Introduction
To be able to complete sports training effectively and successfully, an optimal, long-term and proper planning is required. Many ambitious recreational sportsmen and sportswomen are increasingly seeking professional advice from a personal trainer in order to achieve their sporting goals more quickly and safely. An individually designed training plan is useful in endurance sports as well as in strength training.
Hobby athletes, however, quickly reach their limits when planning their training and do not achieve the hoped-for success. A prerequisite for the training plan is the knowledge of the exact training goal and the time required for a weekly training. The following pages should help you to create an individual training plan.
The training plan, or training planning is a mental anticipation of the training. Primarily, the planning of the training is aimed at the direct execution of the training, but includes aspects of the long-term regulation and control of the training. Before the training plan is created, each athlete must be aware of the exact training goal.
Losing weight and building muscle are the most common training goals in fitness sports. A targeted build-up of muscle mass primarily involves exercises in strength training. A hoped-for weight reduction through fat burning, on the other hand, is mainly achieved through regulated endurance training.
It must be clarified in advance whether the goal can be reconciled with the time required. For an average fitness training to improve general fitness and health, 2 to 3 hours per week are initially sufficient. If the training goals are in the range of extreme muscle growth, three times as much time can be required.
The age and health of the athlete are further factors for planning the sport. In case of health problems, a medical examination must be carried out before the start of training. In addition, knowledge of the constitutional characteristics of one’s own body is decisive for the correct planning of training.
These are explained in more detail below. Every person has a different genetic predisposition to muscle training and fat accumulation. In the science of training, athletes are divided into three types.
Especially in the athletic disciplines, the individual physique types are particularly well developed and easy to understand. While long-distance runners are defined as ectomorphic types, the sprinter belongs to the mesomorphic and the shot-putter to the endomorphic type. The pure form of a type is never given, in most cases a mixed form of both types occurs.
Especially for setting the correct targets, knowledge of the body type characteristics is of special importance. In the following the individual types are described in more detail. Decide for yourself which type corresponds to you best.
When creating your training plan, you should not forget your genetic disposition.
- Slim (Ectomorphs)
- Athletic (Mesomorphs)
- Strong (endomorphic) type.
- The ectomorphic type: This type, also known as leptosome, is particularly characterized by a slender and wiry figure. Absorbed food is quickly burned and fat pads hardly accumulate.
This type can eat what it wants, it does not become thicker. Due to its wiry figure and low body weight, it prefers sports where fast movements are required. The musculature can be defined very quickly due to the low fat storage.
However, a targeted muscle build-up training for this slim type is very long, time-consuming and exhausting. In order to achieve the desired results, you should always train in the range of 8 repetitions. The intensity should always be selected so high that after the last repetition, no more repetitions are possible.
In order to additionally optimize the desired muscle growth, conscious attention should be paid to the correct choice of food. At least 25 to 30% of the supplied food should consist of high-quality proteins. Compare chapter nutritional supplements.
- The mesomorphic type: This athletic type is a real sports ace.
He is characterized by a muscular physique. The interaction between the nervous system and the musculature is particularly good and performance is quickly increased with little effort. Due to the increased mass of musculature, this type has a good metabolism.
The diet should consist mainly of food rich in carbohydrates (pasta, rice etc. ).In spite of this optimal genetic condition, one does not get anything for free. Hard regular training is a prerequisite for the exhaustion of optimal possibilities.
However, this type tends to gain weight when training is interrupted or abstained from.
- The endomorphic type: The type also known as pygnic is best suited for muscle building training. A genetically determined broad stature and heavy bones and low fatigue under high loads allow maximum muscle build-up with even less training effort. The body of an endomorphically predisposed person tends to store fat optimally and is therefore very susceptible to obesity, especially in old age.
Due to the high proportion of subcutaneous fatty tissue, the definition of muscle mass is very undefined and can only be controlled by strict monitoring of eating habits. Therefore, the daily percentage of fats must not exceed 15 to 20% fat. The diet should consist mainly of carbohydrates.
