After taking swimming back up for a year now, I have been able to reflect on the past couple of months. I have come across issues regarding the commitment I have made to the sport, and have had to deal with them. Although I have been able to learn and develop some of my skills in swimming, I have come across challenges that seem to be getting in the way a little bit as well. These challenges are many regarding my commitment to the activity.(LO2) As I can choose the days that I go, I find that I have been not as regular in my training as I would have liked. With lots of work from school, I have found that once I get home from school, I would much rather prefer to take a nap than go to swimming. Although this is the case, my mother does remind me that this is a commitment that I have made and I need to be more present in trainings. My participation in the activity has not been very good recently, as even when I do go to training, I don’t seem to be as engaged as my other team members as my head is normally somewhere else. When it comes to sport or exercise, I tend to enjoying working alone and focusing on myself rather than working as a team, which is something that I have had to work on the past few years, being part of a team. I find that during trainings, I am more detached than my teammates, not as involved as they are, or as interesting and dedicated than them. In order to improve on these issues, I think I need to work on my time management at home, making sure I have enough time for everything, and still leaving time to go to training. Managing my time to make sure that I have time for a nap if I need one, without disrupting my scheduled activists, such as swimming. This is going to be a difficult job to do as I tend to be a procrastinator and put work till last minute, which is when I have to go swimming, but then I have work to do that takes up that time.
Category: Activity
Final reflection
Coming to the end of my touch rugby experience this year, I have had such a good opportunity to not only learn new things, but also work with new people from different grades, or even people in my grade then I haven’t had a chance to work with ever before.
I collaborated with lots of different people. not only people in my own team, but also people other teams as we sometimes trained together and worked together. Trying to work effectively with new people can sometimes be very difficult and frustrating, especially when they are people in different grades as you. I found this challenging but it never was too much for me to handle, in my team I had a couple of people who were in my grade and I was familiar with, although it wasn’t like we were close friends, but it was securing to have people that I still knew and we got to bond together due to that experience. We faced some challenges when working together, as some people were in different levels of skills and we easily got frustrated with each other if someone wasn’t preforming properly in the eyes of another team member. Although this did not happen to often, out coach would help us working together and make sure we weren’t wasting any time by talking or bickering in any way. As a team sport, collaboration is an incredibly important aspect as without the team we can’t play, and in order to play well a team relationship must be created so we can effectively communicate and collaborate during training and during games(LO5). I think in the end we all managed to work together as a team nicely, and I think everyone learnt more skills about how to work together well as a team with people you aren’t familiar with.
Initial Reflection
After taking a year and a half off of nor swimming, I have recently decided to restart swimming this year. I grew up swimming at the Hollandse Club ever since I’ve lived in Singapore which started in Grade 4. I was quite good at swimming as I grew up training around 2-3 times a week but I never found it that interesting or enjoyable to do, my main motivation was my parents as they kept me dedicated to the sport as I grew up by making sure I went to my training as often as I physically could, which is a good lesson of perseverance they could teach me at that age. Ever since I’ve restarted swimming I find it a bit easier to stay motivated than when I was younger as I find the exercise more rewarding as I did before as I am more educated on the positive outcomes of exercise. Before I took my break from swimming last year, I swam with a friend which was a good way for motivation for both of us as we both were never too thrilled about training, we would make sure the other showed up so that we could train together as it made it more bearable. I aim to train 3 times a week but especially during IB as the workload is increasing ,I find it more difficult to keep up with my schedule of 3 trainings a week. Another thing that motivates me to go to training is the feeling after of healthy fatigue, I’m generally happier after I do exercise such as swimming due to the neurological effects of exercise, this is another reason of motivation for me as I enjoy that feeling afterwards(LO4). During the past one and a half months, my mother especially has been helping me to stick to this schedule and motivate me, by just making sure that I go and don’t make silly excuses to skip a training. Although my mom is trying to motivate me as much as she can, I never really feel as committed as I used to, finding it harder and harder to tell myself that I should go to training rather than taking a nap for example. Another aspect of swimming I have been struggling with is the planning. As I am now much older and have been part of the team for a long time, I have more responsibilities now, meeting with my coaches and planning sessions, even planning how to teach the younger kids on the weekend. Coming in on Saturdays to teach infants how to swim, where I have to come early to plan with my fellow coaches(LO3).
Initial Reflection
This school year, I joined pre-season touch rugby, I played touch rugby back in grade 8 which was a long time ago so I don’t consider knowing much about the sport as I have forgotten most of the skill I learnt 3 years ago. So learning the new skills has been very exciting and fun for me as I find the sport really enjoyable. Reflecting on the first season of pre-season, the things I found difficult the most was collaborating as it is a very important skill in the sport, which isn’t something I’m familiar with (swimming), so I have had to build on my collaboration skills. This involved putting myself more out there using communication which I’m also not used to doing in sports, during games and such. To do this I had to just try my hardest to be part of the team and to communicate as much as I could during practice games, which is something I still do need to work on as I’m a quiet person by nature but I am getting better on. In the future seasons, I can work on this by setting more goals for myself to be louder and more responsive during practice and games.
There are a lot of new skills I have developed whilst learning touch rugby, specific skills such as throwing and catching, as well as game tactics such as the ‘A-Drive’, and terms like ‘Dummy Half’. Along with lots of skills I still remember from grade 8 and am working on developing and improving. I can measure my improvement on skill such as throwing and catching, as well as my participation by reflecting on myself and getting feedback from my coach(LO2). For me, the physical skills like game tactics were a lot easier to develop and understand whilst I do still need to work on my collaboration and communication. All these skills are very important in touch rugby as they are used during games in order to work best as a team, whilst skills like collaboration and communication can overlap with other aspects of my life, which is feedback I have received a lot as these skills are not my strong suit and I believe that my collaboration in touch rugby as a team is helping me develop these skills further. I can use these skill in future activities for not only other sports but also other projects that involve group work, collaboration, and communication(LO5).