Improving Sports Performance by Sarah Katz
Essential Questions: What are the best ways to impact and improve sports performance? How can a change in my eating and living habits affect my daily life?
From before I could even remember I have been playing soccer. My parents started putting me in classes at the age of two and I haven’t stopped playing. Throughout my middle school years, I started to play travel soccer and take it more seriously. Playing on a lot of different soccer teams also helped me come out of my shell. I had always been super shy and being exposed to a lot of new environments really helped me to become the person I am today. In addition to soccer, I was also playing basketball and softball for my school’s teams. Going into high school I knew I wanted to play sports because I really loved it.
Fast forward a few years and when it came to starting the college process, I realized that all my life my main focus has been sports and though playing wasn’t really an option, behind the scenes could be something I could be really interested in. I started to research and found that there were so many different fields I could go into. In March, when quarantine started, I began to become interested in nutrition and eating better. As that interest started to grow I realized that I could make a senior project about it.
My project, as a whole, will focus on fitness and nutrition. I plan to do some type of exercise every day whether that be, running, sport-specific exercises, or other types of exercise in addition to my travel soccer practices. I also plan to meal plan and look up different recipes every day to keep a lot of variation in my diet. In the end, I plan to compile all the good recipes and put them together for my future self. I am also planning to interview people who have lots of knowledge about different fields such as a nutritionist, soccer coach, athlete, and physical therapist. By conducting these interviews I hope to learn more about these areas of the industry and apply them to my project and beyond it. I also plan on making some type of documentation of my progress whether that just be writing down numbers on a spreadsheet or actually creating a blog or track it. The challenges I will be facing are mostly personal. I have to pass through that mental block I put up when it is time to consistently exercise.
On a daily basis, I plan to do at least one type of exercise(i.e. Soccer, running), do some recovery work(i.e. heat/ice, stretching), mealing planning and looking up recipes, and actually cooking most of my meals. I will also try to be getting on a consistent sleep schedule to also see how that benefits me. In addition to the project-specific exercise, I will be participating in soccer practice/game three to four times per week. Although these won’t be occurring on a daily basis, I plan to make specific questions for each interviewee so I will be writing ideas down for those often.
By the end of this project, I hope to have a deeper understanding of food nutrition and how to exercise properly. Although I definitely will not be continuing my intense routine, I think the process I went through will help me know in the future to know what my body needs in order to stay healthy. To specifically answer my questions, I plan to do certain soccer drills, running, and the pacer test on the first day and the last to truly see how I have positively impacted my sports performance.