Meaning of Conditional Capabilities

The concept of conditional ability is linked to the physical performance of an individual. Conditional capacities are functional and energetic qualities developed as a consequence of a motor action that is carried out in a conscious way. These capacities, in turn, condition the development of actions.

The strength, the resistance, the flexibility and speed are conditional capabilities. When a physical activity is carried out, a capacity is executed. These abilities are innate but can be improved through physical adaptation and training.

Motor action causes certain substances to be released or exchanged in the body. This process affects the conditional capacities.

It can be said that the conditional capacities are internal to the organism and are determined by genetics, beyond what has been mentioned regarding the possibility of improvement. All people naturally develop a certain capacity for speed, flexibility, endurance and strength.

A professional athlete, for example, will have to train to fully develop these conditional capacities. According to their discipline, they will have to perform specific exercises: while endurance is essential for a marathoner, an athlete looking to excel in 100-meter races will have to work on their speed. Flexibility, on the other hand, is key for a gymnast, but for a weightlifter developing strength will be more important.

Let’s look at a more technical and abstract definition of each of these conditional capabilities:

* strength: although it is a concept that we all use in everyday speech, in the field of sport it acquires a somewhat different meaning. It is not only about the ability to face heavy weights but also to carry out a series of technical gestures with the highest degree of intensity possible without varying the level of execution;

* resistance: another of the conditional capacities that we use daily although without giving it the same meaning as in the professional world. In this case, resistance is what gives us the possibility of supporting a certain load while exhibiting a minimal degree of fatigue. Resistance is measured based on the time taken by the activity and the series of efforts that accumulate throughout it;

* speed: for athletes, speed is not only the ability to move from one point to another in a short time, but also what allows them to give adequate and fast motor responses according to the stimuli received throughout a practice. We could say that it is similar to what in everyday speech we call “good reflexes”, although in this case it requires a lot of development and maintenance work;

* Flexibility: Although we generally associate flexibility with gymnasts who must adopt extreme poses, this concept refers to the body’s ability to adopt any shape without injury. In other words, it can be said that flexibility is the sum of muscle elasticity and joint mobility. To carry out all the actions that a particular sport requires, minimizing the risk of injury, it is necessary to enjoy a great range of motion.

In addition to these conditional physical capacities, there are other types of physical capacities, such as coordinative ones, those that, in order to give the opportunity to carry out certain movements required by sport, it is necessary to have adequate control of certain body segments.

In other words, when an athlete has to perform certain technical movements in a measured and precise way, conditioned by a time limit and by certain characteristics of the playing space, for example, it is necessary to control specific parts of the body to adapt to these limitations and coordinate actions.