Special sports

The essence of special sports is to rely on unified rules, standardized technical systems, directional competition/exercise goals, and a full-chain training, evaluation, and competition system built around a single form of sports. Its core role is to help participants with different needs use the most efficient path to obtain the desired sports results while reducing the risk of injury to a controllable range. It has never been a "partial sport that only practices one movement" that many people mistakenly believe.

A while ago, I went to the gym with my friends to play. I met an old golfer who came three times a week and had been playing men's singles for five years. During the break, we chatted. He said that he had seen a video of a fitness blogger, saying that playing only badminton for a long time would lead to asymmetry of left and right shoulder muscles and serious wear and tear on the knees. He was so scared that he stopped for half a month. Later, he went to the hospital for a full physical examination. The doctor said that his muscle condition and joint health were much better than those of people of the same age, and he did not have any of the problems mentioned by the blogger. Don't tell me, this just touches on the most common controversy about specialized sports: Is it better to specialize in one event, or is it healthier to dabble in all aspects?

What’s interesting is that in the past ten years, there were actually two completely different views on the training ideas for sprinting in domestic track and field circles: Old-school coaches believed that they should first improve their aerobic endurance, and run ten kilometers every day to lay a solid foundation for physical fitness before developing explosive power.； The new team of foreign teachers believe that sprinting is an extreme explosive event, and 99% of the training should focus on increasing the stride frequency, optimizing the starting reaction, and strengthening the power chain of core conduction. Excessive aerobic training will consume fast-twitch muscle fibers and affect performance. Later, Su Bingtian's team merged the two ideas, retained low-intensity aerobics as a recovery method, and followed all core training to meet special needs, and only then did they set the Asian record of 9.83 seconds.

Don't believe it, most of the pitfalls that ordinary people encounter when practicing special sports are not due to "specialization", but because they have not touched the "special training system" at all. I once had a programmer colleague who was obsessed with marathons. He would get up every morning and run 10 kilometers by himself. After three months of running, his knees became useless. When he went to rehab, he learned that running volume only accounts for one-third of professional marathon training. The remaining time should be spent on core stability, lower limb strength, running posture correction, and post-race fascia relaxation. He started running a lot, which was essentially running indiscriminately, and it was not a special training at all.

Many people's understanding of special sports is still limited to popular sports such as running and ball games. In fact, niche sports such as paragliding, free diving, and competitive Frisbee have long had a very mature special system. Last year, I followed a friend to experience freediving. I originally thought that as long as I could hold my breath, I could do it. However, the instructor did not allow me to go into the water at all in the first class. He first taught me the principles of ear pressure balance and underwater emergency response methods for two hours. The subsequent training included static apnea, dynamic level diving, rescue drills, etc. It was completely different from my imagination of "going into the sea and just having fun".

I have been practicing boxing for almost two years, and what I feel most deeply is that the "special" in a special event actually helps you save energy. At first, I thought about practicing weightlifting to build muscle. Later, the coach told me directly that the functional strength required for boxing and the absolute strength of weightlifting are not the same thing at all. Practicing too much will make the muscles stiff and affect the speed of punching. After I cut off the redundant training, my skills improved a lot. Even the sore shoulders and necks I often suffered from before were cured. After all, each class only lasted forty minutes just moving, and the core was always stretched. It was much more useful than the ten core classes I had done before.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that everyone has to practice a special sport seriously. If you exercise just to sweat out after get off work, you can play badminton today and swim tomorrow, whatever makes you happy is totally fine. But if you really want to get some specific results - for example, if you want to lose 20 pounds steadily, if you want to participate in an amateur marathon to get a ranking, or even if you want to improve the shoulder and neck problems that have been accumulated at the desk for many years, it is really more useful to find a special mental training that suits your needs than to follow the trend and try new classes everywhere.