Specialized sports skills

Specialized sports skills are by no means a simple stack of general sports abilities, but a highly integrated ability for a single sports event’s technical action system, specialized physical fitness model, tactical decision-making logic, understanding of event rules, and even event cultural habits. It is not only the core competitiveness of professional athletes, but also the only threshold for ordinary sports enthusiasts to advance from "playing for fun" to "playing in the doorway".

I met something interesting a while ago at a badminton club I frequent. There is a buddy who goes to the gym all the year round. He can bench press 120 kilograms and run five kilometers in less than 20 minutes. He is playing men's singles for the first time. Even a high school sophomore who has been practicing for a year has never played before. After three games, I was so out of breath that I couldn't straighten my back, and complained, "Why is playing badminton so much more tiring than lifting irons?" - His grip on the racket was all wrong, high and long shots could not be sent to the backcourt, and the ball before the net either went out of bounds or hit the net. To put it bluntly, it's like playing an RPG game. If you have a warrior with full strength points, but don't have the exclusive skills in the skill tree, you will definitely not be able to beat players of the same level with full skill points. Special sports skills are the exclusive skill trees that only take effect when the corresponding items are in effect.

When it comes to this, I have to mention the two schools of thought that have been arguing in the sports circle for a long time. No one can convince the other: one school believes that "physical fitness is omnipotent, and if you have a good foundation, you can learn any sport quickly", while the other school insists that "technique is the core, and you can rely on skills to make up for your poor physical fitness." In fact, looking at different events, both groups are right: in skills-dominated events such as gymnastics and diving, no matter how good your physical fitness is, the angle of your aerial turn and the hand gesture of pressing the water splash are just a little bit worse, and the referee score will go down directly. Of course, the weight of special skills is higher. ； But if you switch to strength-oriented events such as weightlifting and shot put, no matter how standard your movements are, if your absolute strength is 10 kilograms worse, it is impossible to achieve results, and the proportion of special physical fitness will naturally be larger. Even in marathons, which are commonly played by the public, there is no absolute right or wrong: if your running posture is wrong, you will always use your heels to brake, and even running 300 kilometers per month will hurt your knees. ； But if the core endurance and leg strength are not fully developed, no matter how standard your running posture is, you will still be unable to walk when you hit the wall at 30 kilometers.

I have been through similar pitfalls before. In the first year of rock climbing, I always wanted to overcome the difficulty. I went to the gym every day to practice pull-ups, and my arms became thicker. As a result, I was stuck on the V2 route for half a year. When I crossed the line for the last time, my finger strength was not enough and I lost strength. My wrist joint was twisted for almost two months. Later, I stopped holding my strength and deadlifted. I spent 40 minutes every day practicing the accuracy of stepping and the force-generating skills of pinching with my fingers. I even changed my grips to finger-strength ones specially designed for rock climbing. Within two months, I passed the V3 line that had been stuck for half a year. To be honest, many people think, "I'm just having fun, there's no need to practice those professional moves." This is not hypocritical. If you practice special skills well, you can first avoid injuries, and secondly, you can have fun. A while ago, I went skiing with a friend. He told me that he had good balance and wanted to go to the advanced trails. He couldn't help but tried to persuade him. After sliding twice, he fell and his tailbone hurt for half a month. Later, he honestly asked a coach to practice plow braking for a week. Now the intermediate trails are much more stable than those who rush up. Even the coach at the ski resort asked him if he had practiced before.

Of course, this does not mean that you have to spend money to find a coach to practice a specific skill according to the system to be effective. Brother Zhang, who plays wildball in our unit, has never received professional training. He spends time on the court after get off work, watching videos of his shooting postures, and pondering the running habits of different defenders. When playing wildball, he often prevents students from the sports college from getting the ball. But he also has his own shortcomings. The last time he played in a municipal league, he was not familiar with the penalty rules of professional referees. He received two technical fouls in one game and was immediately fined. This is because the rule recognition part of his special skills has not kept up. If you play too much wild ball and get used to the loose penalty scale, you will definitely suffer in the official game. Not to mention sports with extremely complex tactics such as baseball and American football. You can't even understand your teammates' signals, and you can only run blindly on the field.

In fact, to put it bluntly, whether you are a professional athlete who wants to improve your performance, or you are an ordinary person who just wants to have fun and avoid injuries. Specialized sports skills are not something that is out of reach and "only for professionals". It is the extra effort you are willing to put into your favorite sport - it may be practicing swinging for half an hour after get off work, it may be not looking at the beautiful scenery when watching short videos, and focusing on picking out a few details of movements, or the power generation skills that you finally figured out after falling several times. These things may seem inconspicuous, but they can really multiply the happiness you get from exercise several times.

Oh, by the way, the guy who was playing iron last time won the third place in the men's singles in the club competition last week. When he received the award, he held up a custom-made badminton racket with a stern face. He said that if he had known that practicing the swing was more effective than adding weight to the bench press, he would have started to move.