Q.Working in groups, interview five sportspersons from different school teams participating in CBSE's Zonal Competitions (or any equivalent competition). Find out details of their training under the heads: Conditioning training (strength training, endurance training, flexibility training), Training of technique (Technical preparation), Training of tactics (Tactical preparation), and Psychological training (Mental preparation).

Sports training is the training of the body and mind to prepare an athlete for the specific demands of their chosen sport — it is deliberately narrower than general personal fitness training, which targets broad fitness rather than one sport's actual movement patterns and energy demands. A volleyball player's sports training, for instance, drills reaction, vertical leap, agility and the high-intensity interval patterns volleyball itself demands, not generic strength work.

The textbook is explicit that training for competition is not new, but it has become increasingly technical over time, and getting real results now needs a scientific approach rather than trial and error. Multiple authorities quoted in the unit (Mathew, Hardyal Singh, Harre, Matveyev, Martin, Thiess & Schnabel, Todd Townes, Garrison) converge on the same idea: sports training is a planned, pedagogically organised, scientifically grounded process aimed at systematically raising an athlete's performance r …