PE SEMESTER1 from June to October

June

o Week1
 Distinguishes aerobic from muscle-and bone strengthening activities
o Week2
 Explains how to optimize the energy systems for safe and improved
performance
o Week3
 Relates health behaviors (eating habits, sleep and stress management) to health
risks factors and physical activity assessment performance
o Week4
 Differentiates types of eating (fueling for performance, emotional eating, social
eating, eating while watching tv or sports events)

July

o Week5
 Recognizes the role of physical activity assessments in managing one’s stress
o Week6
 Self-assesses health-related fitness (HRF). status, barriers to physical activity
assessment participation and one’s diet
o Week7
 Sets Frequency Intensity Time Type (FITT) goals based on training principles to
achieve and/or maintain health-related fitness (HRF).
o Week8
 Engages in moderate to vigorous physical activities (MVPAs) for at least 60
minutes most days of the week in a variety of settings in- and out-of school

August

o Week9
 Analyzes physiological indicators such as heart rate, rate of perceived exertion
and pacing associated with MVPAs to monitor and/or adjust participation or
effort.
o Week10
 Observes personal safety protocol to avoid dehydration, overexertion, hypo-
and hyperthermia during MVPA participation
o Week11
 Identifies school and community resources in case of an injury or emergency
o Week12
 Demonstrates proper etiquette and safety in the use of facilities and equipment
September

o Week13
 Participates in an organized event that addresses health/fitness issues and
concerns
o Week14
 Recognizes the value of optimizing one’s health through participation in physical
activity assessments
o Week15
 Displays initiative, responsibility and leadership in fitness activities
o Week16
 Realizes one’s potential for health-and fitness related career opportunities

October

o Week17
 Organizes fitness event for a target health issue or concern
o Week1
o Week1
o Week1
Week1
What is the Difference Between Physical
Fitness, Exercise, and Physical Activity?
What is the Difference Between Physical Fitness, Exercise, and

Physical Activity?
Health care professionals, the media and now the White House. Everywhere we turn
today we hear how important exercise and physical activity are to long life and good
health. But what exactly constitutes physical activity and exercise and what’s the
difference between the two? Let’s take a closer look at how these terms relate to you
and what you can do to improve your overall health no matter where you are on the
fitness spectrum.
Physical activity involves any bodily movement such as walking to and from work, taking
the stairs instead of elevators and escalators, gardening, and doing household chores.
For inactive people, there’s no doubt that increasing this sort of activity can reduce risk
for disease and improve health.
Exercise, however, is a type of physical activity that requires planned, structured, and
repetitive bodily movement with the intent of improving or maintaining your physical
fitness level. Exercise can be accomplished through activities such as cycling, dancing,
walking, swimming, yoga, working out at the gym, or running, just to name a few.
Regular exercise, depending upon the kind, improves aerobic fitness, muscular
strength, and flexibility.
Aerobic fitness is the ability of the body’s cardiovascular system to supply energy
during continuous physical activities such as biking and running. Studies show that this
type of exercise provides many health benefits such as decreasing risk for heart
disease, stroke, high blood pressure, type II diabetes and some cancers. The 2008
Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans state that most health benefits occur with at
least 150 minutes/week of moderate-intensity aerobic activity. Examples of aerobic
activities that would meet this recommendation include walking at a brisk pace,
swimming, jogging, dancing, etc.
Muscular strength is the ability of the muscles to exert a force during an activity such
as lifting weights. Muscle strengthening exercises involve using your muscles to work
against a resistance such as your body weight, elastic bands or weights. The Physical
Activity Guidelines recommend that adults participate in muscle strengthening exercises
for all major muscles groups at least two days a week.
Bone strengthening exercise, or any weight-bearing activity that produces a force on
the bone, is also important to overall health for children and adults. This force is usually
produced by impact with the ground and results in bone growth in children and healthy
maintenance of bone density in adults. Examples of bone strengthening activities
include jumping, walking, jogging, and weight lifting exercises. As you can see, some
exercises such as walking or jogging serve a dual purpose of strengthening our bones
and our aerobic system.
Lastly, flexibility is the ability of the joints to move through a full range of motion.
Stretching exercises can be an excellent way of increasing flexibility. While the 2008
Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans do not include specific recommendations for
increasing flexibility, some individuals such as dancers and some athletes may need to
include flexibility activities as part of their exercise regimen.
The bottom line is that increasing your everyday physical activity and regularly
participating in aerobic, muscle and bone strengthening exercises are all beneficial to
your health and will improve your quality of life.
So what are you waiting for? It’s time to heed the advice and get active. You have
nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Source: http://articles.extension.org/pages/24799/what-is-the-difference-between-physical-fitness-
exercise-and-physical-activity
WEEK 2

Energy System
Development
As far as I know, Energy System Development is a term coined by Mark Verstegen,
Founder of EXOS (formally Athlete’s Performance).

