The Science of Sports Success

Athletes work out hard to be the best. They should. If amazing, record-breaking feats are what they aim for, they will have to do more than workout hard; they need to be wiser. And to be wiser means to know more secrets.

Power in sports is more than muscle power. It is basically knowing how to move correctly so you won’t waste efforts doing useless motions. Knowing the mechanics involved helps you economize on body movements to conserve energy.

Knowledge of human kinetics (science of body motions) will also help you identify the muscle and bone groups involved in a body movement so you will know where to add attention to your workouts. A general workout (involving the whole body) can do you good, but specific workouts (a specialized workout program for a particular skill) can hone a skill to perfection. This is where human kinetics comes in.

In a general workout, an athlete may well be training hard daily, building up strong and bulky muscles—looking super fit—and yet unable to do well in his game, especially in a competition. It’s like a shotgun training where you aim and pull the trigger, hoping to land some shrapnel on the target. And for all you know, you may be firing lots of shells around and yet have the target virtually unscratched. There is no point being a hulk of a loser in tip-top shape.

Champions are brains and skills, first of all; and then muscle power, second. You cannot ignore one in favor of the other. Brains and skills mean that you know the sport well, and also the body mechanics involved. Your hectic training must be based on these. You focus your effort, time, and resources only on what’s essential, aside from the general workouts you need. Thus, you add to your potential of being a champion.

Many athletes today give the impression that sports is all about packing whatever bulky muscle you can build into your body to make it fit like a horse. With the advent of modern fitness gadgets and much improved weights devices, the trend is towards stressing muscle power—especially when hyped by the media. But muscle training per se does not equate to being a champion. When your acumen and skills measure up to the challenge at hand, you win. And this means you have to train accurately according to what the sport requires. This spells out nothing but athletic kinetics.