What is the difference between special sports and physical fitness sports?

The core difference between special sports and physical fitness sports is that their goal orientations are completely different. The former is aimed at the improvement of abilities and even competitive performance in a single sport, while the latter is aimed at the general basic physical abilities that support all sports and even daily activities.

I have been working in the youth sports circle for almost 8 years, and I have seen many parents who were confused about the difference between the two at first and took many detours. Two years ago, I had a 7-year-old boy whose parents wanted him to pursue a career in football. When he first entered elementary school, he went to the football field every day to practice dribbling and shooting. After practicing for a year, he couldn't even stand 10 jumping jacks in a row. He gasped after running two steps and complained that his knees hurt. It was because he focused on specific movements too early and failed to keep up with the general basics of heart, lungs, core, and joint stability. Later, he stopped doing special supplements and fitness for half a month, and the discomfort slowly subsided.

To give a very intuitive comparison, if you go to the physical fitness center and take a tour, there are soft hurdles, marker buckets, wave speed balls, balance mats, soft frisbees and other teaching aids. You can change several ways of playing in one class, and you will practice coordination and reaction at one time. You rarely stare at the same action over and over again.； But it’s completely different if you go to a special training ground. The tennis court is full of service machines and training rackets, and the row of badminton halls is full of nets and multi-ball baskets. All training content is designed around the technical and tactical needs of this project. I know a girl who has practiced professional badminton for three years. In order to strengthen the single-leg support ability for saving balls in front of the net, I practiced single-leg deadlifts for two months. My right thigh is two centimeters thicker than my left leg. This is a typical feature of special training-everything is for the performance of the project, even if it requires local targeted strengthening or even to supplement the extreme ability of a certain area.

There are indeed different opinions on the priorities of the two in the industry. Some special coaches who have been on the professional team route since childhood believe that if the child is talented enough and clearly wants to follow the professional competitive route, it is indeed possible to get into the special event early and carve the muscle memory of the skills first. Then, follow up to make up for the corresponding physical shortcomings, and the speed of results will be faster.； However, more coaches who do mass sports training will still suggest that it is best to build a foundation of physical fitness before the age of 10, and then gradually expose children to different specialties. This can not only avoid postural problems and sports strains caused by premature unilateral exertion, but also allow children to try more and find projects that they are really interested in. After all, most people do not practice sports to win medals. It is more practical to build a good body and develop lifelong exercise habits.

In fact, the relationship between the two is not either/or. Many professional teams now also incorporate general physical fitness into daily training to make up for shortcomings in ability and reduce the risk of injury. To use an inappropriate analogy, physical fitness is like the general courses in nine-year compulsory education. It lays a solid foundation in Chinese, mathematics, English, physics, chemistry, and biology. The specialization is the subsequent university professional courses. The general foundation is solid enough. Whether you study computers or medicine later, you can learn faster and more steadily, and you are not prone to health problems caused by "partial subjects".