Exercise assessment and prescription
This screening tool, often incorporating a PAR-Q, is used by fitness professionals to identify an individual's safety risks prior to commencing physical activity.
What is a pre-exercise questionnaire (or health screening)?
This strength training method uses an athlete's own body weight acting against gravity to build strength, requiring no external weights or machines.
What is calisthenics (or bodyweight training)?
This principle states that the physiological gains achieved through a training program will steadily decline and reverse if training stops or is significantly reduced.
What is reversibility?
This oxygen-binding protein, located inside red blood cells, increases in concentration as a key physiological adaptation to sustained aerobic training.
What is haemoglobin?
This final phase of physical training gradually lowers the heart rate, prevents blood pooling, and uses active recovery to help clear metabolic waste products like lactate.
What is the cool-down?
While recreational participants use this practice primarily for baseline motivation and general health tracking, elite athletes use it for talent identification, recovery tracking, and precise performance optimisation.
What is performance/fitness testing?
This stretching method involves continuous, active movement through a joint's full range of motion, preparing the muscles for the specific patterns of a sport.
What is dynamic stretching?
This principle dictates that training must match the exact physiological demands, energy systems, and muscle groups utilised in the athlete's specific sport.
What is specificity?
This muscular adaptation refers to an increase in the cross-sectional size of a muscle's contractile fibres resulting from resistance training.
What is muscle hypertrophy?
This brief, initial discussion outlines the goals, safety expectations, and planned activities of the session before the athletes begin warming up.
What is providing an overview of the session?
Exercise prescription must be personalized; for this specific group of athletes, a professional must consider thermoregulation issues, modified rules, and the appropriateness of resistance training.
Who are children and young athletes?
Meaning "speed play" in Swedish, this aerobic training method blends continuous, steady-state running with random, unstructured bursts of high-intensity effort.
What is Fartlek training?
To trigger physiological adaptations, this principle requires a trainer to gradually increase the workload (intensity, duration, or frequency) once the body has adapted.
What is progressive overload?
This cardiovascular adaptation is defined as the volume of blood pumped out of the heart's left ventricle per single beat.
What is stroke volume?
This component of a training session occurs immediately after the warm-up, allowing athletes to focus on tactical or technical skills when they are physically and mentally fresh.
What is skill instruction and practice?
In fitness testing, this criteria is critical to ensure that a test actually measures the specific fitness component it is intended to measure.
What is validity?
This highly explosive training method uses the "stretch-shortening cycle" to store elastic energy in the muscles and tendons during exercises like box jumps or depth drops.
What is plyometric training?
This refers to the specific boundary range (e.g., 60-70% Max Heart Rate for aerobic, or 80%+ Max Heart Rate for anaerobic) required to stimulate adaptation.
What is the training threshold?
Aerobic training causes eccentric hypertrophy of this specific chamber of the heart, physically expanding its volume capacity to hold and pump more blood.
What is the left ventricle?
This core phase of the session is dedicated to developing physical fitness components (such as speed, power, or aerobic capacity) specific to the sport.
What is the conditioning phase?
This is the systematic process where fitness professionals use baseline test results to tailor training variables (FITT) specifically to an athlete’s physiological weaknesses and goals.
What is exercise prescription (or program personalisation)?
This advanced flexibility method uses a partner-assisted "contract-relax" cycle to override the stretch reflex by triggering the Golgi Tendon Organ (GTO).
What is Proprioceptive Neuromuscular Facilitation (PNF) stretching?
This modern, structured warm-up protocol stands for: Raise, Activate, Mobilise, and Potentiate.
What is the RAMP protocol?
This adaptation refers to the increased density of microscopic blood vessels surrounding the muscle fibres, allowing for superior oxygen delivery and waste removal.
What is capillarisation (or capillary density)?
This final coach-led phase involves reflecting on the session's success, gathering athlete feedback, and discussing performance adjustments for the next session.
What is the evaluation phase?