Mark’s a smart dude, but also the term obviously describes the intent, much the same
way Neuromuscular System Development encapsulates training for the nervous
systems and muscular systems.

Most people only know about ‘Aerobics,’ or ‘Aerobic Training,’ or what I often hear
people talk about in terms of ‘cardio,‘ and maybe a few refer to as ‘conditioning.’

Aerobic simply means, ‘with oxygen,’ and only compromises one of three energy
systems.

Two are actually Anaerobic Pathways — which if you’re wondering, basically means,
‘without oxygen.’

We are capable of producing energy in an oxygen environment and in an environment

exclusive of oxygen.

Oxygen is a catalyst for energy production, your aerobic energy system is actually far
more efficient at generating energy via the production of adenosine
triphosphate (ATP) — the most basic component of energy that your body
utilizes — but at the expense of speed and a lower power output.

You can’t sustain a high level of energy output for too long, before the aerobic system
must kick in to cope with the energy demands.

The other obvious drawback is that exclusive training of the aerobic system won’t
really contribute much in the development of the other two energy systems, while
training the other two energy systems leads to dramatic improvement of the aerobic
system, as shown most notably in the Tabata Study. Though keep in mind that those
involved in that study, still did about seventy minutes of aerobic work per week.
Something to think about…
Too much time spent in the mythological ‘fat-burn zone‘ or too much low-level aerobic
training is often thought to lead to the degradation of muscle tissue, making your body
less metabolically active throughout the day.

However, most of that has to do with shear energy balance, and the fact that people
can’t keep their energy balance above maintenance levels. Burning more energy than
you take in, without the protein intake and resistance training to support muscle
retention, will degrade more muscle tissue, even in the absence of aerobic training.

Thus, spending some time training in that aerobic zone is usually a good idea, all the
same. Higher intensity forms of exercise thicken the walls of the heart when done to
excess, while aerobic training results in greater elasticity of the heart. That quality
appears to be associated with better heart health, even though higher intensity forms
of energy system training still yield a lot of the same benefits.

The other important consideration is that aerobic training improves recovery from
strenuous exercise and helps you recover better between sets of higher intensity
exercise.

Basically everything has it’s pros and cons, you should be aware of that, and then
cater your ‘cardio’ to improve what’s important to you.

1. The Quick System

AKA: ATP-CP Phosphagen System (Alactic Anerobic Energy System)

This is your immediate or shortest duration energy system, lasting roughly no longer
than 10 seconds.

You’ll find this energy system heavily involved in sports like javalin, shot-putting,
American Football, Baseball and short sprints.

It basically uses the ATP stored directly in your muscles, to produce energy quickly.

It’s actually a pretty powerful energy system, but the obvious limitation is endurance.
It’s questionable how trainable this system actually is.

A lot of NMSD is actually geared to this system and strength training, particularly
explosive strength, with less than 5 reps is often within this system already, but in
terms of everyday health and performance an ESD day of training geared to this
system most likely has sprint variations of an exercise with longer periods of rest.
For example, a 10 second sprint followed by 60 seconds of rest. Sprint intervals like
this are often characterized by quick or short duration work periods, with longer rest
periods as high as ten times the duration of the work portion.

Often energy system work in this realm is characterized by 6-20 times the amount of
recovery relative to your work period, or enough time to allow a chemical process to
restore ATP again within the muscle. Depending how how high the intensity is, or you
want it to be.

For example, 40m, 60m, 80m and 100m sprints are mostly geared to this energy
system, and are among my favourite protocols for maintaining cardiovascular fitness
via this system.

Often I’ll just do a quick sprint, walk back slowly and repeat.

However, sprinting is also technical, so you need to show technical proficiency to work
on them, otherwise you’re best off with a bike, rower or something with less of a
learning curve.

The nice thing about this type of training, is that you can do significantly less but get
great health benefits, while better preserving metabolically active muscle tissue, so
they are relatively time efficient. If you discount the fact that you need long rest
intervals anyway.

Personally, I’d rather sit around for a few minutes between bouts of intense exercise,
than to do mindless steady state work — though I still force myself to do some of that
too…

The more work you do in this realm, the more muscle mass is also likely to be
preserved (by comparison to the other two), but in my opinion shouldn’t be at the
expense of occasionally working on the other two energy systems.

