Oh thank god. I thought I killed the thread. This is a good response, thanks Bakari!
Agreed, but you left out some that don't start with S. Agility, balance, proprioception. I suppose you could try to force them all uder "skill", but agility and balance are rather different than, say, hitting a ball with a stick.
I think agility and balance are covered under Skill, Speed, Strength, Suppleness, and Spirit. You can practice balance, agility to a lesser extent (there's speed issues here). I do not know enough about proprioception to even respond, but that is an interesting point to look into. I do THINK it's trainable, which would classify itself as a skill.
Not in my experience. The cardio dude is going to run circles around you. Possibly literally. You aren't going to catch him. And when it comes time for him to take you down, momentum is what counts, not just mass: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hV6QhFYxqc8 (0:43)
So it will depend here greatly on position and context. I have a cardio friend that I will never keep up with if I let him get away (which he knows and plans accordingly), but I could very well rush him down if I gave it some thought first. I think soccer would be a better cardio vs. strength comparison, most football plays (well, in the groups I play with) are sub 20 yards, which is not an aerobic cardio distance. Anyone should be able to sprint 20 yards even if they are pretty well gassed. In this case, Power (combination of Strength and Speed) is going to make the day. However, Speed is not trainable in leaps and bounds the way Strength is. So, we go back to Strength assuming all other things equal. A better cardio-sport overlay would be soccer, in which case I would vomit a lung before the halfway point.
I think you are getting to the heart of it: you can judge a sport's general "fitness" by how well its practitioners can do other sports or activities. The more of the 'S' list you posted above a sport or workout requires, the more it is making you generally fit (and not just fit for one narrow specific activity). How fast can the power lifter sprint, and how much can the runner clean and press?
This is a good point. However, some of these are trainable and some are not. You can train yourself to bully up a 400 pound squat. Not many people can ever be trained to sprint a sub 11 100m. This is even testable - try to improve your vertical leap or do an over the head hammer throw with a nominal weight. Both of these are very speed dependent and cannot be improved much more than 25% or so (channeling rippetoe here). My first squat attempt was a failed 95 pounds. So I'm almost quadruple in Strength development.
I think there comes a point where the only thing additional weight training does is make you more able to lift straight bars with iron plates on the end. In my experience, a lot of guys who spend a lot of time at the gym have a whole heck of a lot more trouble carrying furniture and appliances up a couple flights of stairs than a 60 year old Guatemalan day laborer who's only "exercise" comes in the form of work. Since I've noticed that trend, I no longer delude myself that I lift for the sake of fitness - its pretty much purely appearance.
Maybe, maybe not. I outpaced the movers we used last year when we went from a townhome to a 3rd story apartment. For 7 straight hours. In this instance, my greater Strength and moderate Skill (moving heavy shit in a gym) were sufficient to outlast their greater Skill (moving furniture requires certain technique), greater Stamina, and lesser Strength. Maybe the guys who you see spend a lot of time in the gym are "working out" instead of training. Can they squat 400 pounds? Deadlift 500? OHP 225? If so, I'd question them gassing out carrying chairs down a hall.
Now, I want to specifically omit the Major Powerlifter / Big Ass Bodybuilder which you may be referring to. In this case, their Strength has come at the cost of everything else in the S list in order to be the best. Specialization has its costs, and that is an extremely valid point.
The activities that require strength AND endurance AND skill, those are what test real fitness - gymnastics, parkour http://youtu.be/0VFF4oFqpRI, military bootcamp, American Ninja, the World's Toughest Mudder, maybe MMA (esp. back before the rounds became so short).
All sports require some component from all of the Fit categories, which is why Fit is an activity-specific definition. Your specific definition of "fit" is a moderate balance of all the categories, with a high Skill component (put a gymnast in MMA though, he's going to get his face eaten. So now is he unfit? No, he has a low Skill in fighting). Even being a strongman takes skill, picking up an atlas stone the wrong way is not going to carry the day.
Now, in terms of crossover, what can we move from sport to sport? Skill? Only moderately, unless the Skill is highly similar (gymnasts -> parkour). Suppleness, definitely, although I wouldn't bet my life on yoga. Spirit for sure, "born athletes" have it. Speed? Not really, once you have speed you have it you are limited by Skill specificity. Stamina and Strength, which are both HIGHLY trainable and HIGHLY commutable. However, Strength builds and holds well, and does not detract from the other components the way high Stamina do.
I promise I'll write more cohesively next time, I just finished deadlifting and I'm a little foggy. Here's my argument - for Fit, I put Strength on a pedestal. The rest are very specific, very long tailed to develop, or are just plain genetically capped.
