Specialized sports skills include

Specialized sports skills refer to a set of exclusive abilities that correspond to a specific sport and are needed to complete training, competition or leisure sports goals. Currently, the core components generally recognized by sports academic circles and coaching circles include special technical action systems, special tactical decision-making abilities, special perception and judgment abilities, and special protection and adjustment abilities. Some schools also list special physical fitness as a fifth category.

To be honest, many people have a narrow understanding of this concept and think that "being able to do a certain action" means they have mastered a specific skill. When I used to lead youth basketball training, the most common question I encountered from parents was: My children practice shooting and shooting at home every day and can hit 20 consecutive goals. How come they can’t even touch the ball on the court? The essence is to equate special skills with a single technical action, ignoring the value of other components.

Take the specific technical action system as an example. It really doesn’t just require rote memorization of standard actions. It's the same shooting. The emergency stop jump shot under confrontation, the lever adjustment when being blocked, and the underhand layup during fast break are all completely different technical details. If the order of force is almost wrong, either the shot will not be made or it will be intercepted directly. I used to have a student who practiced fixed-point shooting so accurately that he won the three-point championship in games. However, his shooting percentage plummeted during confrontations. This was because he only practiced standardized movements without interference and did not practice technical deformation and adjustment in different scenarios.

I once met a table tennis coach who retired from the provincial team. He said that when he selected young talents, he never looked at who had the most standard swing at the beginning. He first looked at who could judge the spin when receiving the serve. This is called special perception and judgment ability. To put it bluntly, it is the "ball feel", "water feel" and "rock feel" that everyone often talks about. It is not a metaphysics. It is a conditioned reflex judgment formed by your body after you practice too much: badminton players don't need to watch the whole process. They can tell whether they are smashing the ball or hanging in front of the net by looking at the angle of the opponent's swing. ； If you swim freestyle, you don’t need to count strokes. Your body can naturally sense whether the stroke efficiency is sufficient and whether you need to adjust your movements. ； Rock climbers can look up and scan the route to know which foot points can exert force and which fulcrums can only be supported by fingertips. This thing cannot be taught through theory, it can only be learned through practice over and over again.

As for the special tactical decision-making ability, it is the core gap between ordinary enthusiasts and semi-professional players. If you watch an amateur badminton game, many people smash very hard, but they can’t win after playing for a long time. They just don’t have any tactical awareness: the opponent’s backhand is obviously weak, but they insist on using their forehand hard. ； The small ball in front of the net can deceive the opponent, and it is a waste of energy to smash every ball. To put it bluntly, tactics are not complex tactics. They are just combining your own advantages and your opponent's disadvantages to choose the most labor-saving way to score. Even if you are playing wild football on weekends, knowing how to run into the open space and wait for the pass, and not to carry the ball alone, are the most basic special tactical abilities.

What many people tend to overlook is the special protection and adjustment capabilities. On the contrary, these are the special skills that ordinary enthusiasts should learn first. Marathon runners don’t need to pursue pace at the beginning. First, learn how to adjust your stride length according to the hardness of the road surface and how to fine-tune your gait to relieve pressure when your feet hurt. This can avoid most knee injuries. ； Basketball players don't need to practice dunking first. They must first learn to bend their knees to release force when landing, and how to roll in a circle to cushion when someone hits them. This is much more useful than practicing an extra ten kilograms of bench press. I had a runner friend who trained for half a year and then ran a full marathon. His pace was not low, but he didn't learn to adjust the matching of breathing and cadence. After running for 30 kilometers, he stopped breathing and quit the race. He also injured his diaphragm, which took him half a year to heal.

There are actually still some differences in the classification of specialized skills in the industry: One group is the system of traditional domestic sports schools, which are used to separate specialized physical skills as the fifth category. For example, those who practice basketball first practice weight-bearing squats, bench presses, and return runs separately, and then develop the strength and endurance required for the special event before touching on skills.； The other school is the mainstream coaching idea in Europe and the United States, which believes that special physical fitness is inherently integrated into technical and tactical training. For example, when practicing step-back shooting, one-leg balance and core explosion are naturally practiced, and when practicing fast break transitions, the ability to turn back and forth is naturally practiced. There is no need to separate them separately.

Don't tell me, the two ideas really have their own applicable scenarios: the professional team preparation period is tight and the goals are clear, and you can improve your points quickly by focusing on special physical fitness alone.； If ordinary enthusiasts just want to have fun and avoid injuries, it will not be so boring to practice physical fitness in technique, and it will not be easy to develop dead muscles that cannot be used on the court.

I have been practicing basketball for three years, and I consider myself to be in good physical condition. Last year, I decided to learn tennis on a whim. After swinging for half an hour in the first class, I started to hit my wrist and it was so painful that I couldn’t lift it up. The coach took one look at me and laughed, saying that you had brought over the habit of pressing your wrist from basketball. In tennis, you need to lock your wrist when swinging the racket, and the logic of exerting force is completely different. They are really as separate as mountains. We often say that "sports are connected". The only things that are connected are general qualities such as basic cardiopulmonary and strength. Special skills are really different if they are separated by just one detail.

Of course, there is no need to think too hard about special skills. Even if you are an amateur player who only plays badminton once a week, if you can skillfully catch the backhand ball and deliberately shake the opponent before putting it in front of the net, you have already touched the door of special skills. There is no need to be harsh on yourself according to the standards of professional teams. Being able to match your sports goals, have fun and not get injured is better than anything else.