Describe the fitness requirements of three contrasting sports Health related fitness components 1. Strength – Is needed to hold players off the ball. 2. Aerobic Endurance – Is needed to last the full ninety minutes without fatiguing. 3. Body Composition – The right body composition is needed in order to be competitive physically. 4. Flexibility – Is needed in order to turn quickly and is needed for certain tackles. 5. Muscular Endurance – Is needed so that the player can play strongly for the whole ninety minutes. Skill related fitness components 1. Agility – Is needed to change direction quickly when dribbling.
Balance – Is needed to maintain equilibrium whilst dribbling, shooting or holding of players. 3. Reaction Time – Is needed so that a player can respond quickly to a given situation such as a snap shot or free ball. 4. Power – Is needed s that a player can generate enough force as quckly as possible. For example when two players are chasing for a ball and will shoulder each other. 5. Speed – Is needed so that a player can cover distance quickly and scare defenders. FOOTBALL Health related fitness components 1. Strength – Is needed for punching power 2. Aerobic Endurance – Is needed to go twelve rounds without fatiguing. 3.
Body Composition – The right body composition is needed in order to be competitive physically. 4. Flexibility – Is needed in order to dodge a punch and twist with a punch of your own. 5. Muscular Endurance – Is needed so that a boxer can fight strongly for the whole twelve rounds. Skill related fitness components 1. Agility – Is needed to change direction, bobbing & weaving and switching fists. 2. Balance – Is needed when dodging and punching. 3. Reaction Time – Is needed to dodge and incoming punch and good reaction time is needed if there is an opening for a decent punch. 4. Power – Is needed for combinations, fast punching power.
5. Speed – Speed is needed to get quick shots off and combinations. 6. Coordination – Is needed to bob your head, move your feat and punch all at the same time. BOXING Health related fitness components 1. Strength – Is needed for barging, checking an opponent and fighting. 2. Aerobic Endurance – Is needed to stay on the rink for a long amount of time without being subbed, playing box to box and defending a power play. 3. Body Composition – Have to be the right size in order to meet the physical demands of the game as Ice Hockey has a lot of contact in it. 4. Flexibility – The Goaltender needs this to pull of saves.
5. Muscular Endurance – Is needed so that a player can stay physically strong all the way to the end of the 3rd period. Skill related fitness components 1. Agility – A Goaltender needs agility in order to pull of saves. 2. Balance – Is needed when dribbling with the puck, changing sticks in your hands and is generally needed to be a top skater. 3. Reaction Time – Players have to be able to react quickly as the puck is often dumped into open space for players to skate onto. 4. Power – Is needed to chase after a puck, face offs and when delivering quick snap shots. Also helps in the fights.
Speed – Speed is needed when chasing after the puck and dribbling. 6. Coordination – Is needed because a player is aiming at a relative small goal. ICE HOCKEY Compare the fitness requirements of the three contrasting sportsPower is needed more in boxing as the need for devastating speed and strength is higher. It is obviously needed in football as Henry who has explosive power is regarded as one of the best players in the world. But the other best players such as Zidane can get by without it. All the top of the range Ice Hockey players and boxers need power to make it to the very top because they are more high impact sports than football.
Critically analyse the fitness requirements of the three contrasting sports The requirements for strength are similar between boxing and ice hockey but are needed more so than football. The reason for this is that although football is a contact sport it still is not as physical as ice hockey or boxing. Boxers need strength for harder hitting power. Hitting power is a must as boxers who don’t have it are condemned to a career full of twelve round career shortening slug fests. In ice hockey the average weight of a player is around 210lbs, therefore players need a lot of strength in order to hold up the puck, barge and be aggressive in general.
Footballers do need strength but just not to the same to degree. The reaction time requirements for all three sports are different. Firstly with the two team sports there is a difference between the size of the rink and pitch and a difference between the tempos of the games. A rink is a lot smaller than your general football pitch because ice hockey is a 6-a-side game whereas footy is 11-a-side. Regarding ice hockey this leads to a high tempo game and is played at an even faster tempo than a 5-a-side game.
