My level of effort and engagement today: Excellence
Why have you placed yourself at this level? Give supporting evidence.
I have placed my level of effort and engagement at an excellence for this session for a few different reasons. First of all, I got out of the changing rooms and into the weights room in a reasonable amount of time, which sometimes doesn’t happen because girls take aaaaaages to get dressed and you end up waiting for them. I then went for a solid warm up run with Eve which was really enjoyable, around the field. When I got back I suggested to the group of girls that looked slightly lost that we’d do an interval training type of thing in partners, which worked really well for about 15 minutes. Then everyone dispersed and did their own things, so I took advantage of the weights and the machinery that I don’t have at home and did some different exercises I’ve learnt previously on them. It’s so much more interesting when you’ve got all of this different equipment in front of you (that you don’t usually have access to, I mean) and so you get to spice up your workout a little bit with exercises you don’t do too often. I then went for a run to finish the session off too, again with Eve, which was really good. We then stretched together and the whole thing felt really well planned and I had slightly sore muscles the next day; so I know I did something right.
Factors that influence participation: fun & enjoyment, challenge, social factors
Factor 1: fun & enjoyment + Factor 2: challenge + Factor 3: social factors
I really enjoy physical activity in all forms really, and I enjoy strength training that much more. Since my accident i’m restricted in term of what exercises I can do, but that didn’t really bother me at all in the end. It’s such a great feeling achieving things that you didn’t think you were capable of and so I get fun and enjoyment out of coming face to face with and tackling a challenge. I also got a lot of fun and enjoyment out of using different equipment that is not like the stuff I have at home, and so if you’re an avid exercise person like me you’ll know the feeling of getting to play with new toys. It’s great. It keeping your mind interested in what you’re doing because the same old exercises can get sort of boring and loose their excitement after a while. So this influenced my participation in that it made me enthused and exited and really wanting to work out well!!! Some people in my class I talk to more than others, some of which I barely talk to at all. And so it was really neat when I suggested to the girls that we all do something together, they were like ‘yeah okay’ and so we struggled through the pain and had a bit of a laugh together, which was really enjoyable. And doing things with and around your friends always makes me more competitive, so I tried some bench pressing and a few other exercises which I might not have done if other people weren’t challenging me to do so. I also really enjoyed running with Eve, because we don’t really associate with each other that much out of school because of our quite different friend groups, and I found out that other than being quite good at and enjoying running, we are both very similar in many other ways and have so much in common.
Bearing in mind the criteria in Resource 1, what could you do to improve your future participation?
To improve my future participation I think I probably could have nagged a few other people to join in and show them some cool things or challenge them (Soph, Jaz etc) because I think they’d find they quite enjoy it. I also think if I knew that we were going to be in the weights room even when I was in the changing room, I could have better planned what I was going to do because I forget sometimes that I am slightly restricted. So that would have saved the time I spent thinking when I could actually have been doing. Not that those breaks were even a bad thing now that I think about it, because they gave me a chance to catch my breath and stretch a little or grab a drink of water.
alexandrasorewa 