Module 3. PLANNING FOR SUCCESS
As we have learned in this course, delivering better and faster results requires instructors both understand and be able to explain why they have chosen to include specific exercises and why they have asked them to be performed at specific levels of intensity.
Let’s take a look at how specificity and progressive overload can be applied to a cross country ski and how this exercise can target each of the five health-related components of physical fitness.
Cardiorespiratory Endurance
In order to overload the cardiorespiratory system, participants must get their heart rates and respiration rates elevated beyond what they are used to. To facilitate change, coach participants to find their own, attainable exertion level. Remember that everyone’s ability is going to be different so some may need to work at a 6 while others can maintain a 7 or even an 8.
Muscular Endurance
One way to elicit a muscular endurance stimulus is to add focus. Maintaining the base exercise of a cross country ski, add an emphasis on one portion of the movement. For example, you may have your participants push hard on the out for a minute, then switch to focusing on the inward motion for the next minute. You may also transition this to a grounded movement concentrating on a single leg. Or, as demonstrated in the video, you can add speed, emphasizing both movement directions and focusing on muscular endurance.
Muscular Strength
The same level of fatigue experience during muscle endurance should be felt in a much shorter period of time when working on muscular strength. Intensity should be rated as an 8, 9 or even 10!
Neuromotor Training
Begin with the base exercise to allow your participants to get the hang of it, then add more complex movement challenges. An example may be performing the cross country ski with the right leg externally rotated, left leg neutral, and arms reaching in the transverse plane.
Flexibility
To promote flexibility, the base exercise can be done at slower speeds while providing a different focus. For instance, if you wanted to use this as a component for the warm up, participants could add six directional arm movements with ski legs.