Just Keep Moving! Just Keep Moving!
Wellness & Fitness
I have played many sports like soccer, swimming, cross country, and track and field over the years. I have become stronger and more willing to participate in activities that involve high intensity workouts. Fitness is important for good overall health but also gives a way to control emotions. Exercising helps diminish any extra body fat and it also allows people to let any strong emotions out, such as anger. By using forceful motions, during your workout, the body will eventually relax. This is one of the reasons why I love running. I feel that it gives me some time to ponder about different things and help sort out any problems that I might be having. Running is a good stress reliever for me but sprinting can do the job faster, for obvious reasons. I believe that my endurance has grown, by doing many workouts and playing games that involve workouts this school year.
A claim isn’t enough. But don’t worry, I can persuade you to believe that I have grown in endurance. My first artifact is the Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) chart. This is the chart that we filled out after every fitness day in which we wrote down our heart rate and how hard we thought we worked. Heart rate is the amount of beats the heart produces in a specific period of time. The more effort I put into fitness class, the higher the heart rate. You can also see how the days that my RPE was an 8 or 9, my heart rate was very high. The E stands for exertion which is the amount of effort that you put into the workout. The scale for RPE was 2 to 9 ranging from no discomfort to finding it hard to breathe and feeling very uncomfortable. On August 19, 2015, my RPE column was around 6, and I was panting a little bit. As I was passionate about sports, I determined to put in more effort to improve my endurance. I made sure that whatever days that we did activities involving high-intensity workouts, I would work harder and rest later.
Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) Chart
For any exercise that I struggled with, I would work harder to be able to do it for the entire time. For example, ab workouts take a lot of strength from the core. To be able to hold that exercise for the entire time took determination. This not only strengthened my abs but it also strengthened my endurance because I was able to hold or do the exercise for the entire period of time. Another activity that we did was stations. These stations included cardiovascular activities. Cardiovascular is related to the amount of blood that the heart pumps and shows how healthy your heart is. The cardiovascular exercises I did, helped pump more blood to all parts of my body. Examples of cardiovascular exercises includes any exercise that involves jumping. Jumping jacks are an example. Cardiovascular exercises are usually exercises that have fast movements. These exercises strengthened my body which helped me with endurance. I am currently working at an RPE level of 8 and occasionally mark a 7, which you can see on the chart in late October through early March. My goal is to get predominantly 9s by the end of the school year (highest level). I am proud to say that I got my first level 9 on October 29, 2015 and have worked hard to get a total of four level 9s, so far. Our class period is 55 minutes long and doing a workout for that long can be strenuous. By being able to put in effort that causes shortness of breath and being uncomfortable, I showed myself that I could sweat it out and keep on going till the class was over. This showed me how much I had grown in endurance. In Track & Field, I run hurdles. Both of these workouts are high intensity and are extremely vigorous. In the start of the season, my main goal with hurdles was to be able to get over them without falling. After achieving that, I had to make a new goal of being able to sprint in between each hurdle to cut down seconds from my time. That’s where the endurance growth that I had worked on in school came into play. I had to even out how much energy I put into sprinting and leaping over the hurdle. By growing in endurance, I am able to get over the hurdle while sprinting between them.
Before we start the workout for the day, we run around the gym. In the start of the school year, we ran one and a half minutes while by the end of the school year we will be running for about seven minutes. As the weeks passed and the running time increased, I not only worked on being able to run the whole time but I also increased my speed. I pushed myself while running and I was able to keep up and not fall back. If you were to take a snapshot of how I felt and how I used to run in the start of the year, you would have seen my back slumped, panting, and I would have been running at a moderate speed.
My fitness teacher then took a video of me (dark blue shirt with yellow text and multi-colored sports leggings) running for five minutes. As you can see, I’m running with a straight back and I have increased my speed while running for the whole time. Where did all of this endurance come from? When I ran every day, I created a new goal for myself. The goal was to be able to cover more distance every day. To do this I used the techniques learned in class such as breathing slowly through the mouth and the nose, running with a straight back, and taking longer strides with my legs. This allowed me to cover more distance. I then decided to work on my speed. Every fitness day, I would try to increase my speed a little more by matching my speed with that of other faster runners in my class. Before I knew it, I was able to run more laps than I did before. This showed me that the endurance I had was grown to be able to cover more distance in the allotted time and I wasn’t getting as fatigued as I ran more. In August of last year, I ran with the Beavercreek Cross Country team. Being the last member of the team was tough. I was persistent to keep going but I knew that I had to improve my physical strength to get better. By working hard through the running workout for that day, I was able to make personal records at meets and graduate from the title of being the last one to finish the workout. I believe that the techniques that I learned from running in class and the activities that we did helped my endurance in Cross Country practice.
Every day in fitness, I worked a little bit harder to make my body stronger. Doing fitness every day allowed me to have a healthy body and helped me to be in a positive mood all the time. Fitness class allowed me to gain in endurance that helps me in other sports that I play. In Track & Field, running is a very large component. By gaining in endurance I am able to challenge my friends to a good running race. When I grew in endurance, I didn’t just use it for Track & Field and I didn’t just use it to get a 15/15 for fitness class. I used it to make a plan for the future that was outside of fitness. Getting better at endurance took a lot of hard work. I exhibited persistence by telling myself to keep moving even when it hurt. With this determination I know that I can go far and achieve all of my goals that I set for myself as long as I work through the pain. Even when I graduate from seventh grade, I am not done gaining in endurance. Doing these exercises can help me in the long run by keeping me healthy and improving my resistance to diseases. This is my goal for years to come. I will be stronger and I will get better at endurance.