Improvement of Human Motor Activity through Sport and the Needs of the Production Process

Abstract

Among the many identified, carefully studied and described functions perform ed by sport, special attention should be paid to the function of improvement of motoricity. This function is still insufficiently studied and even frequently un derstood in a controversial way.

Still not enough attention is paid to the circumstances connected with this which reach the very foundations of human existence, the very essence of man as the fundamental productive force.

Thus broadening the range of productive forces, improving working tools and constructing new, better tools, people are as a result compelled to adjust their skill to these improved working tools, or means of communication. This signifies a constant need for an intensification of motoric activity, greater precision and speed of movements, i.e. a broadening of the limits of motor ability. It is precisely sport which objectively performs the function of such a school of motoric activity, irrespective of the fact whether the competitors and organizers of sport are aware of that or not. Setting for the competitors the task of a maximum of precision of movements, sport makes it possible to shape and afterwards to introduce into everyday practical life new and improved forms of movements.

Many of the movements and motoric techniques, used for the first time in sport and which then seemed to be not functional and even deprived of any sense at all, later turned out useful in the production process, in communication and technology. Movements used in sport thus are of an anticipating nature in regard to movements at work. They make it possible better than so far to master the entire body, learn about its motoric possibilities in the sphere outside of production, from where, after having already been tested and verified, they may be transferred to the production sphere.

That is why that function of sport should be approached as an exceptionally important function, perhaps even the most essential function performed by sport.

Therefore the definition of "Sport" without taking into account its civilizatio nal role and its ties with production processes — and such attempts were and are being made - should be considered not only as being superficial, but as pointless and disorientating.

Therefore "Sport" should be defined as an objectivized, basic, mass form of present-day cultural activity, which uses exercises as well as games involving motion as means to depict in a specific way the needs and character of the con temporary technology of production, transportation and military technology, of the contemporary level of the organization of social life, its rate and its complexity, in order to help our body and our motor system to adapt to present-day civili zational conditions.