Specialized sports ability

The essence of special sports ability is "a comprehensive ability package that only serves specific scenarios of a single sport and cannot be completely transferred across sports." To improve it efficiently, general physical fitness is a necessary foundation, but more than 70% of the effective training time must be tilted towards special scenarios. There is no improvement formula that can cover all sports.

You must have seen this kind of person: he can squat twice his body weight in the gym, he can actually grab rebounds on the basketball court and jump as high as a school team guard who has not practiced much strength, he can run 5 kilometers in 20 minutes, and he still squats on the sideline and sticks out his tongue during half a field game. Many people classify this as "insufficient talent". In fact, the essence is that the boundary between general physical fitness and specific sports ability is confused.

There are actually two factions in the current physical fitness circle that have been arguing endlessly: one is "general physical fitness comes first". They believe that as long as you maximize the basic qualities of strength, explosive power, cardiopulmonary, and flexibility, you can reduce the dimensionality of any special training. This is actually especially useful for novices - if you can run 1,000 meters in four and a half minutes, you will definitely be out of breath after running two steps to practice badminton. If you practice aerobic for two months, your progress will definitely be much faster than practicing your swing on the court every day. But the other school’s “Special Priority Theory” is right. Once your requirements for special performance reach the threshold of top amateurs or even semi-professionals, the marginal effect of general physical fitness will fall faster than the bear market: I have been in contact with a sprinter from the provincial reserve team before. When the squat increased from 140kg to 160kg, his 100-meter time was actually 0.1 second slower. Later, he discovered that in order to hit the heavy weight, he used to exert force from the waist first when squatting. Over time, he changed the hip-knee synergistic force mode of starting and pushing off the ground, which actually hindered his legs.

Let me talk about a case I handled myself. Last year, a volleyball main attacker who played CUBA came to me and said that in order to increase the height of his smash, he went to the gym every day and did deadlifts. In three months, his deadlift increased from 140kg to 170kg. As a result, his height dropped by 3cm. I asked him to jump in slow motion once, only to find that his hip flexors were extremely tight after doing too many deadlifts. When he took off, his knees couldn't straighten at all. His habit of flexing his hips to exert force also caused his upper body to lean forward. The force he originally used to jump up after smashing the ball was relieved by one-third and he ran forward. Later, he adjusted the plan and reduced the proportion of heavy strength training from 40% to 10% per week. The rest of the time was spent on the court practicing taking off with arm swings, running-up steps, and finding opportunities for spiking under confrontation. In just over a month, his height increased by 5cm, and the success rate of spiking on the field increased by nearly 20%.

Oh, by the way, many people have ignored the most "metaphysical" part of special abilities: special perception. This thing cannot be supplemented by general training. To put it bluntly, it is the "conditioned reflex" that you have developed after spending a long time in this project: table tennis players do not need to keep track of the complete trajectory of the ball. They can know whether the rotation is strong or weak by glancing at the opponent's swing. The football goalkeeper stands on the goal line and can predict the direction of the shot just by looking at the direction of the opponent's forward's supporting foot. No matter how familiar you are with reaction lights and balance pads, you will never be able to develop this feeling unless you have endured hundreds of dunks and received thousands of shots on the court. There was a hot topic a while ago about whether crossfit athletes can compete in competitive sports. In fact, the answer is very obvious: crossfit trains comprehensive general abilities. When it comes to special competitions, those redundant qualities will actually hinder them - if you ask top crossfit athletes to run a full marathon, the more than ten kilograms of muscles compared to professional marathon athletes will be an additional oxygen consumption burden at every step, making it impossible to win.

Of course, don’t overdo it. I have seen many veteran football players who have been playing field football for five or six years. They never want to go to the gym to practice basic strength. It is common for their feet to change directions and accelerate cramps. After playing football, their knees hurt and it is difficult to go down the stairs. This is because the basic physical fitness cannot bear the consumption of special sports, but it is easy to get injured.

After all, there really aren’t that many fancy methodologies for special sports ability. Whatever you want to practice, just go to that venue and make up for whatever is missing. Don’t always think about taking shortcuts by practicing other things - after all, what you want to rush to is the finish line of the marathon. You can’t practice climbing stairs at home every day, right?