Elements of an Exercise Prescription

A general exercise prescription will take into consideration the principles of conditioning and
include the following basics:

1. Health Status Questionnaire / Physical Exam

Your doctor will administer a general physical examination. You will be asked to complete a
questionnaire to decide whether you have any health conditions that may hinder your ability
to exercise or make improvements to the schedule. Most personal trainers need approval
from a specialist before developing the program.

2. Fitness Assessment and Evaluation

The next step to developing your workout plan is a health assessment. This measure is used
to evaluate your physical health standard and what type of workout you can do comfortably.

Sometimes, the examination involves basic blood pressure and heart rate scales, size,
stability, body shape, and aerobic capacity, history of exercise, and priorities and interests.
Various assessment methods are used, and they are often performed at routine intervals to
assess the improvement.

3. Exercise Type

A big part of your fitness treatment is the sort of workout you are pursuing. Proper medication
should involve different workouts and a healthy regimen to develop core strength, agility,
endurance, and general health and then get even more tailored to your health objectives.

4. Cardiovascular Fitness

Rhythmic exercises involving large numbers of muscles (such as running, cycling, walking,
or swimming) are the safest ways to improve blood supply to the body and increase heart
rate for a longer time. This exercise method leads to changes in the heart's ability to pump
blood to the functioning muscles across the body, which increases general cardiovascular
health.

Cardiovascular exercise is also linked to many health changes, including a reduced

risk of many cancers, decreases in total cholesterol, blood pressure, and body fat levels.

5. Strength Training

Strength training is an integral part of health. It's one aspect of the prescribed workout
and can differ significantly from person to person.

A successful plan should involve the heart and all the main muscle groups fighting toward
resistance and developing strength, stamina, and endurance in different combinations.

The resistance may be your own body from weights or friction.

 A capable trainer will find the right combination. However, the most basic routine
involves 1 to 3 sets of 10 to 12 repetitions for building strength.

6. Frequency of Exercise

How much you exercise is an essential aspect of fitness to make progress healthy but
consistent. This prescription mostly starts two or three days a week and progresses or four
or five days a week.

7. Duration of Exercise

Based on your current level of fitness and exercise history, you can start your exercise
prescription with as little as ten minutes of steady exercise and develop from there.

Ideally, you'll aim about three days a week for 20 to 60 minutes of daily exercise.

8. Intensity of Exercise

Perhaps the most crucial element of an active, healthy, and enjoyable program is your
exercise prescription's strength. This is where the expert or trainer's abilities are tested. Each
person responds to exercise differently; it is essential to find the right intensity and a balance
between effort and rest. Trainers use heart rate as a basic measure of exercise intensity
guidelines.

Professionals will determine the most suitable heart rate range for many protocols, which will
help you progress but not overdo it. Additionally, the trainer will monitor your heart rate and
other vital signs when you're exercising.

A beginner may start at a maximum heart rate range of 50 percent. On the other hand, a
professional athlete will work at approximately 90 percent of their optimum heart rate during
intensive training.

9. Exercise Session Order

Your exercise program will usually follow a similar order, but this varies depending upon your
training goals. All programs will begin with a warm-up and end with a cool-down and
stretching.

10. Exercise Progression

This is how your doctor or trainer keeps you on track and attaining your target of fitness.
Moreover, you and your teacher need daily input and open contact.

Some coaches can keep the training details recorded, but it's smart to keep the training log.
Write down notes about your exercise style, time, distance, weight, reps, and how you feel.

The rates of progression for new exercisers are generally broken into three separate 6-week
phases: (1) initial conditioning, (2) fitness improvement, and (3) fitness maintenance.
11. Exercise Modifications

A successful workout plan is versatile and adaptable and can be changed regularly and easily
when moving you toward your goals. Adjustments are a regular and continuous medication
part of the workout for the rest of your life. You'll find you need to adjust your routine regularly,
try new things, take breaks, and increase your time and intensity over the years and decrease.

Periodic visits to your physician and personal trainer will help keep the routine healthy.
However, by this time, you'll have enough expertise and experience to go it alone, develop
your own fitness regimen, and achieve a personal best if that's what you want.

TRAINING PRINCIPLES

We know that the body must respond and adjust to the next response to the same or greater
stress and workload by being stronger in order to accommodate the new load when we
evaluate the muscle systems with workloads. The following are the five training principles.

1. Overload

Repeated practice of a skill or a series of moves beyond necessary performance is a

method of overloading where quality and quantity are used to master specific capacity or
series of moves and resolve and eliminate errors. Skills and movements are of higher quality
when fatigue doesn't impair the trainee's ability to sequence movements properly.

