One Weight At Times example essay topic

This intervention has to deal with trying to increase my total weight and number of repetitions for weight lifting. The main problem I have been having, mostly with my bench press, has to do with being stuck at one weight at times and not being able to increase the maximum lift or get any more reps out of the workout. I have tried to 'shock my system' by increasing the weights to a weight that I could only do one or two times. I have also tried building up my endurance through using less weight for more reps at times.

No matter which I have tried, I always seem to get stuck at one point or another. The reason that I chose this form of intervention was because I have tried to talk to many people about why this occurs, but they all seem to agree that it happens to everyone and there is no way to get around it. If I could find a way to avoid this, it would improve my workout a great deal and I would be able to progress at a quicker rate. Besides with the bench, I will occasionally run into problems with any of the power exercises that I do.

The military press, front and back, and 21's cause the most problems next to the bench presses. Since separating both shoulders in a skiing accident, I tend to have pains in my shoulders if I work them too hard. Hopefully, by using imagery and setting some short-term goals I would be able to increase the weight much easier than without. I believe that when I visually see the weights on the bar, intimidation may set in and there may be some doubt. If I am able to switch that to positive thought, it may effect how well I am able to lift the desired weight. Besides these exercises, I also chose to track the progress of my push up counts based on sets of three and two other forms of curls.

On the bench that I used, I used a bar for one form of curls and I also used the bench curl attachment. I tracked these two not because I was having trouble, but because I wanted to see if either one made a difference in the type of progress that was being made. Subject Age: 22 Gender: Male Major: Sports Management History of Concerns: I discovered this problem when I first began to train in high school. Once I began I made quick and effective progress, but fell into a sort of 'slump' for a few weeks on my bench press when I could not get passed a certain weight for almost a month. The person helping me stated that everyone falls into these situations all the time where they are not able to get over a certain stage in their training.

Since then, I have lifted for more recreational purposes, but I still seem to find myself in the same situations usually two or three times a year. It occurs in the area of bench-pressing, but as I stated earlier, it has happened with's a few shoulder workouts also, which is most likely due to an injury I sustained a few years ago. Being able to eliminate these negative thoughts should positively affect the final results. Aspirations: Through doing this investigation, I wanted to test if one's psychological state of mind had anything to do with the type of workout they have. By using positive imagery and setting short-term goals for every workout, I was curious to see if it would drive me to lift more weight or do more repetitions. According to articles I have read, those steps will have an impact on my results.

Dr. Jonathan F. Katz of Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center states, 'There's more to lifting weights than physically preparing your body, you have to gear yourself up emotionally and psychologically. ' Mentally, the way I went about using imagery was by trying to picture myself doing each lift prior to actually doing it. Sports Psychologist Michael Sachs says that he 'encourages people to use all five senses... see things, hear what's going on, smell, taste the sweat, feel the bar... ' I would sit on the bench for about 30 seconds and try to get that mental picture in my head. As far as setting the goals, I wrote down my desired weight before I would work out. This way, there was no compromising my own goals.

Most days the weights we basically the same. A few days I would try to overload just to get the feel of the heavier weight and then I would try to move up from there. Other times I would do and extra set or lighter weight to try and get up my endurance levels. By setting these goals first, it gave me something to aim for. It made me believe I could do it. It would help relieve the negative images in my head.

Results: Overall, I cannot make an assumption that this type of intervention worked. There are many factors that could have contributed to the type of workout that I was having. If there were more factors involved or perhaps a longer time frame to do the research, I could make an accurate decision. I will say that in some instances, positive thought can help one to achieve their goals because their confidence levels are high, but for me, it is not so easy to tell.

Conclusions: My conclusions is that for reasons such as health, mood at the time of lift, the order of the exercises, type of music, and other factors, lifts on one day vary from those on another. If I were to have recorded these factors at the times of the workouts, there could have been a more accurate conclusion. The weight did increase overall, but that could be just do to the fact that I kept a steady workout regimen and I was able to produce more effectively. That happens regardless of the situations. Most articles believe that imagery and setting goals have a strong impact on the final results. I am not convinced, but I feel that with more research and more accurate record keeping, the relationship could be discovered.

Work Cited 1. Schlosberg, Suzanne, 'Let's Get Visual', Men's Fitness, August 1998, vol. 14, p. 1-2.2. web (Strength and Conditioning Coach, Sport Nutrition Consultant, Houston, TX) 3. Buchanan, Dale, 'Setting Goals for Fast Results', Lift for Life, September 1, 2000, p. 904. Lester, Scott, 'Weighing the Options', Recreation Resources, November, 1999, p. 17-21.