Specialized athletes

The core essence of a special athlete has never been as simple as "a practitioner who specializes in a certain sport", but a person who regards "breaking the boundaries of a certain human physical ability" as the only KPI in his career. How far you can go has always only depended on whether you can reach a height that others cannot reach in this subdivided dimension.

After training with the short jump team of the provincial team for half a year in the past few years, I have seen too many children who have this KPI engraved in their bones. The 16-year-old Xiao Yuan was practicing 100 meters. The first thing he did every morning when he opened his eyes was not to touch his mobile phone, but to step barefoot on the body fat scale on the bedside to weigh himself. The difference was 0.3 kilograms. For breakfast that day, he had to run two laps around the track and field for aerobics before eating. Even the whole team was chewing on the salted duck sent by his mother. He sat next to him and smelled it. He said that his body fat rate had increased by 0.1%, and the wind resistance during the run cost him 0.02 seconds longer.

The industry has actually been arguing about the path of special training for almost ten years now, and no one has convinced anyone. One group is the "extreme group" who sticks to specialized movements. I used to know a weightlifting team coach who strictly prohibited the athletes in the team from playing badminton in private, saying that the force generation logic of the wrist is completely different from that of clean and jerk. If you play too much, wrong muscle memory will be formed. When the key wrist is loose on the field, years of hard work will be in vain. This sounds extreme, but the athletes they brought out have won gold medals in the National Games, so you really can't say they are wrong. The other school is the "universal ability supplement school" that has become popular in recent years. For example, Su Bingtian's team has added a lot of yoga, core stability training, and even content such as balance boards that seem to have nothing to do with sprinting in the past few years. The logic is also very simple: the ceiling of general physical fitness has gone up, and the upper limit of special abilities can be raised further. Su Bingtian can break 9.83 seconds, and this training system has contributed a lot.

Many outsiders think that athletes in specialized sports are "specialists" who know nothing except their own sports. This is a pure misunderstanding. I used to have a friend who had been practicing 100-meter freestyle for 10 years. After he retired, he went to run a marathon with nothing to do. He ran a marathon in 2 hours and 57 minutes in the first marathon. People around him praised him as a genius. He waved his hands and said what kind of genius he was. His lactic acid tolerance and cardiopulmonary function developed during special training were much better than ordinary people. He really wanted to let him go. Compared with professional marathon athletes, he can't even reach the threshold of being a substitute for the provincial team - the barriers to special events are much thicker than outsiders think. The abilities you have accumulated by practicing freestyle for 10 years can only be used as basic qualities in long-distance running events. If you really want to strive for special results, you have to refining your movements, pace, and muscle memory. You will not be able to achieve results in three to five years.

The IAAF has issued a report before. The top 100-meter athletes have an average proportion of fast-twitch muscle fibers of more than 70%, while ordinary people generally only have 40% to 60%. But even if you are born with 90% of fast-twitch muscle fibers, without more than ten years of special training, let alone the national team, you will not even be able to pass the test of the provincial team. I saw Xiaoyuan practicing arm swings in front of the mirror for a whole month in order to change the angle of landing of his feet. Every step was stuck at 78 centimeters, and he had to step back and start walking again if he missed one centimeter. He practiced every day until his thigh muscles were shaking so much that he couldn't even go down the stairs.

To be honest, I used to think that these people were too arrogant. Isn’t it just a 0.01 second difference? How could they make life so miserable? Later, when watching the National Championships, Xiaoyuan ran 10.37 seconds, 0.02 seconds behind the first place, and did not get a spot in the national team. He squatted down by the track and cried, sweat mixed with tears, and he couldn't even take off his spikes. The toes of the shoes were so worn that the skin turned up, and the blood bubbles inside burst and stuck to his socks. When he tore them off, he hissed and gasped in pain, but he didn't even cry out. Only then did I understand that for them, those 0.01 seconds were not a number, but several years of their youth, the ticket to whether they could touch that boundary.

Nowadays, I can occasionally browse Xiaoyuan’s WeChat Moments, and he is still practicing. He still posts his weight and training log every day, and the caption is always “Another 0.01 second.” In fact, the words "specialized athletes" never refer to a glittering status. They are a group of people who use their best years or even more than ten years to gamble on a limit that may not be touched at all. If they win, the national flag will be raised on the podium. If they lose, there is no shame. After all, not everyone has the courage to put all their energy and love into one thing.