What are sport-specific skills?

Simply put, specialized sports skills are the sum of specialized action patterns and supporting perception and decision-making abilities that are formed through systematic targeted training for a specific sports event and fully meet the rules of the event and competition/participation needs.

To use an analogy, the general sports foundations such as running and jumping ability, core strength, and coordination that we usually talk about are like the general hardware configuration of a computer, while specialized sports skills are optimization patches specially made for a certain game. Only after installing them can the performance of the hardware be fully utilized in this game, and it cannot be used in other games.

I met several children like this when I was leading a youth basketball winter camp. They could finish in the top three in the 100 meters in school sports events, and their standing long jump was 20 centimeters farther than children of the same age. Their basic qualities were fully fulfilled, but once they got on the court to play 3v3, they could even step on the line for the most basic layup while on the move.

Speaking of this, the circle has always had different views on the boundaries of specialized sports skills. Some coaches and exercise physiology researchers believe that only dynamic adaptability that can be used directly in formal game scenes is considered. For example, the pull-up layup after confrontation in basketball, the unloading stop of a high-altitude ball in football, fixed-point free throws, dribbling around the pile and other stereotyped static/semi-static actions that are practiced in daily life can only be regarded as intermediate products in the training process and cannot be regarded as real special skills.； However, many veteran coaches who have been involved in youth training for 20 to 30 years do not agree with this statement. They feel that these basic special movements that have been repeatedly polished to the level of muscle memory are themselves the core components of special skills. After all, all flexible changes on the field are disassembled and combined from these fixed movement patterns. It cannot be said that only movements used for scoring count, right?

In fact, for ordinary sports enthusiasts or young athletes who are just getting started, there is no need to worry about these academic disputes. You just need to see whether the content you practice is only applicable to this project and whether it can help you perform better in the process of participating in this project. For example, when you are practicing figure skating, Axel’s aerial rotation posture control is completely useless when walking or running, but it can help you get higher finishing scores on the field. This is a proper figure skating specific sport skill. ； On the other hand, the core strength of plank support you practice can be used in any exercise, so it can only be regarded as a basic ability and cannot be considered as a specialized skill.