Principles Of Training

The sport principles of training are aimed at helping you understand the training process and allowing you to plan your training so you see a steady upward progression in results.

Specificity making sure your training is specific to what you are hoping to achieve. Simply put, dont spend all your time doing sprint training sets if you want to improve your long-distance cycling!

Progression the body adapts to increased training loads and this will result in improved fitness levels and competitive performance.

Overload training at a level that will push you. If you are always training at the same intensity and at the same speed you will not see the progression you would hope for. You need to be constantly overloading your muscles and cardio respiratory system to improve your strength and fitness level.

Reversibility if you dont train or you decrease your intensity then you will see your fitness levels drop and as a consequence so will your overall performance. If you are unwell and are unable to train for an extended period then you will notice a reduced performance level when you start training again.

Tedium Keeping the training interesting. If you find yourself getting bored then you are less likely to want to train and your motivation levels will automatically drop, which can lead to a reduced effort level and even the likelihood of skipping training sessions. This will lead to Reversibility occurring.

When you start to plan your training programme you can use the FITT principles to work towards SPORT. For instance, to make sure that the SPORT principles of Progression and Overload are always occurring you can increase the Frequency of your training sessions, the intensity of each session or the Time you spend training.

Frequency how often you train.
Intensity intensity you train at.
Time how long you train for.
Type which training methods you are using.

To stop Reversibility occurring rapidly you reduce intensity if feeling sick. To avoid the SPORT principle of Tedium you can change the Type of training methods you are using. It is advisable that you only change one aspect of the training at a time rather than changing everything otherwise it can be too much for your body and may lead to an injury occurring.