Definition of sport-specific ability

Special sports ability is a collection of exclusive physical, technical, tactical, mental and special perception abilities that athletes need to complete the competition requirements of a specific event and stably output competitive performance that conforms to the rules of the event. It is an ability assembly that is different from general sports ability and has strong event-specific attributes.

When many people first get into training, the easiest thing to confuse is the boundary between it and general athletic ability. Let’s take what I saw when I was training with the provincial track and field team’s short cross group. There is a guy who trains 100 meters. He can squat up to 180 kilograms, which is better than many older teams in the same group. Although he was a strong athlete, his 100-meter time was always stuck at 10.8 seconds. Later, the coach changed his training plan, cutting off half of the heavy squats, adding a bunch of starting kick and extension exercises, and special training on hip strength during running, and he ran to 10.3 seconds in two months. To put it bluntly, general athletic ability is the raw material in your hand, and specialized athletic ability is the ability to forge the raw material into a blade that meets the requirements of the project. If you have good steel and it is not forged in the right place, you will not be able to cut hard bones.

After all, this definition has been debated in the training community for almost thirty years and is not completely unified. The Soviet training system followed in the country in the early years was more biased towards the "action pattern matching theory", that is, as long as the force generation logic of the training movements is consistent with the special movements, the abilities developed are considered special abilities. For example, those who practice weight lifting and practice vertical jumps in volleyball are all included in the training of special abilities. The advantage of this idea is that the boundaries are clear, and it is not easy to go astray when laying the foundation for teenagers. In recent years, with the introduction of digital training systems in Europe and the United States, many coaches believe in the "competition performance conversion theory". To put it bluntly, it doesn't matter what you practice, only what can be directly converted into competition results is considered a special ability. For example, if you practice shooting, no matter how stable your static strength is, but your hands shake when you are nervous on the court, you must first practice your mental ability to resist interference. This is your core special ability at the moment.

There is actually nothing wrong with both statements, but the applicable scenarios are different. This logic makes sense when applied to amateurs, right? I have a friend who is obsessed with playing tennis. In order to improve his serving strength, he went to the gym every day and practiced bench press until he could push 90 kilograms. However, his serving speed dropped by 10 kilometers per hour. Later, when he went to the coach, he found out that his shoulders were too stiff, and the range of turning shoulder straps required for serving was completely gone. Do you think his bench press training is of average ability? Yes, but it is completely incompatible with the special power generation mode of tennis serve. No matter how much you practice, it will be useless.

There is actually no need to stick to the definition. The demand for specialized abilities at different stages is already very flexible. For children who are just getting started, they should first lay down the basic abilities that match the special action mode, so that there will be no obvious shortcomings when advancing later. ； For professional athletes who are preparing for international competitions, all training must revolve around abilities that can be directly converted into scores on the field. Even practicing meditation to adjust their mentality can be considered part of specific ability training.

To put it bluntly, special sports ability is essentially a combination of abilities "tailor-made" for a certain event. There is no universal ruler, and there is no need to draw black and white boundaries. What can help you achieve better performance in this event is the special ability you need most at the moment.