Inquiry #10

Inquiry #10

This inquiry we were able to have more freedom on what we do and how we present it. I decided on a little practical investigation. I had two weeks left of my rugby season, so I decided that I will do one week of my normal life then record my results through that game. The next week will include something different. Such as stretching, improved diet, warming up more often, sleep and hydration.

Fertile Question - What more can we do to our bodies to help improve our performance in sport?

Thesis - To improve the quality of your game my research has lead me to the conclusion that you need to train, eat properly, stretch, warm up, change your sleep and hydrate properly. This formula can help you see visible changes in your game.

Planning - For the first two weeks, I will be on a simple plan for one and the other will just be my ordinary life. Since I have two rugby games left I will be trialling out these methods on these games. For numerical data I will be asking someone to look at how many tackles I make, meters run, bad passes and some other sort of stat. I will then do the same on both of these games. After both of my games, I will look at the results to see how much of difference a routine makes.

On Monday the 7th of September I will start the week on of stretching, eating well, sleep properly, and normal warmups in the morning.

In the morning I will do my normal stretches and do the same in the night. Since dieting at a young age is quite difficult I will be trying to diet during breakfast and dinner. As changing my lunches will be too hard to do as I would have to pay more money just for this. During the night I will listen to what my Expert said which is no light and no distractions ( like music )

What are the pre - activities currently being done before playing sports?

Hydration

When exercising your body temperature increases which causes your body to sweat which then loses fluids throughout your body. This is when hydration came into play. It is recommended that you drink 500 - 1000 MLS of water during and before a workout. But drinking too much water beforehand can cause nausea and bloating which affects your performance.

Recovery time

Every time you exercise, your muscle tissue experiences little tears. As this sounds bad this is how you bulk up and get stronger. So resting after doing exercise is key. Given key muscle areas, rest is good as you don’t want to push through the pain and injure your muscles. A good idea is post stretching, this helps the body to reduce injury.

Proper sleep

Sleeping is key to finding success in improving your performance. Sleep helps provide energy to both the brain and body. When sleep is cut short your body doesn't have time to repair memory, consolidate memory and release hormones. Serena Williams said that she enjoys going to be early and around 7 p.m. Also, Lance Armstrong said that he needs 6-8 hours of sleep as this helps him improve his performance. A study in SLEEP shows that the role of sleep in performance shows declines in split-second decision making which is to do with poor sleep. Results also showed increased accuracy with good sleep. Teenagers ages 14-17 get eight to 10 hours

Stretching

Without stretching muscles, they start to shorten and become tight. Then if you have you suddenly call on them for a sport they will be weak. A good example is if you're sitting in a chair all day your hamstrings will start to tighten. Then when you stand up it will make it harder for you to extend or straighten your leg. Stretching at the start of your day should be a new normal in everybody's life. Calling on injured, or non stretched muscles can cause big problems. But according to David Nolan, stretching muscles when they're cold can injure your muscles. "When everything is cold, the fibres aren't prepared and may be damaged. If you exercise first, you'll get blood flow to the area, and that makes the tissue more pliable and amenable to change,". So if you haven’t used any of your muscles pumping blood into the first is a good idea. If that was going for a quick walk or something that makes your heart rate go up.

Does diet affect performance

You are what you eat they say. Even just eating the right food helps increase your improvement when playing sport. It starts in the morning. You need to eat carbohydrates, proteins and fats. Eating these types of foods throughout the day will fuel you and make you feel a whole lot better. Knowing what you eat is important as one meal can throw you off your whole track.

Before playing carbohydrates should be the main thing to eat. They are easily digestible and give you the energy you need before the game. Foods to be avoided are spicy foods and foods that are high in protein and fat.

A good example to have would be either bread, cereals, rice, potatoes things like this and to add to this fruit and yoghurt.

Week 1

This week wasn’t too bad as I was just doing my ordinary life, these stats shown could have been better. This game wasn’t my best game and this could have been the lack of energy or the pre things I had done that week. So I’m looking forward to this week coming up as all these things will boost my energy levels and I will be feeling a whole lot better.

Week 2

As the results were not a huge increase from last week I still felt like I had more energy to do things and this was the cause of the diet. As one week is not a long time to increase a lot of things I still believe if I kept this up to my stats and overall gameplay on the field will be better. This is an insight for me as if I keep on doing the things I did last week this can help improve my performance.

Planner

Grey = Week 1

White = Week 2

Numerical data

This graph shows All Black half-back Tj Perenara that is a vegetarian, these stats are coming from his latest season 2020 super rugby. These stats were for one of my research questions are is being vegetarian going to improve your performance I thought these two stats are relevant to what I am doing. Tj Perenara decided to go vegan in about 2017-2018 before this in 2016 his stats were still really good but when he switched in 2017 things like tackles, running meters, points suddenly went up. In 2017 his average ball carry stats ( carries and meters run ) went up by 7.1meters. When he was in this process to becoming a vegetarian, It wasn’t the wisest choice to do back then but he wanted to help the environment. As my expert said, there are many positives to being a vegetarian they just need to be sure that they trust themselves they are getting enough carbohydrates and protein from these plant-based foods. If you researched his stats from 2019-2020 there is a big decrease in his overall performance and this largely due to COVID-19. Since they were not able to play other teams this lead on to having a smaller season. But even with the smaller season, his stats were close to his normal average in a full season. Overall this shows that switching to a vegetarian diet will be hard at the start but in the end, it shows that it can help improve your performance.

Expert

I was lucky enough to interview Belinda Murray who works for the Bay of Plenty sport. She was able to give me key crucial information that added to my inquiry. Below is the link to the recording to my interview.

Expert interview

Reflection

This topic has been something that I have wanted to know about for a long time. This inquiry has helped me realise things I can do to help me get my sport to another level. In the second week I felt way better and as my rugby season is over I will try and continue this during the off season. In this inquiry I have researched and researched until I found the most ideal things to do prior playing. As stated in my thesis you need to train, eat properly, stretch, warm up, change your sleep and hydrate properly. So overall I believe if you do these things you will see visbile changes to your gameplay.