Combination of physical fitness and special sports

Physical fitness and special sports have never been a sequential relationship of "laying the foundation first and then practicing skills", but a complementary relationship that runs through the entire sports career and is dynamically nested according to project attributes and training stages. There is no universal adaptation formula, and all conclusions about "who is more important" divorced from specific scenarios are hooligans.

When it comes to this, some people will definitely think that I am being quarrelsome. After all, there are two arguments that are the most fierce now: one is the "fitness is omnipotent theory", which says that no matter what you practice, you must first run for three months and jump for three months. After laying a solid foundation, you can touch the ball and use equipment.； The other is the "specialism theory", which believes that spending time practicing useless running and jumping is a waste. It would be better to play basketball for half an hour more and run five kilometers more. In the more than ten years I have been involved in training, I have seen both extreme losses. To be honest, it is really not that black and white.

I saw a particularly typical example when I was helping out at the youth training camp of the provincial team. A 12-year-old tennis player's forehand strokes always went out of bounds. Three coaches took turns to change the movements for two months, but the error rate was still high. Later, when he went to a physical fitness specialist for a test, it was discovered that his core anti-spin ability was 30% worse than that of children of the same age. Every time he swung the racket, his torso was thrown half a circle, and the racket surface naturally became crooked. Later, the training plan was adjusted. Before each forehand training, he did 20 minutes of anti-spin medicine ball throwing and weight-bearing rotations. After the training, he immediately connected three sets of fixed-point forehand shots. This was equivalent to directly binding the muscle memory of "steady the core before swinging the racket" to special movements. In just three weeks, his forehand error rate dropped by 40%. Do you think this is due to physical fitness? Or is it due to special training? Neither one works well without it.

What’s interesting is that in the current training circle, there are indeed two mature schools with completely different directions regarding how to combine the two. Both of them have withstood decades of verification in their respective applicable scenarios. The traditional period training system is more focused on endurance and strength events, such as marathon, weightlifting, and road cycling. The year-round training will be clearly divided into a basic period, a special period, and a competition period. 70% of the time in the basic period is used to build general physical fitness such as maximum oxygen uptake and absolute strength. It is normal to not touch special events for one or two months. This model can lay a solid foundation for athletes' ability reserves, and they will have great potential to improve their performance in the later period. In recent years, the popular functional training school has benefited more from skill-based and explosive sports, such as gymnastics, figure skating, and table tennis. It advocates completely binding physical fitness training and special action patterns from scratch. Those who practice basketball do not need to stick to the plank support time, but should practice dynamics. In anti-spin throws, the force pattern is exactly the same as the change of direction. There will be no "dead muscles" that interfere with special movements. Nowadays, more and more domestic youth training are using this idea, which can indeed greatly reduce the probability of movement deformation and the risk of injury in the beginner stage.

Don't think that this is something that professional teams only have to consider. Ordinary enthusiasts are more likely to get into trouble. Last year, a friend who ran a half-marathon came to me and said that after a year of training, his pace was still stuck at 6 and a half minutes, and he was running out of breath after running 5 kilometers. I looked through his training records and found out that he had followed a fitness blogger to practice a lot of fancy "specialized functional training" such as agility ladders and medicine ball throwing and catching. He had never even run a 10-kilometer aerobic jog, and he had not built up his basic aerobic ability at all. Later, he was adjusted to 10 kilometers of constant-speed jogging twice a week as a base, plus two wall squats and heel raises to practice lower limb endurance. In two months, his pace improved to 5 and a half minutes. At this time, special training such as interval running was added, and his performance increased very quickly.

I have been rock climbing myself for almost six years. I was stuck at the V3 level for more than half a year. I always felt that my fingers were not strong enough, so I practiced on fingerboards every day, and I almost injured my tendon sheath. Later, when I asked an old rock friend, I found out that every time I got high enough, my core was completely loose. My whole body swayed like a pendulum hanging on the rock wall, and all my strength was released from my waist. After that, I stopped focusing on my finger strength. I did hanging leg raises and side planks for 15 minutes before each climb. When climbing the line, I deliberately tightened my core and exerted strength. Within two months, I felt the V5 line. If I had believed that "basic strength comes first" and squatted in the gym and deadlifted every day, my weight would have increased by three to five kilograms, and it would have been more difficult to climb up.

Of course, this does not mean that general physical fitness training is useless. I have heard the coach of the figure skating team complain before, saying that many fitness bloggers now claim that "anything you train if you can't squat 1.5 times your body weight is useless." The female singles athletes in their team can only squat to 0.8 times their body weight at most. If they really squat to 1.5 times, the muscle mass of their lower limbs will increase, and the inertia will be too great when turning in the air, and they will lose their grades quickly. You see, completely opposite conclusions are correct in their respective scenarios.

In fact, for the vast majority of ordinary athletes, there is no need to worry about the combination ratio of 7:3 or 5:5. If you are practicing to strengthen your body, you can just do 10 minutes of special exercises to make up for your shortcomings after each training session: If your jumps are not high enough when playing badminton, add 3 sets of abdominal jumps. If you always sprain your feet when running, stand on one leg for 5 minutes. If you have shoulder pain when playing tennis, do two more sets of shoulder external rotation strengthening. If you really want to achieve some small results, you should regularly test your own ability shortcomings. If you are slowing down, give it more time. Don't be stuck by the standardized training plans on the Internet - after all, exercise is always suitable for you and is the most right.