Which is yours? – Technical magazine of sport Sport Training

By Jose Enrique Quiroga

Seeing the doubts that often arise about the true concept of the different types of sports practice, we are going to classify it into four large, well-differentiated groups: performance, fitness, recreational and adventure.

Recreational sport: Sports activities for purely recreational purposes do not really need much explanation, their own name clearly defines their purpose. For these athletes, leisure is the main objective. In this group we find people who go out on weekends for a bike ride, to play paddle tennis or to play a game of football or basketball… Playing sports is just a way to have fun, without giving too much importance to others factors.

El fitnessOn the contrary, it is a concept that tends to generate more doubts, so we are going to expand a little more on its definition, which, obviously, goes much further than “getting in shape”. We can define fitness as any sports practice (and lifestyle that it entails) that is done based on two objectives: to improve health and to improve physical appearance. Based on this, all fitness athletes carry out their practice thinking about these two purposes, to a greater or lesser percentage one or the other. Thus, within this group, we can find people who practice sports thinking 99% about their health and 1% about their physical appearance, and vice versa. Of course, between these two extremes, and with any combination of percentages, we find most of the members of the group of fitness athletes.

adventure sport It implies, on the one hand, direct contact with nature and, on the other, the achievement of a challenge related to it. Here we find mountaineers, sailors, etc., and even cyclists, runners, skiers and any other adventurous athlete.

And finally, we consider sports practice with the aim of improve performance, which is typical of everyone who participates in competitions (not necessarily), regardless of their level. Here we find ourselves with any high-level athlete, but also with any popular runner who trains to try to improve his records, to win the race in his town or not to be last, that is, the level is not a determining factor.

With this classification we differentiate between four large groups of athletes, although, of course, the objectives of each one are perfectly compatible and can overlap in the same person. There is no doubt, for example, that any performance athlete cares greatly about their health associated with training, as well as enjoying and having fun with all of it. And in the same way, a fitness, recreational or adventure athlete can show, and in fact does, a certain interest in improving their records and being in the best possible physical shape. For this reason, we could conclude that surely any type of athlete can always find in Sportraining a lot of content of interest to him.

–