Regular strength training increases the percentage of muscle mass compared to body fat, and this increased muscle mass in turn burns more fat. The start of a training session is therefore very sensible, especially for this type. Balancing endurance training is also particularly suitable for boosting the energy metabolism.
The training plan in the field of recreational sports is divided into two or 3 time periods.
On the one hand it is about long-term planning. This contains long-term goals and is determined on the view of a year up to several years. The second contains short-term and medium-term goals, which are divided into a weekly cycle and a monthly cycle.
The training principles are decisive for the design of the training plan. Each training plan is based on the following principles. These are generally accepted principles of sports science.
Every trainer and ambitious successful athlete draws up the entire training plan based on these principles. Especially beginners have to consider the following principles when creating the training plan. Every athletic adaptation, from fat burning to muscle building, is based on an adaptation of the organism.
This adaptation is achieved by setting a training stimulus. In sports, the following stimulus intensities are distinguished.
- Subliminal weak.
They do not trigger any adaptation of the musculature. The training weight is chosen so lightly that there is no build-up of the muscles. For beginners, stimuli cannot in principle be subliminally weak, since even at very low levels of exertion the organism adapts.
In the area of endurance, all stimuli set also lead to adaptation. Even at slow walking speed fat is burned.
- Overthreshold weak. These stimuli are set to maintain a training level.
Especially immediately before the competition phase, athletes try to maintain the performance level. Although the intensity is slightly increased, these stimuli are not sufficient to further build up the muscles. Many advanced fitness athletes suffer from stagnation because the training stimuli are too weak.
To improve performance, a change in the training plan is necessary.
- The supra-threshold strong stimuli are the stimuli that every athlete tries to implement in the training plan. This is where the hoped-for increase in muscle cross-sectional area occurs during muscle build-up. However, it is not easy to find exactly the intensity that these stimuli are set.
- However, there is a risk that the stimuli in muscle building training are too strong.
If this happens, the result is not an improvement in performance as hoped for, but injuries to the muscles. Starting with a severe muscle soreness up to a rupture of the muscle fibre.
Those who start with a strength training or endurance training hope for a quick development of the musculature, a better figure, fat burning and a general increase in performance. If the training loads remain the same over a longer period of time, the organism adapts itself to the extent that the training stimuli set are no longer strong enough.
The load in training must be increased consequently, the own efficiency continuously and progressively. Particularly with beginners, there are very rapid and sometimes sudden increases in performance. The loads should be increased as follows.
If the training stimuli are not sufficient, the training frequency should first be increased. This means more training units per week. This is followed by an increase in the amount of training within the training plan.Several exercises can be integrated into the training plan and the length of breaks can be shortened.
Finally, the intensity should be increased during the training. The principle of shaping load and recovery is the most important in all sports training and must be considered in the training plan. The phase between load and recovery is described in more detail below.
At time 0, the athlete is at the starting level and begins muscle building training. By setting the right stimulus, there is now a drop in performance, which every athlete experiences at the end of the training. At this point “A”, the recovery phase begins.
It can last for different lengths of time depending on the intensity of the training. However, the decisive factor is that this regeneration phase goes beyond the initial value. If there is no further training stimulus, the curve returns to the initial level.
The optimum time for the next training stimulus is at time “End B”. If possible, the training plan should be versatile and varied. In each training unit, always the same running distance and weights, with the same number of repetitions and the same length of pauses, leads to stagnation of performance and has a demotivating effect.
Even if the training goal is to build up muscles, you should occasionally switch to strength endurance training. The training must be integrated as an integral part of everyday life. If it can be set up in terms of time, the time spent each week should be divided into as many stages as possible.
Training several times a week is always better than putting all your time into one training session. If the training schedule includes running on Mondays and Fridays, these are fixed training times.
