the intensity dramatically as this won't motivate me to complete the training sessions as they will be too hard for my ability.
PROGRAMME
Each week I had 2 days exercise, 1 day rest, 2 days exercise and 2 days rest. I feel this this layout was the best one for me as it gave me adequate recovery time and I was feeling fresh and ready for the next training session. However, towards the end of the training session I was feeling recovered after one day and therefore I could have used Sunday as an extra training day for me to improve my cardiovascular endurance further.
I feel that the lengths of the gym training sessions were appropriate as I was able to do the exercises that I needed to do at the gym in the required time. However, the lengths of the running training sessions weren't appropriate. On many occassions I went over the allocated time and therefore had to finish the run in extra time than I want to finish it in. In the future I will not be as optimistic about the time it takes me to run the distances and make sure that I allocate enough time to complete the run in.
I think that the exercises that I selected were appropriate for improving my cardiovascular endurance as they were all cardiovascular based. However, the exercises that I selected were exremely boring and therefore in the future I will chose more fun exercises to do such as swimming or cycling.
Overall I feel that this training programme was very beneficial and has improved my cardiovascular fitness dramatically.