2. Progression

To ensure that outcomes continue to improve over time, the training intensity's degree needs
to increase continuously above the adapted workload. The most common and most
applicable form of progression is increasing weight; however, progression can also be
accomplished by adjusting pace, number of exercises, the difficulty of exercises, number of
sets, and in any combination.

3. Specificity

Exercise is stress, and as the body acclimatizes to stress effectively, precision regularly and
in several ways imposes a particular form of stress on the body. The Specific Adaptations to
Imposed Demands (SAID) affirms that the body will improve its performance of a specific
exercise over time.

4. Variation
Exposing the body to an entirely new stimulus provides regular performance improvements.
It decreases the likelihood of over-use injuries, over-training, lessening fatigue, and
sustaining exercise strength. Altering the load, length, duration, variety of exercise and rest
periods can also boost efficiency.

5. Reversibility

The gains of training are lost without training, with long periods. At the other side, this also
means that if the preparation is resumed, the detraining effect can be reversed. Extended
rest periods minimize performance, and the physiological effects decline with time, which
restores the body to its pre-training state. Quality improvements may be lost in as little as two
weeks or lesser. Interestingly, training has a lingering effect even when discontinued in that
detraining strength levels are seldom lower than pre-training levels.

Homeostasis is the body's physiological response to overall equilibrium, stability, and

internal/external comfort. Most of all, any movement that disrupts the body's homeostatic
state will cause a series of acts within our interconnected muscle system: increased heart
rate, blood pressure, intake of oxygen, etc. Therefore, to make an improvement and muscle
hypertrophy-even a less drastic aim of merely growing cardio-health, homeostasis would be
broken. The body likes homeostasis … it will fight to maintain homeostasis; this is normal,
barring any pre-existing health concerns.
Lesson 2.1: Locomotor and Non-Locomotor Movements
Mark as done

LOCOMOTOR MOVEMENTS

Locomotor refers to movements in the body in which there is a move of the body from one
position to another. We are causing movement for the body. There are eight big movements
of the locomotor. These are either classified as even or uneven moves. Also, rhythmic
movements are made up of similar, unchanging acts.

These movements include:

1. Walking- it is a transfer of weight from one foot to the other. Usually, the heel
touches first on the ground.
2. Running- it is a transfer of weight from one foot to the other. However, the body
is propelled into the air and suspended between run steps.
3. Hopping- this requires a push-off from one foot and landing on the same foot.
4. Leaping- there is pushing off from one foot and landing on the other foot. The
body is suspended in the and between the push off and the landing. This can
also be combined with a run or walk.
5. Jumping- requires the body to push off from one or both feet. Most common is
a two-foot takeoff and two-foot landing. A jump can take off on one foot and
land on two or take off from two feet and land one foot.

Remember that these refer to the physical education definition of these movements.
Sometimes, there are confused about the movements and terminology. A hop is technically
defined as springing from one foot and landing on that same foot. A leap is a springing
from one foot but landing on the other foot. Leaping movements are commonly used when
people jump over objects, like jumping over a tree's twig.

There are also locomotor movements that are done in an uneven rhythm. Meaning, they
consist of unequal actions. They also sometimes incorporate alternating actions. These
movements include:

1. Skipping- this is performed in a combination of a step and a hop on the same

foot followed by a step and hop on the other foot. The rhythm is long uneven
steps to short hops.
2. Galloping- this is s forward movement where one foot leads the gallop while
the other foot follows. The lead footsteps with a bent knee and pushes off into
the air and landing on the trailing foot. The rhythm is uneven, long steps to short
 landings. Remember that a gallop is defined as stepping forward and pushing
up with one foot while the other foot follows.
3. Sliding- this is similar to a gallop performed with the right or left foot leading.
The lead foot does not step or push off into the air. Sliding movements are used
in skating and skiing.

NON-LOCOMOTOR MOVEMENTS

Axial movements are often called non-locomotor movements. These are motion of certain
parts of the body, or even of the entire body, without causing the body to move. Swing your
arms back and forth is one example. Remember that non-locomotive gestures, such as
walking and waving the arms, are frequently paired with locomotive motions.

There are many different non-locomotor movements:

1. Bending/Flexing- decreasing the angle between two body parts

2. Stretching/Extending- opposite of flexion is extension, the straightening of a
part, or increasing the angle between two body parts
3. Lifting/ Raising- to put a body part or something in a higher position
4. Rotating- includes a variety of movement patterns that require the body to
move through space and around its own axis. It includes movements such
as twisting, rolling, turning and spinning.
5. Swinging- moving a body part side to side or forward and back like a
pendulum
6. Swaying-Shifting weight from one side to the other side in a smooth way(ex.
twirling a hoop, dance)