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Lecture Notes

In addition to the general principles of training, when you're designing an exercise program there are five different things to keep in mind when you're building this program. The first is to make sure that it's safe to begin that exercise program; so this could include talking to your doctor, but it also could include, or start with, taking a questionnaire, such as the PAR-Q,or the Physical Activity Readiness Questionnaire, and there's a copy of this questionnaire, it's ten items, there's a copy posted on Compass. I want you to take a look at it, read over the questions, think about how these questions could relate to whether or not it's safe for you to participate in physical activity. The second is to do some sort of self-assessment of your current fitness level, and this could provide a baseline or starting point for thinking about some of your goals, which leads into the third point here. You need specific goals when we're talking about developing your fitness, and we'll talk a lot more in the future about setting effective goals that are specific and adjustable and timely, but again, we'll talk about this in a future chapter. Fourth, build slowly, and here you can think back to that principle of progression in the FITT formula. You want to start gradually and, in order to maintain consistency and keep up with your physical activity routine, you want to build in slowly.