The players aerobically can afford to go out due to rotating subs and these 200lbs players are skating at tremendous speeds therefore a quick reaction time is needed on behalf of both the players and the goaltender. A goaltender needs a quick reaction time in order to save a fast moving puck. A goalkeeper in football needs reaction time for the same reasons but a puck moves faster than a football. An ice hockey player needs to react quickly when the puck is being dumped into space a lot like in football when a defender pumps the ball into space for a striker to run onto.
The difference being an ice hockey player has to react quicker as the distance needing to be covered is shorter. Reaction time is needed the most in boxing of all three sports. A boxer needs a higher degree of reaction time as a boxer without it is simply a sitting duck. The best boxers in the world such as the fallen Roy Jones Jr. had excellent reaction times and always seem to see a punch coming even before its been thrown. Reaction time can make or break a boxer a lot more than a footballer or ice hockey player. The cardiovascular requirements of all three sports are all different.
A boxing fight can last between 3 and 36 minutes. A boxer gets a breather between rounds but needs to work to their maximum aerobic capacity for each of those rounds. It is possible for a boxer to take a breather of sorts but they will lose the round and take a few hits, because of the demands put on a boxer a boxer has to train aerobically even more than a footballer. Second in line I feel comes football which also needs an extremely high degree of cardiovascular endurance. A player needs to be able to last for ninety minutes and especially if playing in the premiership need to maintain a decent tempo.
But to separate the two sports I feel that a boxer needs his aerobic endurance in a shorter more compact space of time than a footballer. A boxer always tends to look more tired at the end of a fight than a footballer does at the end of a football match. Lastly comes ice hockey and as a player gets rotated regularly and a match only lasts for 60 minutes the need for aerobic endurance is no where as near as high as a footballer or a boxer. The main component needed in football is aerobic endurance. In football, a significant amount of training time is used to improve players’ aerobic capacity.
I once knew a player called Greg who used to be a goal-scoring machine as a youth soccer player despite being rather uncoordinated. We called him legs in reference to his gangly, awkward build. He had no touch, limited speed, and below-average creativity, and yet he averaged a goal a game as our teams starting centre forward thanks to the one virtue he did possess: He never got tired. In terms of its physical demands, football shares more in common with marathon running than it does with other ball sports such as boxing and ice hockey. Football has a bigger playing field than any other major sport and less stoppage.
In a typical game, a football player might spend a cumulative two minutes in possession of the ball and more than 30 minutes’ running, covering a few miles in the process. For all of these reasons, there are few greater advantages one team can have over another than better running endurance. Body composition is the most important component in Ice hockey as you have to be a big man to play in many of the positions because you are allowed to check (skate into a player to try and knock him down) and board people (skate into somebody and knock them into the edge of the ice rink).
If that wasn’t enough if you are a small guy, fighting is allowed as long as you “drop your gloves”. So because ice hockey is such a physical game you need to wear a lot of armour to avoid injury and having the right body composition is a must. In boxing body composition is the most important component. The ability to be able to put on weight quickly after a weight in is an envious talent. In a fight in 1998 between Arturo Gatti and Joey Gamache, Gatti had put on a staggering 19lbs since the weigh-in. Gatti boasted a frightening 16lbs advantage over Gamache. For a welterweight that represents an extra 10% of body mass, an enormous amount.
Watching the fight myself, I was immediately struck by how much larger Gatti was than Gamache. Chest, biceps, forearms, neck, shoulders, back, legs – in every part of the body where a fighter generates strength and punching power, Gamache was dwarfed. Gatti was teeing off at will, and a series of frightening knockdowns later, Gamache was left stretched on the canvas. He later announced he would never fight again. It illustrates how important this component is in boxing because it legal to do this, anyone using their body composition to their benefit can effectively cheat their way to the top.