Athletics (physical culture)

Biological factors

Gender and genetics play major roles in athletic body types. Significantly fewer football leagues exist for women; however, women have been active in martial arts for centuries, and sports like figure skating and tennis tend to favor women in terms of spectator popularity. Basketball, high jump, and volleyball favor taller athletes, while gymnastics and wrestling favor shorter ones. Long distance runners tend to be thinner, while competitive powerlifters and American football players tend to be stockier. Athletic development often begins with athletic parents.

Physical conditioning is a primary athletic function for competition. Most often, trainers utilize proven athletic principles to develop athletic qualities; these qualities include coordination, flexibility, precision, power, speed, endurance, balance, awareness efficiency, and timing. While physical strength is prized over most other qualities in Western athletics, it is forbidden in the physical conditioning of tai chi.

Sports medicine not only treats injuries with medical procedure, but attempts to prevent problems such as trauma and overuse injuries. Sports medicine can also include the use of massage, glucose testing, Rolfing, physical therapy, and performance-enhancing drugs like caffeine and anabolic steroids.

Sports nutrition is the study and practice of nutrition and diet as they relate to athletic performance. It is concerned with the type and quantity of fluid and food taken by an athlete, and deals with nutrients such as vitamins, minerals, supplements and organic substances such as carbohydrates, proteins and fats. Although an important part of many sports training regimens, it is most intensely applied in strength sports (such as weight lifting and bodybuilding) and endurance sports (for example cycling, running, swimming).

Training and coaching

Athletes first learn basic movement patterns such as running, stopping, jumping and throwing. Coaches help athletes refine these movements into sport specific skills. A skill such as high jumping can then be refined into a competitive technique like the Western roll or the Fosbury Flop. An individual's expression of a technique is often called a style; while various competitive swimming strokes are also called styles. Team sports often develop and practice plays or strategies where players carry out specific tasks to coordinate a team effort of attack or defense.

Technical training may also include teaching the rules and restrictions of a sport or game.

Elite athletes and teams require high-level coaching. A coach is often associated only with an athlete's technical development; however, a coach will likely play all the roles of mentor, physical trainer, therapist, medical responder, technical trainer and performance facilitator. Coaches may or may not involve sportsmanship in their program. Coaching typically signifies a quadrennial, ongoing mentorship for athletic development, as opposed to a clinician who might only assist for a short period of time.

Not only must coaches be able to teach technical form, but recognize and correct problems with a teams' or an athlete's technique and conditioning. This is done by listening, observing and building trust with the athlete. Recent advancements in video technology can provide accurate biomechanical data to optimize the form, precision, timing, efficiency and power of an athlete's movements.

Critical to a team's or an athlete's success is a winning attitude. Inherent in the drive to win is the ability to remain relaxed and focused under the pressure of competition. Modern athletic coaches employ the use of sports psychologists to help athletes organize themselves through visualization, relaxation techniques, self-talk, concentration, etc.

Amateurs and professionals

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 was created to prohibit sex discrimination in education programs that receive (U.S.) federal funding. The original statute made no reference to athletics or athletics programs. From 1972 to 2006, Title IX underwent a series of amendments for gender equity which became high impact on high school and collegiate athletics because it promoted maximum female participation in athletics through equal spending.

Professional sports are sports in which athletes receive payment for their performance. Professional athletics is seen by some as a contradiction of the central ethos of the sport since the competition is performed for its own sake and pure enjoyment rather than as a means of earning a living.

Organizations

• International Olympic Committee
• National Collegiate Athletic Association
• Amateur Athletic Union
• Union des Sociétés Françaises de Sports Athlétiques
• World Athletics
• Chin Woo Athletic Association
• National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics
• Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women