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The Harvard Step Test

I am a very keen sportsman who takes part in a whole range of sporting activity. At school I have participated in the school football team, captained the cricket team, done climbing, basketball and badminton. Outside of school I am a season ticket holder at Burnley football club, and I captain Burnley boys football club at Sunday league level.

I am also a member of Burnley boys club where I play snooker.

For the purpose of my analytical investigation I intend to devise a self - improvement training programme. The programme that I intend to undertake is tennis, this is because I am interested in the sport, rarely play the sport, and so I feel that tennis is the sport, which I will get the most improvement from.

I don't have many strengths in tennis but the ones I do have are volley and lob. I do, however, have weaknesses and the purpose of the analytical investigation is to devise a training plan to improve on these. My weaknesses are serving, forehand and any backhand shot. I feel that I will need to research the correct techniques in order to show improvement My self-improvement programme will concentrate on improving my weaknesses.

In order to complete this programme I will need to devise a self - improvement program in order to develop my weaknesses. Devising a training plan to get the correct techniques and skill to improve will do this. AIMS My specific aims of this investigation are to show improvement in the game of tennis this will be done by taking a pre-test to show how good I am at the sport. Then I will devise a training plan, which I will stick to for 4 weeks and do it 3 times a week medical genetics.

After this I will take a post-test to show how much I have improved since I first started the programme. Finally I will analyse what I have done and evaluate what could have gone better. After completing the aspect of serving and recording all my results. I feel I have improved a lot in serving, as my results compared with pre and post- tests will show. In the next session I will be starting my sessions on backhand.

EVALUATION AND CONCLUSION

In general my training programme was successful because it tested each area and principle of fitness that I wanted it to. I think that, my training programme not only tested my fitness and my football skills, it also improved them. Although it was successful, there were some tests such as the Bleep Test on which I had to rely on earlier results because of the lack of equipment to do it at home. This meant that there would have been some results, which would not have been up to date. This could mean that I could have performed worse or better than my previous school results.

The shuttle runs, this station was very successful. By the end of the week, I had improved my speed as I did more runs in one minute. Improving my speed was an encouraging result of the training programme because; speed is an important factor for playing football. It also improved my agility and the endurance of my quadriceps and hamstrings. The sit-up exercise was very tiring; after each time I performed this exercise I could feel my abdominal muscles stretching and becoming stronger. I improved throughout the six weeks because as my results show I could do more sit-ups at the end of the training programme than in the beginning of the training programme. But as a whole I improved the strength and endurance of my abdominal muscles.

Chipping balls into hoops, I found this exercise fairly uncomplicated. Although my accuracy and chipping ability are somewhat good, they still improved as a whole. The shooting exercise tested my shooting (!) and accuracy ability. This was one of the easier stations as shooting isn't a very backbreaking work out, although I did improve in the six-week period. I could pinpoint a spot between the cones and then usually get it there. This improved my accuracy.

The burpees' exercise was the exercise that I found quite difficult, during the training programme, as it was very tiring and challenging. Overall, this did improve my agility, cardiovascular endurance, muscular endurance and strength of the quadriceps and hamstrings. The dribbling exercise was a fairly easy exercise. I have improved on my speed and ball control. I noticed that I could do dribbling faster at the end of the training programme than at the beginning. I also noticed that I was not as tired as I was before.

The kick-ups exercise, I am fairly good at kick-ups already but by the end of the program I was able to keep the ball under control at a lower height than what I started with.

The passing exercise, this exercise tested my right and left foot, my accuracy and my speed, my left foot has improved a lot by doing this exercise, my right foot has slightly improved. The 12 Minute Cooper Run was a very tiring exercise. It greatly improved my muscular endurance, speed and agility. To do it three times a week was very challenging, but I observed that at the end of the week, I could complete more metres than at the beginning of the week. This was a sign of improvement. I also got rid of the habit to start walking; I kept going at a steady jog throughout the run.

The Bleep Test is an exercise from hell. It is very gruelling and needs a lot of muscular endurance, speed, agility and aerobic capacity. Especially just after completing the 12 minute Cooper Run, the results may have been a bit low. I could not do this test at home, because of the lack of the equipment, and so had to rely on previous results, I do not find the Harvard Step Test, difficult and I think that my results show that I was above average. I completed two Harvard Step Tests during the training programme.

The Harvard Step Test measures my aerobic capacity and my recovery rate and my results show that my fitness index increased during the period of training. This also proves that the training programme helped my pulse and recovery rate which would enhance all of the rest of the exercises. The pull-ups were not very hard. They tested my muscular strength. I found that after doing the pull-ups my arms were very sore. I learned that it was better to do pull-ups at a constant speed than doing them quickly, because if you do them quickly then you tire out your voluntary muscles very quickly.