What are the contents of special sports?

The core content of the special sports we often talk about actually covers the four major modules of special technical polishing, special physical reserves, special tactical adaptation, and special psychological construction. It is a full-dimensional ability system built around a specific sports event, which is completely different from generalized fitness and basic sports.

The easiest pitfall for many novices who have just started special training is that they think that "specialty training is just about picking out movements." In fact, technology is only the most basic part. Take the marathon as an example. The technical content goes far beyond the standard postures of swinging the arms and landing the feet. It also includes pace switching at different slopes, water-taking movements at supply points, and even body posture control before crossing the line. People who have not systematically practiced running a full marathon will lose half a minute even when getting supplies during the 35-kilometer fatigue period. It is because these details are not in place.

To implement technology, it must be supported by specialized physical fitness. This is completely different from the general strength training in the gym. Even if you can squat 200 kilograms in the gym and haven't trained specifically for marathon specific physical fitness, you still won't be able to finish the marathon - what a marathon requires is muscle endurance output for more than three hours, core fatigue resistance, and even the dynamic stability of small ankle muscles. These must be gradually polished through interval running, LSD long-distance jogging, and targeted core training. When it comes to the specific physical fitness of powerlifting, it is completely the opposite. What is required is to burst out the maximum strength in a short period of time, and you need to practice heavy weights and low reps. The training contents of the two events are completely incompatible.

Once your technique and physical fitness are well developed, whether you can really achieve results on the field depends on the accumulation of special tactics. I talked to a table tennis coach who retired from the provincial team before. No matter how proficient his team members are in pulling skills, they still spend two hours reviewing the opponent's game video before the game to figure out the strategy for each ball: How to adjust the line when encountering an opponent with a left-handed racket? How to control the rhythm when encountering a chipper? Do you even want to deliberately use a few sets of uncommon serves to disrupt the opponent's prediction? These are all part of special tactics and can't be compensated for by practicing technique alone.

What many people tend to overlook is actually special psychological construction. This thing is really not just a sloganeering exercise. For example, shooters who practice shooting usually practice ten rounds of gun shooting, but when it comes to competitions, their hands shake, indicating that they have not passed the special psychological test. Their psychological training even includes deliberately playing audience noise in the training ground, randomly disrupting the training rhythm, and testing the stability of the players. There are also novice rock climbers whose legs feel weak when they climb a 15-meter-high rock wall. It’s not because their upper limbs are not strong enough, but because they can’t cope with the stress of high altitudes. They have to do scene desensitization training repeatedly before they can overcome it.

There is also a lot of controversy in the industry, such as whether teenagers should start specialized training too early: One school of thought believes that more basic sports skills should be practiced before the age of 12. Setting specialties too early can easily cause local overuse sports injuries, and will also limit the development boundaries of physical abilities.； The other group believes that sports such as gymnastics and diving that require boyish skills must be exposed to special content early. Otherwise, after the golden window of flexibility and reaction, it will be difficult to catch up later. There is no absolute standard answer so far. Most of them need to be flexibly adjusted based on the characteristics of the project and the child's physical condition.

To put it bluntly, specialized sports are training systems that are "tailor-made" for a single sport. Each piece of content is based on the actual needs of the sport. If you randomly use training content from other sports to mix it up, there is a high probability that your efforts will be in vain and you will easily get injured.