What types of sports are included in specialized sports skills?

At present, in the field of domestic physical education and competitive training, special sports skills are generally divided into five categories: ball sports, track and field sports, gymnastics sports, water ice and snow sports, and fighting and confrontation sports. Many front-line sports teaching and research personnel have also proposed that outdoor development categories be separately listed as the sixth category. Currently, the two classification methods are used in different scenarios.

I have been working in a youth sports training institution for almost 7 years. When I conduct introductory assessments for children, I can actually feel that these categories are not determined out of thin air, but follow the core competency requirements of different projects. For example, the ball games we are most familiar with include not only big balls such as basketball, football, and volleyball, but also niche sports such as shuttlecock, softball, and squash. The core requirements are ball control ability, spatial judgment, and teamwork awareness. In the elementary school softball team I led before, the children practiced for three months. When running, they would subconsciously glance at the position of their teammates. It was completely different from when they first came in and ran around.

Track and field is the foundation of all special events. Running, jumping, and throwing are the core. But it is not just running laps on the playground that is called track and field. For example, in orienteering, which is promoted in many places, the core abilities are endurance, explosive power and body control. Many coaches will also link it to track and field for basic training. As for gymnastics, it is not the horizontal and parallel bars competitive gymnastics that everyone thinks of. Rhythmic gymnastics, aerobics, and skill cheerleading are all in this category. The core is to practice body posture control and the completion of complete sets of movements. There was a girl in the team who had a serious hunchback. After practicing cheerleading for half a year, she can open her shoulders and back without any special reminders, and her whole temperament has changed.

Water, ice and snow are even more special. Whether you are swimming, surfing, skiing, or figure skating, you must first adapt to the power generation logic of special media such as water, ice, and snow. Most of the children from the south have to fall three or five times to figure it out when they first go to a ski resort. The normal way of power generation when walking cannot be used on snowboards. Fighting and confrontation events are more of a test of on-the-spot reaction. Sanda, fencing, wrestling, and taekwondo are all included. The core is judgment of offense and defense. Victory cannot be won by strength alone. The children who practice fencing in our gym have basically never lost when playing reaction games with their peers. They all have the ability to predict by watching the opponent's sword movements.

As for the outdoor development category that is much discussed now, it was indeed classified in other categories before, but now rock climbing, river tracing, and mountain cross-country projects are becoming more and more popular. In addition to basic physical fitness, such projects also require the mastery of risk judgment and outdoor survival skills. The ability requirements are quite different from the previous categories. Now many new sports training syllabuses have begun to try to list it separately. Maybe it will become a common classification standard in a few years. In fact, for ordinary enthusiasts, there is no need to worry too much about whether the classification is accurate. It is much more useful to find a project that interests you and practice it than to worry about which category it belongs to.