Kōkiri Learn

Background reading · Health and Physical Education

How training works: SPORT, FITT and the methods athletes use

Your body adapts to the challenges you give it. Learn the principles and methods that make training work.

Every time you train, you give your body a small challenge. Afterwards, while you rest, your body repairs and adapts so it's a bit more ready next time. That is how training makes you fitter, faster or stronger.

Aerobic and anaerobic

When you jog, cycle or swim steadily, your heart and lungs can deliver enough oxygen to your muscles to keep going. This is aerobic exercise. In a flat-out sprint, your muscles need energy faster than oxygen can arrive, so they make it without oxygen for a short time. This is anaerobic exercise. It's why sprinting makes your legs burn and you have to stop. The burning fades quickly once you rest. Soreness a day or two later is different: it comes from tiny changes in muscles as they adapt.

The SPORT principles

  • Specificity: train for what you want to improve. A sprinter does short fast runs; a cross-country runner builds stamina. - Progression: make training a little harder each week, not all at once. - Overload: work harder than your body is used to, so it has a reason to adapt. - Reversibility: stop training and fitness slowly fades, so keep it regular. - Tedium: doing the same thing every time gets boring, so add variety.

    • FITT: planning each session

  • Frequency: how often you train. - Intensity: how hard. - Time: how long. - Type: which activity or method.

    • Training methods

  • Interval training: short bursts of hard work with rests between. Great for speed. - Fartlek: Swedish for 'speed play', a continuous run with changes of pace. Great for stamina and games with stop-start movement, like netball or football. - Circuit training: a set of stations, each working a different part of the body. - Flexibility training: stretches and movement that help you move more freely.

    • A New Zealand training story

    In the 1950s Auckland coach Arthur Lydiard had his runners build a big base of steady aerobic running, then add hill training and shorter fast runs. His athletes, including Peter Snell and Murray Halberg, both won Olympic gold at Rome in 1960, and his ideas spread around the world.

    Sources and further reading

    Written for Kōkiri Learn students in our own words. Check facts against the sources.

    Used in: Personal Best: Training and Goal Setting