Phys Ed 1

The Fitness Log

For this project, I created a fitness log with which I could track my progress towards a self-assigned goal. The log contained several components to create schedules, record workouts, manage goals and measure progress. I began making my log by coming up with my fitness goal for the semester, because by defining a finish point it's easier to get started. Choosing a goal is an important step, because an unreachable goal will just lead to stagnation and a lack of motivation; conversely, a goal that's too easy won't be a challenge and it will become boring. Goals with the right qualities for success are called S.M.A.R.T. goals, an acronym of the five factors that constitute a reachable but challenging goal. (See the Core Concepts section for more on this.) Since I wanted to focus on running, my S.M.A.R.T. goal was to be able to run 2 miles with a pace of under 10:30 per mile by April 1st (the end of the month).

After recording this in the first page of my log, I started going about creating the trackers for the rest of the log. I came up with a format which I replicated for each two-week block of logging. By grouping my charts together in these two-week blocks, I could easily look back through the log and see my progress over time. The format I created included a schedule for the next two weeks, pre-made workout trackers for the scheduled workouts, a mood and pain log where I could reflect after each workout, a mile tracker where I could track the total amount of miles I ran, and a sleep log to track how much sleep I got. Additionally, I added a place to track my resting heart rate on the front page as well as my target heart rate range. Once the target heart rate range is reached, a workout yields the most benefits with the least risk of injury, so it was important to calculate this in order to make sure I was always getting the best workouts possible. In fact, I reached my target heart rate range in every workout I logged, which was a good signal to know I was exercising at the proper intensity level.

Goal and Resting Heart Rate

Exercise Schedule

Exercise Tracker

Mood and Pain Log

Mile Tracker

Sleep Log

While my goal was focused on running, it's good to stay well-rounded in your fitness and so I didn't neglect the other aspects of exercise. There are 5 such aspects, referred to as the "Health Components of Fitness": cardio endurance, muscular strength, muscular endurance, flexibility, and body composition. (These are described in more detail later.) Running was most related to cardio endurance with muscular endurance in second, therefore I designed HIIT ("High Intensity Interval Training") workout routines that would focus on muscular strength and flexibility (as body composition is simply an indirect product of the other four components). An example of such a HIIT workout can be found on the exercise tracker above.

Core Concepts

Throughout the logging process I learned many important concepts that, when utilized correctly, can greatly increase your fitness productivity. Some of these concepts have been mentioned above — they will be covered in more detail below.

S.M.A.R.T Goals

S.M.A.R.T stands for "Specific", "Measurable", "Attainable", "Relevant", and "Timely". Making sure your goal is S.M.A.R.T. will help keep you motivated and give you a good challenge to overcome. By making a goal specific, you will know exactly what steps to take to achieve it. Measurable goals are easy to track your progress towards, adding extra motivation. Attainable goals are never too far out of reach to be impossible, making sure you never give up. Relevant goals aren't too easy or unrelated to what you're trying to focus on, making sure the goal is worthwhile. And finally, timely goals have a deadline to meet which allows you to plan a schedule for them.

I used this principle to help build my goal. I knew it was specific and measurable since I detail exactly the pace and distance I need to run in order to achieve it. It was attainable since based on a test run I wasn't too far off from achieving it, and it was obviously relevant since it focuses on fitness. Finally, I had a firm deadline on my goal, so it was timely.

The 5 Health Components of Fitness

The 5 Health Components of Fitness are cardiovascular endurance (how long you can perform cardio exercise), muscular strength (how much force your muscles can output), muscular endurance (how long your muscles can output force), flexibility (how wide your full range of motion is) and body composition (how much muscle compared to fat you have). These components help to pinpoint areas of your fitness to improve and quantify the different aspects of being physically fit.

I used these principles when designing my workout plans. As said before, I knew that running covered cardiovascular endurance and muscular endurance so I focused my other workouts around muscular strength and a bit of flexibility.

The Overload Principle

Everyone knows that if you don't try hard when exercising you'll never improve. This idea manifests itself in the overload principle, which simply states that your body needs to be overloaded during an workout in order to gain anything significant from it. It's also important to find the balance between too easy and too hard, since if you don't give your body time to recover you will end up injuring yourself. Therefore, by incrementally increasing the difficulty of your workouts you can gain the most from them.

This principle was incredibly important in planning my runs. Clearly, I didn't want to push too hard because that would only lead to setbacks, but going too easy wouldn't lead to any improvement either. So, I followed the overload principle and incrementally increased the intensity and distance of my runs in order to make sure I continued to benefit from them.

The FITT Principle

The overload principle involves increasing the difficulty of your workouts. But what constitutes "difficulty"? This is described by the F.I.T.T. principle, an acronym for "Frequency", "Intensity", "Time" and "Type". Frequency is how often you exercise — whether that's every day or every week, the greater the frequency of exercise the more difficult it will be. Intensity is how hard you push during the workout, which can make each individual workout harder. Time is how long each workout lasts, and going for longer means working harder. Finally, type is what kind of exercise you're doing, so a more high-impact exercise will bring the difficulty higher.

