Ch 10Training & Doping in Sports — Class 11 Physical Education, concept-first.

This unit studies how athletes are prepared, scientifically and systematically, to perform at their best — and why that preparation must always be honest and drug-free.

Sports training is the planned, systematic and scientific process of preparing a sportsperson for the highest possible level of performance in a chosen sport.

Sports performance training is the training of the body and the mind to prepare an athlete for the rigours of a specific sport.

Training to achieve something in competition is not a new idea, but with time far more effort and science have gone into it.

For the formulation, implementation and development of players — and as guidelines for coaches — certain principles of sports training are followed.

The whole purpose of training is to stress the body in a controlled way so that it responds by becoming fitter and stronger. That controlled stress is the training load.

The sports training process involves activities and movements that lead to fatigue. Fatigue is the direct product of the load caused by physical activity or exercise, and — perhaps surprisingly — it i…

Training load is the physiological and psychological demand placed on an individual through motor stimulus (movement), with the aim of improving and maintaining performance capacity.

The normal development of an athlete's training state is disturbed when the physical and psychic daily load of life exceeds the loading capacity of the individual.

In its literal sense, adaptation means to get adjusted. Just as a living organism adjusts to its environment, the human body can modify itself to a new state of performance efficiency in response to a…

Every well-run workout or competition has a beginning and an end that matter as much as the main work.

1. Passive warming-up — the player warms the body through external sources, without actually taking part in physical activity: sunbathing, wearing a heavy uniform, drinking hot water or hot beverages…

Meaning Limbering down — also called cooling down or warming down — is an easy exercise that lets the body shift gradually from an exertional state to a resting (or near-resting) state.

To perform and compete well, an athlete needs more than fitness: they must do the movement the right way, do it reliably, make good decisions in the contest, and have an overall plan.

Skill can be defined as the capacity of the sportsperson to realise a technique in actual motor action — in other words, the automatisation of motor action.

Technique is the mechanical model of doing a task through which an athlete minimises energy expenditure and produces a remarkable output.

Tactics are the skills that allow a player or team to use their abilities to the best possible advantage — the tactical actions and other measures adopted before or during a competition for successful…

A strategy is basically laying down the goals and making a plan to reach them — for example, setting the goal of winning the season or the match and then planning how to achieve it (developing players…

Sport is meant to be a fair test of natural talent, training and effort. Doping breaks that fairness by using artificial means to gain an advantage — and in doing so it endangers the athlete's health…

Doping is an athlete's use of prohibited drugs or prohibited methods to improve training and sporting results.

Anabolic steroids — more properly anabolic-androgenic steroids — are steroidal androgens that include the natural male hormone testosterone and synthetic compounds with similar effects.

Human growth hormone (hGH) — also called somatotrophin — is naturally produced by the body, synthesised and secreted by cells in the anterior pituitary gland at the base of the brain.

Diuretics, sometimes called "water pills", help rid the body of salt (sodium) and water and inhibit the re-absorption of water in the kidney; by moving more sodium and water into the urine they reduce…

Stimulants are a group of drugs that increase activity in the body, sometimes called "uppers". They speed up the messages travelling between the brain and the body (partly by increasing dopamine level…

Narcotics are drugs that can change a person's psychic and physical state across a wide range of symptoms, from sleep to euphoria and excitation.

Blood doping (or "blood manipulation") is a prohibited method of improving performance by artificially boosting the blood's ability to carry oxygen to the muscles. The three widely used types are:

Gene doping is a form of drug abuse in sport in which genetic material is injected into the muscle to improve performance or make the muscles grow stronger.

This unit explained how planned preparation raises sporting performance, and why clean, drug-free sport must be protected. The key points, in the book's order: