What is a sport?

To put it simply, it is a systematic training and related supporting activities based on the inherent laws of a single sport, focusing on multiple dimensions such as technology, tactics, special physical fitness, and game psychology. It is essentially different from the general leisure fitness of casually running a few steps, meeting friends to play football, and general basic physical training.

Many people who are new to systematic training easily confuse "frequently playing a certain sport" with "practicing special events." When I led youth basketball training two years ago, I met a child in the third grade of junior high school. The parents patted their chests and said that the child had a special foundation after playing basketball for three years. The result was that even the most basic dribbling power model was not correct, and the power habits of running and jumping were all "wild ways" cobbled together on the wild court. If he really wanted to play a regular game and could not last even one quarter, this actually does not count as having been exposed to special training.

Speaking of this, I have to mention the controversy that has been quarreling in the industry for several years - when is the right time to start fixing special projects? Most of those who hold the view of "late specialization" are scholars who study sports injuries and adolescent physical development. They believe that children's skeletal muscles are still developing before the age of 12. Fixing specializations too early can easily cause local overstrain injuries, and solidify the movement pattern early, and the ceiling of later sports performance will be lower. It is best to do basic training in all sports first, and then choose the most suitable project to dig deeper after the body develops to a certain stage. But on the other hand, many coaches in the traditional competitive training system also have sufficient arguments. In sports such as gymnastics and diving, which need to hone muscle memory from an early age and produce results at an early age, many world champions start regular special training at the age of five or six. As long as the training method is scientific, not only will it not cause excessive injuries, but also lay a solid foundation early, and the probability of achieving results later will be higher.

In fact, in the context of ordinary sports enthusiasts or student athletes, there is no need to worry about who is right or wrong between these two groups. The core depends on what your purpose is for practicing special events. If you are pursuing a career path, or aiming to enter a higher education through sports, there is no problem in planning a special event in advance based on the characteristics of the event. If you just want to develop a sports specialty and be able to play regular amateur games, then there is nothing wrong with deciding on a special event when you are fifteen or sixteen, or even changing events all the time.

To put it bluntly, special sports are like learning calligraphy. If you usually write two words by hand and play with two pages of a copybook, it does not count as learning a special skill. You have to systematically practice a certain type of font from the pen holding posture, stroke structure, and font theory. Even if you do not take the professional calligraphy route in the end, as long as you practice according to this system, even if you are exposed to calligraphy specialties, the same principle applies to sports.