I used the FITT principle in conjunction with the Overload principle during my workouts. When incrementing the difficulty of my workouts, I initially focusing on increasing the intensity (getting a better pace) and the time (running longer). Later, I started increasing the frequency as well (running more times per week).

Additional Concepts

Heart Rate and Target Heart Rate Range

Your heart rate (HR) is how fast your heart beats. This is usually measured in BPM, or beats-per-minute. Generally, a higher BPM (a faster heartbeat) means you're working harder, while a lower BPM means you're resting. When you are completely at rest, your heart rate is called your "Resting Heart Rate" (RHR) — this is usually measured when you first wake up. On the other hand, when you are working as hard as you physically can your heart rate is called your "Maximum Heart Rate" (MHR). This can be easily calculated by subtracting your age from 220BPM. Now, there is a sort of "golden zone" in between these two extremes where you are working hard enough to get the most benefits out of exercise while not risking any injury, and this zone is called your Target Heart Rate Range (THRR). There are a variety of ways to calculate your THRR, but the simple way is to say that your THRR is the range between 70% and 80% of your MHR. (A more complicated but more accurate way is known as the Karvonen formula, which takes into account your resting heart rate as well.)

I used this concept all the time in my fitness log because I wanted to make sure I was getting the most benefits out of my workouts. Therefore, I kept my THRR on the front page of my log so I would always know how hard to push, and during my workouts I would always try to get my heart rate into that range. (Indeed, I always reached my THRR in all of my workouts.)

ATP (Adenosine Triphosphate)

Adenosine Triphosphate, or ATP for short, is a molecule produced by our muscles when we exercise. ATP contains energy that our muscles use to move. To produce it, the body has two different mechanisms: anaerobic production and aerobic production. When you first start exercising — say, when you start sprinting — the body uses anaerobic production to produce ATP. Anaerobic means "without oxygen", because this process simply involves converting stored carbohydrates (in the form of glycogen) into ATP. Unfortunately, the anaerobic process does not yield a large amount of ATP. Therefore, once you start exercising for a more extended period of time — for instance, once you've gotten into a marathon run — the body has to start using aerobic production (meaning "with oxygen") to generate more ATP. In this process, red blood cells pick up oxygen in the lungs and pass through the heart on their way to the muscles. They then deliver the oxygen to the muscle cells which use the oxygen to convert stored fat (which is slightly slow) or more stored glycogen (which is faster but still yields much less ATP) into ATP. In this conversion, the byproduct CO2 is released, so the red blood cells take the CO2 back to the lungs where it is exhaled. By repeating this cycle over and over again, your body is able to continuously deliver energy to the muscles in order to keep them moving.

While I didn't use this knowledge for the log specifically, the process was obviously happening every time I exercised and so it was interesting to know about.

Skill Related Components of Fitness

Often times, it is important to classify fitness from the perspective of a certain skill. For example, a golfer does not need raw power or speed, but this is important to a football player. In this light, there are 6 "skill-related components of fitness" that can help pinpoint specific areas of physical ability:

Power: How forcefully can you exert a burst of force in a quick movement?
Speed: How fast can you move or perform an action?
Agility: How quickly and efficiently can you change your direction of motion?
Balance: How effectively can you control your position and orientation?
Coordination: How efficiently can you use many parts of your body synchronously to perform an overall motion?
Reaction time: How quickly can you react to an outside stimulus?

Each of these components can be tested using a variety of standard test systems. Some examples are:

The Illinois Agility Test, which quantifies agility as how long it takes a subject to run around a sequence of cones in a specific pattern.
The alternate-hand wall toss test, which quantifies coordination as the number of successful times a subject can repeatedly toss a ball against the wall and catch it with the other hand in 30 seconds.
The ruler drop test, which measures reaction time as the measurement showing on a ruler just above the subject's thumb after someone (unexpectedly) drops it into their open hand.
The standing stork test, which quantifies balance as the amount of time a subject can stand in the stork position (raised foot on the opposite knee and hands on hips).
The vertical jump test, which measures power as your maximum jump height relative to your standing height.
The 30 meter sprint test, which measures speed as how fast you can sprint 30 meters.

While I never ended up using any of this in my log specifically, it was interesting to think about how what I was doing would fit into these components. (Running was obviously most related to speed.) It is also good to remember these tests in case I ever need to know how effectively I can execute a certain skill.

Resistance Training and Bodyweight Exercises

Resistance training is any form of training that involves using your muscles to exert force against some kind of outside resistance. The most common example of this is weight lifting, which involves pushing your arm muscles (or pulling) against a set of weights. However, there are also other kinds of resistance training. Once such example is the use of resistance bands, which are essentially oversized rubber bands that can provide resistance to any muscles in the body (arms, legs, core, etc). As they are elastic in nature, a single band can provide more or less tension by simply not stretching as far or stretching further. There are also many other less-common alternatives, including weight machines, medicine balls, and suspension trainers.