The downside of this type of training is that it’s hard to recover from, so you can’t do
it often and it’s questionable how much you can do in conjunction with resistance
training (not very much as they are very similar).

Most sprint coaches theorize that this kind of work can only truly be tolerated about
twice a week, some might lean to a max of three times a week, but the consensus on
this type of training is generally unanimous in the sense that you need more recovery
time when utilizing higher intensity training protocols.

About 72 hours or more for high intensity sprint work that is above 90% effort or close
to 100%.
Some coaches also question the trainability of this energy system, noting that
improvements to the energy system itself seem moot relative to the neuromuscular
improvements. I don’t completely agree.

I’d note that big improvements within a 10-12 second interval can be less than tenths
of a second. A tenth of a second is the difference between first and third at the most
recent Brazil Olympics for the 100 m, or less than the difference between third and
sixth for more perspective.

I recommend using it sparingly a few times a year, in low doses (less than 20-30
minutes not including warming up), followed by resistance training (rather than on
separate days), with aerobic training done on off days to aid in recovery.

It is however more relevant for athletes in power sports than the average Joe or Jane.

2. The Medium System

AKA: Glycolytic System (Lactic Anaerobic Energy System)

The glycolytic system or your sugar system, still requires energy expenditure in an
environment without oxygen like the ATP-CP system, but after about 10-12 seconds
the body basically starts utilizing simple carbohydrates or glucose as a fuel source,
rather than pure ATP.

Sugar requires some breakdown and chemical changes to occur for this system to be
effective and training this system leads to a better utilization of glucose and a greater
duration of exercise at a higher intensity.

This system is predominantly used in Power Sports like Soccer, Basketball, Hockey,
Rugby, and 200m, 400m, 800m track events.

The downside?

Lactic Acid build-up, which isn’t as bad as most people think, however, it still creates
a burning sensation as your body produces the acid — which is actually a fuel source,
basically your body in an anaerobic state produces lactic acid — and eventually will
disallow you from continuing at that intensity.

This is also often referred to as the Lactate Threshold or Anaerobic Threshold

(whatever you want to call it), but your body is good at dealing with it for about 90-120
seconds, depending on training, before it has to start utilizing the aerobic energy
system and your power output has to drop.
It’s maintaining this intensity past your initial threshold, that makes training this energy
system so vital, in so many activities.

The nice thing about this system though, is that with a little bit of rest, you can tax it
pretty heavily and train a lot of similar qualities to your aerobic system at the same
time — as a side note, these energy systems actually have a bit of a cascade effect
in that ATP-CP can contribute to Glycolytic System development, which can lead to
Aerobic system development, but the opposite is not true, you can’t train your aerobic
system and significantly develop your ATP-CP system really.

Your energy systems work together, not in isolation.

A good example of training protocols that develop this system would be 30 seconds
on, 60 seconds off intervals or basically anything where the work is less than about 2
minutes and characterized by at least an equal amount of rest but upwards of three
times the amount of rest to work, in terms of a ratio, or even less rest than work, as in
the Tabata protocol.

Less rest to work ratios typically mean you can’t hold out as long, which is why the
basic Tabata approach is only 4 minutes — though contrary to popular opinion, there
was still about 70 minutes of steady state aerobic work in that study, everyone
conveniently ignores…

If you want to improve fatigue resistance, you lower the rest interval, if you want to
improve the quality of the contribution of the glycolytic system to training, you typically
use longer rest intervals, especially as they relate to sports.

45 seconds on, three minutes off, as in most hockey shift scenarios, is still an example
of Glycolytic Interval Training.

*Note more rest is needed when training the quick energy system, less for the
medium, and even less for the long system.

One of my favourite and according to Dr. Steven Boutcher at the University of South
Wales, perhaps the most effective for fat loss (per time spent, and if using a bike for
comparison), is an 8 seconds on, 12 seconds off protocol.

A major advantage to this protocol, is that the rest permits you to keep your output
fairly high, though the majority of the work ultimately ends up in the aerobic training
realm. Try it for 4-5 minutes.

Interval training in these zones, has been shown to make significant improvements in
markers for aerobic and cardiovascular health. However, their positive influence over
insulin sensitivity might also be useful for weight loss, improving metabolic rate and
muscle mass maintenance.

You can also limit training in this area significantly, perhaps even to only 20-30
minutes or less in a training session, while getting similar results (or better) to the
typical long-slow distance aerobic work that many people still do for fat loss and weight
loss.

In a pinch it’s a great substitute for longer more boring styles of aerobic training, but
again, you might not want to utilize it more than two (maybe three) times a week for
optimal use.

