Physical Education – ‘who’s the Fittest Athlete?’

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The two most important fitness components for a triathlete are muscular endurance and cardiovascular endurance. This shows that a triathlete needs to be good at using the same muscles or repeating the same action for long durations of time or as much as the individual can endure. The events that a triathlete competes in are much longer than that of a netballer whose games are no longer than 60 minutes. Whereas a netballers two most important fitness components some might say are speed/agility and muscular strength.

The training and diet of a netballer are not as intense as that of a triathlete. Due to the shortness of a netball game, a netball player doesn’t need to have an increasingly strict diet, training schedule or long recovery plan. However, they are still important. Because of the different fitness components of a netballer, the training they require is mainly focused on muscle strength and speed including agility. Nevertheless, this may vary due to the various positions in netball. Although a netball team may not have as much rigorous training, each athlete’s fitness is just as important as a triathlete.

Both athletes require different fitness components as their strength due to the fitness demands each sports activity has on the individual. There are some vast differences on the fitness components of each sporting activity, in my opinion, it is a netballer who may be considered the fittest athlete. This is because they need to be strong in many fitness areas not only cardiovascular endurance and muscular endurance. Agility, balance, muscular strength, speed, coordination and flexibility are also so important to the fitness of any netballer. A triathlete doesn’t require agility, balance or flexibility as their man fitness component. Therefore, it can be seen that a netballer may be fitter than a triathlete because of their versatility of strength in many fitness components rather than the two main components of a triathlete.