One final form of resistance training is the set of bodyweight exercises. Bodyweight exercises use the weight of your own body to provide resistance to push against, which allows you to perform them nearly anywhere with no equipment. I definitely did use many bodyweight exercises in my HIIT workouts (like push-ups and planks), so this tool was valuable to know. Bodyweight exercises were a great way to work on other aspects of fitness without any of the equipment usually needed.

Muscles and Bone Movement

The body is made up of a variety of bones and muscles that work together in order to provide a range of possible motion. While there are too many to name here, a diagram of the major bones and muscles is shown at right.

Each muscle is attached to two bones — the first of which is called the origin, and the second of which is called the insertion — and acts like a spring which contracts or lengthens. When the muscle contracts, it pulls the two bones together, which is called flexion. On the other hand, when a muscle lengthens it allows the bones to spread apart again, an action known as an extension. (Additionally, if the action moves a bone closer to the body's vertical midline it is called an adduction and if it moves a bone away from the midline it is called an abduction.) Each muscle has a specific role which it performs, for example flexing the spine or extending the lower leg, and it always functions for this purpose alone. Importantly, muscles never actually push; they can only pull, which means that each muscle group has to have a partner on the other side of the bone in order to be able to perform their movement in both directions.

While I never explicitly used this knowledge in the logging process, I did think about what muscles I was using while exercising so it was not entirely ignored. Knowing how your body does what it does provides an interesting perspective to exercise.

Types of Yoga

Yoga is a 5,000 year old practice which was intended to focus on improving your mental and spiritual energies, or chakras. However, over time yoga has evolved into a more exercise-based program and modern yoga now focuses on flexibility, strength, and breathing. There are many types of yoga, each of which have different focuses — some common types include include:

Ashtanga Yoga, which links ancient yoga poses with structured breathing to connect every movement to breath
Bikram Yoga, or Hot Yoga, which consists of a series of poses to be performed in an artificially-heated room (105℉)
Iyengar Yoga, which teaches the correct alignment in each yoga pose as a gentler introduction to yoga
Restorative Yoga, which uses a few simple poses and props (blankets, blocks, etc) to allow the person to sink into meditative relaxation while holding the pose

While none of this information was applicable to my fitness log (as I did not have any yoga included in my fitness plan), our class as a whole took part in a series of restorative yoga sessions over the course of several weeks. Therefore, it was interesting to know some of the background about yoga in order to have a better picture of what we were doing.

Reflection

I definitely think this project was a success overall. My conscientious learning was certainly a strength in this project as I never fell behind in the logging process. Each week, I made sure to fill out my log and create a new template for the next week — that way, I wouldn't have to prepare anything before (or during) my workout as the entire tracker would already be set up. Therefore, I tried to manage my time effectively in order to always be prepared. In addition, I never missed a planned workout (aside from switching workouts around in the rare case of a conflict), so this also reflects well on my conscientious learning. Even though I didn't always really want to go do my workouts, I never gave in and kept pushing even when I wasn't feeling it. Another strong point of my conscientious learning was my self-reflection. Every two weeks, I wrote reflections on how the logging process was proceeding (see image at right). In this way, I was able to be thoughtful about the project and make sure I was doing the best work possible; in addition, I could also make sure to correct any past mistakes to improve in the future. Finally, I think my communication was a positive aspect to this project. By creating a standard organized layout for each block of logging, I was able to easily present my work for grading and express my work clearly. Also, such a structure made it easy to find evidence to add to this final report, which is a large communication element itself.

Wasted space!

Of course, no project is ever perfect. While my conscientious learning was mostly a positive, there was also room for improvement. Initially, I was making each new template set all at once, which was certainly doable but got very monotonous. I did not really contemplate this until later, at which point I decided to start making each new template set bit-by-bit over the course of the week. By doing the work in much shorter sections it became less tedious, which was certainly an improvement. However, my failure to realize this earlier and reflect on my time management strategy meant that I had been making the work overly dull for no reason, as I was too focused on the output (which did not change regardless of the method used) and not the process. So, in the future I will always make sure self-reflect more thoroughly on my time management in order to create the most effective approach (as I did, later than optimally, in this project). In addition to this issue, there was another minor difficulty with respect to critical thinking. Certain exercises — namely, my runs — were recorded on Strava, an online exercise tracking platform which can provide statistics about your workouts. In my log, I wrote "On strava" for exercises that were tracked on Strava instead of in the log, which didn't seem like an issue at the time. However, I ended up writing over 60 "On strava" notes over the course of the logging, which was really just wasted space. This certainly wasn't any sort of major disruptor (after all, I was only writing a few each time I logged) but looking back I'm now realizing how unnecessary that was. By just restructuring my tracker slightly, I could've entirely avoided those notes and still have been unambiguous about how the exercise was tracked. So, for the future it's important to consider how little aspects might propagate further and end up becoming something much bigger (which could be much more catastrophic than just having to write something too many times).

Aside from these very trivial issues, I believe I did well with this project. I set goals, tracked my progress towards them, and ended up reaching them each time. In the end, I used the tracker pretty effectively for its purpose: to track my fitness and make progress with that in mind.

Back to: 9th Grade

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