What are the special sports?

The core sports we often talk about cover ten major categories: track and field, ball games, water sports, ice and snow, fighting, gymnastics, weightlifting, shooting and archery, chess and cards, and driving. Currently, there are more than 40 major sports and nearly 400 minor sports in the summer and winter Olympics officially recognized by the International Olympic Committee. If you include the special sports that are popular among the people in various countries, the total number will be several times higher.

I used to work in the track and field team of the provincial team, and the team often said, "If you don't compete in special events, you will easily get injured." Don't look at them as just running. The special requirements of 100 meters and 400 meters are completely different: the 100 meters is an extreme anaerobic explosion. Even the starting reaction and the arm swing range during running need to be measured to milliseconds and millimeters. Level, 400 meters requires both speed and lactic acid resistance. I have seen a young man in the team who can run 100 meters in 10.8 seconds. He was temporarily pulled to compete in the 400 meters. In the second half of the race, he walked directly on his legs and couldn't even touch the tail of the second-line 400 meters team member. This is the threshold of a special event and cannot be crossed casually.

Some friends may ask, are e-sports, Frisbee, and flag football, which have become popular in recent years, considered special sports? There is indeed no unified statement in this industry: some practitioners think that as long as there are unified international rules, a professional competition system, and standardized training paths, it will definitely count. After all, e-sports has been included as an official event in the Asian Games, and Frisbee has a national championship. ； The other part insists that special sports are based on physical athletic ability as the core assessment standard, so they will classify chess and card games and e-sports as "intellectual specialties" and separate them from physical fitness. In fact, both views are reasonable. The definitions in different scenarios are inherently flexible, so there is no need to argue about right or wrong.

If you go to a sports school to sign up for a hobby class, and the coach asks you what sport to choose, he will most likely be referring to the highly popular Olympic sports such as track and field, basketball, and swimming.； If you go to a street sports club for consultation, the special sports they are talking about may be niche sports such as rock climbing, paddleboarding, and BMX. In essence, as long as systematic training is conducted for a single project, it can be classified as a special sport.

To put it bluntly, specialized sports are like subdivided majors in universities. Seeing that they belong to the same major sports category, the differences in training logic and ability requirements for different projects are really no smaller than the differences between computer majors and Chinese language majors. If you practice blindly with the mentality of "I have good physical fitness and can play any speciality", you will most likely suffer injuries.