Typically you’ll still need about 36+ hours of recovery between bouts for ideal
performance. You can’t just use high intensity training protocols all year round either,
despite how some people might approach it these days.

Be careful mixing it with resistance training protocols as it’s still relatively high intensity
(most moderate set lifting is in the glycolytic zone).

What’s interesting is that a great deal of athletic research indicates that this system
can be trained rather sparingly and the benefits last for quite some time. It’s highly
trainable.

Meaning the benefits of doing glycolytic training three times a week (I’d skip
resistance training this week or use very low volume anyway) for one or two weeks
can last 6-12 weeks. Ultimately, you can probably get away with a week of this type
of training every 2-3 months, with maybe the odd maintenance session here or there
and get a lot of the benefits.

A fun little fact about most interval research is that most of the benefits shown are
seen in short windows, and they don’t necessarily continue to advance beyond
those windows.

Just because it’s been shown that higher intensity interval training has been shown to
be very effective at eliciting metabolic and aerobic improvements, doesn’t mean you
should just completely forget about aerobic training.

A lot of people these days hammer the @#%* out of this system in particular,
expecting to somehow improve. If that’s you, you might want to consider spending
some time on #1 or probably more on #3.

Just saying…
Anaerobic training is stressful on the body and harder to recover from in high
quantities. Not to discourage you from using it, but a lot of it usually just ends up being
aerobic training anyway.

I recommend a few phases of each type of training each year, with a few sessions
here or there, depending on how they are planned to maintain during the rest of the
year.

Of course, this all depends on your objectives.

3. The Long System

AKA: Aerobic System

At the end of a high intensity interval training session, your last interval might have as
much as 40% contribution of the aerobic system.

In other words, it’s always there, always helping you last longer.

If you have decent aerobic fitness than your resting heart rate will typically be
around 60 BPM.

If you’re not there on a regular basis, then you might want to mix more into your routine
for general health purposes than the other two for now. I think it’s something worth
focusing on maintaining.

This system is predominantly used in endurance sports such as long, typically

slow (relative to their power sport counterparts) distance cycling, triathlons,
marathons, kayak racing, and swimming.

I get it, it’s boring, I’m not a fan of doing the same thing ad nauseam for long periods
of time either.

The main disadvantage being the time requirement (also boredom) but the main
advantage being that aerobic training can be done almost daily. It’s much easier to
recover from that other forms of energy system training.

It’s definitely associated more so with that, than anything else, but pretty much
anything that keeps you at a moderate heart rate (about 130-150 BPM) for 20-30
minutes will have an aerobic training effect. Even brisk walking is of benefit and is
worth considering on days you’re not lifting or doing some other form of cardiovascular
activity.
Honestly, I don’t recommend average people stretch it out beyond 60 minutes, and I
usually keep them in that 20-30 minutes zone because I’d rather more frequency than
duration, generally. If you have an endurance sport objective, obviously you’ll have to
stretch it out longer than that to 90 minutes.

The aerobic system can handle low-medium intensity activities for about 90 minutes
in duration or longer, depending on training.

If you’re ever heard the term ‘bonking’ or are familiar with the practice of ‘carb-loading’
in endurance sports, then you are probably aware of this limit, in that your body can
only store so much fuel.

Once you run out of this fuel you can make yourself feel rather sickly. However,
aerobic training makes better utilization of fat as a percentage of work, so it’s often
effective to combine with resistance training (which preserves/builds muscle mass)
for fat loss purposes. That’s why so many bodybuilders use brisk up-hill walking on a
treadmill for cutting purposes.

Typically the average human being stores enough fuel for comfortably about 20 miles
worth of activity in the aerobic zone, but training can change this, as can genetics.

If your goals are suited to endurance sports, then you will want to do a considerable
amount of training this system still.

Aerobic energy system training also what most people seem to think of when they
hear the term ‘cardio,‘ but as you can see above, it’s only one of three systems.

It’s more for improving recovery for other things, more than anything else. It stimulates
a different part of your autonomic nervous system (parasympathetic) which can lead
to improved relaxation and stress relief. Not a bad thing if you’re a high strung work-
a-holic these days, whereas the two above might aggravate your stress levels, making
things worse rather than better.

Aerobic training is also more associated with cognitive/mood/energy benefits than

higher intensity forms of exercise, but there is a lack of research on this for the other
two. Most of these benefits appear to need about 20 minutes of aerobic activity strung
together though, despite the popularity of short workouts like the seven minute
workout (it has benefits, just not necessarily these).

