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Athletics is a term encompassing the human competitive sports and
game A game is a structured form of play (activity), play, usually undertaken for enjoyment, entertainment or fun, and sometimes used as an educational tool. Many games are also considered to be work (such as professional players of spectator s ...
s requiring physical skill, and the systems of training that prepare
athletes An athlete (also sportsman or sportswoman) is a person who competes in one or more sports that involve physical strength, speed, or endurance. Athletes may be professionals or amateurs. Most professional athletes have particularly well-develo ...
for competition performance. Athletic sports or contests are competitions which are primarily based on human physical competition, demanding the qualities of
stamina Stamina may refer to: Biology and healthcare * Endurance, the ability of an organism to exert itself and remain active for a long period of time, as well as its ability to resist, withstand, recover from, and have immunity to trauma, wounds, or fat ...
, fitness, and skill. Athletic sports form the bulk of popular sporting activities, with other major forms including
motorsports Motorsport, motorsports or motor sport is a global term used to encompass the group of competitive sporting events which primarily involve the use of motorized vehicles. The terminology can also be used to describe forms of competition of two ...
, precision sports, extreme sports and
animal sports Animals in sport are a specific form of working animals. Many animals, at least in more commercial sports, are highly trained. Two of the most common animals in sport are horses and dogs. Types of animal sporting events There are many types o ...
. Athletic contests, as one of the earliest types of sport, are prehistoric and comprised a significant part of the
Ancient Olympic Games The ancient Olympic Games (Ὀλυμπιακοὶ ἀγῶνες; la, Olympia, neuter plural: "the Olympics") were a series of athletic competitions among representatives of city-states and were one of the Panhellenic Games of Ancient Greece. ...
, along with equestrian events. The word "athletic" is derived from the grc, άθλος (athlos) meaning "contest." Athletic sports became organized in the late 19th century with the formation of organizations such as the Amateur Athletic Union in the United States and the
Union des Sociétés Françaises de Sports Athlétiques The Union of French Athletic Sports Societies (french: Union des sociétés françaises de sports athlétiques (USFSA)) was a former sports governing body in France. During the 1890s and early 1900s it organised numerous sports including athleti ...
in France. The Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States (later the National Collegiate Athletic Association) was established in 1906 to oversee athletic sports at college-level in the United States, known as college athletics. Athletics has gained significant importance at educational institutions; talented athletes may gain entry into higher education through athletic scholarships and represent their institutions in athletic conferences. Since the Industrial Revolution, people in the developed world have adopted an increasingly sedentary lifestyle. As a result, athletics now plays a significant part in providing routine
physical exercise Exercise is a body activity that enhances or maintains physical fitness and overall health and wellness. It is performed for various reasons, to aid growth and improve strength, develop muscles and the cardiovascular system, hone athletic ...
. Athletic clubs worldwide offer athletic training facilities for multitudes of sports and
game A game is a structured form of play (activity), play, usually undertaken for enjoyment, entertainment or fun, and sometimes used as an educational tool. Many games are also considered to be work (such as professional players of spectator s ...
s.


Etymology

The word athletics is derived from the Greek word "athlos" (ἄθλος), meaning "contest" or "task". The
Ancient Olympic Games The ancient Olympic Games (Ὀλυμπιακοὶ ἀγῶνες; la, Olympia, neuter plural: "the Olympics") were a series of athletic competitions among representatives of city-states and were one of the Panhellenic Games of Ancient Greece. ...
were born of war and featured various forms of athletics such as running, jumping, boxing and wrestling competitions. In the modern English language the term athletics has taken on two distinct meanings. Its meaning in
American English American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the Languages of the United States, most widely spoken lan ...
broadly denotes human physical sports and their respective systems of training, the sense described in this article. The other, narrower principal meaning of the word comes from British English and variants within the British Commonwealth; this meaning of athletics refers solely to the concept of the
sport of athletics Athletics is a group of sporting events that involves competitive running, jumping, throwing sports, throwing, and walking. The most common types of athletics competitions are track and field, road running, cross country running, and racewalking ...
(a category of sporting competition that comprises track and field sports and various forms of foot racing), rather than physical sport in general.


Biological factors

Gender and genetics play major roles in athletic
body types Constitution type or body type can refer to a number of attempts to classify human body shapes: * Humours (Ayurveda) * Somatotype of William Herbert Sheldon * Paul Carus's character typology * Ernst Kretschmer's character typology * Elliot Abrava ...
. Significantly fewer
football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...
leagues exist for women; however, women have been active in
martial arts Martial arts are codified systems and traditions of combat practiced for a number of reasons such as self-defense; military and law enforcement applications; combat sport, competition; physical, mental, and spiritual development; entertainment; a ...
for centuries, and sports like figure skating and tennis tend to favor women in terms of spectator popularity. Basketball,
high jump The high jump is a track and field event in which competitors must jump unaided over a horizontal bar placed at measured heights without dislodging it. In its modern, most-practiced format, a bar is placed between two standards with a crash mat f ...
, 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 T'ai chi ch'uan. 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 Physical therapy (PT), also known as physiotherapy, is one of the allied health professions. It is provided by physical therapists who promote, maintain, or restore health through physical examination, diagnosis, management, prognosis, patient ...
, and performance-enhancing drugs like caffeine and
anabolic steroid Anabolic steroids, also known more properly as anabolic–androgenic steroids (AAS), are steroidal androgens that include natural androgens like testosterone (medication), testosterone as well as synthetic androgens that are structurally related ...
s. 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 Human swimming typically consists of repeating a specific body motion or swimming stroke to propel that body forward. There are many kinds of strokes, each defining a different swimming style or crawl. In high school, collegiate, and Olympic swimm ...
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 High performance sport or elite sport is sport at the highest level of competition. In sports administration, "high-performance sport", where the emphasis is on winning prestigious competitions, is distinguished from "mass sport" or "recreational s ...
and teams require high-level coaching. A
coach Coach may refer to: Guidance/instruction * Coach (sport), a director of athletes' training and activities * Coaching, the practice of guiding an individual through a process ** Acting coach, a teacher who trains performers Transportation * Co ...
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 Sport pertains to any form of competitive physical activity or game that aims to use, maintain, or improve physical ability and skills while providing enjoyment to participants and, in some cases, entertainment to spectators. Sports can, th ...
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 The Union of French Athletic Sports Societies (french: Union des sociétés françaises de sports athlétiques (USFSA)) was a former sports governing body in France. During the 1890s and early 1900s it organised numerous sports including athleti ...
* World Athletics * Chin Woo Athletic Association * National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics *
Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women The Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) was founded in 1971 to govern collegiate women's athletics in the United States and to administer national championships (see AIAW Champions). It evolved out of the Commission on Interc ...


See also

* Outline of sports


References


External links

*{{Cite EB1911 , wstitle=Athletic Sports , volume=2 , pages=846–849 , short=y
Athletic Scholarships
* Sports terminology Lifestyles no:Sport