Aerobic activity increases the elasticity of the heart to a much greater extent (higher
intensity forms of exercise appear to thicken the heart, though the jury is out as to how
detrimental heart wall thickening might be) than high intensity exercise, which may be
of significant benefit.
Unlike the Anaerobic pathways, training your aerobic system yields little
improvements in speed, power or strength and is associated with degradation of
lean tissues.

However, you are mostly in a state of aerobic energy expenditure all day, every day,
anyway. So muscle loss probably has more to do with negative energy balance, than
aerobic work per-se. Muscle degradation is easily combatted by utilizing some of the
other methods above, as well as utilizing resistance training and adequate protein
intake.

See: Why Strength Training is Important.

I’ll note that research into this interference effect suggests that non-weight bearing
aerobic activities (like biking/swimming) do not have a significant interference effect
when kept to less than three times a week for no longer than about 20-30 minutes at
a time. Something to consider if you’re attempting to gain muscle via resistance
training but want to maintain some different aspects of cardiovascular health along
with with.

Walking, is predominantly aerobic, and yields numerous health benefits, not to

mention provides many people a much needed break within the day.

I’m not saying Aerobic training is bad or good really. For fat-loss, you can use it more
frequently and recover better from it, but it might not have the muscle preserving
effects of the other two. Something to consider is that the other two can’t be done as
often, nor for as long.

I think a mix is generally best as they have slightly different benefits/downsides.

Going for a walk or light hike between workouts is a great activity for ‘active recovery‘
days and low level blood flow has been shown to reduce muscle soreness from
previous workouts.

Even if it’s only a placebo effect, light swimming and cycling (notice non-weight
bearing endurance activities…) have also been shown to reduce muscle soreness
when done between harder workouts.

Despite popular opinion, there are aerobic methods that don’t include long continuous
bouts of exercise. As long as you keep your heart rate in an aerobic zone, sled work
can be aerobic, rope work can be aerobic and a variety of interval protocols can be
aerobic. Don’t limit yourself to just long slow distance work (that’s how I prevent myself
from being bored with it) if it doesn’t appeal to you.
Get a heart rate monitor and keep yourself in that aerobic zone for 20-30 minutes
using other methods if you like, or use rate of perceived exertion (5-6 out of 10).

I sometimes like to think of it as breathing through my nose, if you have to breathe

through your mouth, there is a good chance it’s become more anaerobic (or is
approaching it) so back off, trying to breathe through your nose for the 20-30 minutes
can be a reasonable indication that the intensity is low enough to be mostly aerobic.

Either needs to be fairly continuous though, even if you have chosen to use an interval
approach.

My recommendation is 20-30 minutes of aerobic training (you could do more if you’re

an endurance athlete) with a non-weight bearing modality, on days you don’t lift, or
following about 1-6x a week depending on your objectives. Or tack on a little of it after
lifting.

Closing
It is important to remember that these are more like guidelines, than rules.

We know that all three energy systems work interdependently, so it’s not exactly cut
and dry.

For example, working your quick or medium systems, means your aerobic system is
in use during the recovery period.

Doing resistance training will provide some benefits to these systems, depending on
the type too.

If you want to optimize your training, it’s important to order any energy system work
within a training session or workout appropriately, so that the quick energy system is
developed first, then the medium system, finishing with the long system.

This is of course assuming that you plan to train 2 or more energy systems within a
given session.

Also you are better served utilizing some form or combination of interval training in
your weight loss efforts, instead of typical aerobic exercise.

Summary

 Train all 3 energy systems on a semi-regular basis.

 Be mindful of how you integrate these forms of training with resistance training.
 Place emphasis on the Anaerobic System over the Aerobic System only a few times a year, the
rest of the year should probably focus more on the aerobic system (for recovery and heart health),
if you lift (and you should). Or at least be mindful of what you can actually recover from.
 Your Medium Energy System means anything lasting 10-120 seconds, with typically up to 4 times
the rest, but more often a 1:2 or 1:3 ratio.
 Your Long Energy System will last roughly up to 20 miles which is typically where people bonk in
Marathons without adequate training, or about 90-120 minutes (depending on your level of
training) before your carbohydrate stores are depleted and additional carbohydrates must be
consumed.
 Intervals done in the Long Energy System typically have an inverse work to rest ratio (think walk-
run protocol) or even. Often the rest is considerably shorter than the work phase, often 1:1, 2:1,
3:1 or even up to 10:1 or higher.
 If training more than one system within a given workout, train the systems from quickest to longest.
 All 3 systems work interdependently, not exclusively, so take most recommendations with a grain
of salt.