Are certain fitness abilities gained faster than others?

[KingJustin]

This is just a theory of mine and I have kind of been basing my workout around it, but I figured, what the hell, maybe I should think about it since it would be bad if I was wrong.

My theory is that "cardio abilities" (cardiovascular endurance, stamina) are generally both picked up AND lost, much faster than "lifting abilities" (strength, power).

Because of this, I think it makes sense to start athletes on strength training regimes and then move more towards cardio regimes to peak for their event. This kind of runs opposite to the conjugated idea and is kind of Western I guess, but if I'm not mistaken, Zatriosky noted that it's very hard to really improve more than 2 abilities of fitness over a mesocycle.

I'm guessing this isn't exactly rocket science or anything, but yeah.

Evaluate.

(I'm using CrossFit's 10 fitness measurements: cardiovascular/respiratory endurance, stamina, strength, flexibility, power, coordination, agility, balance, and accuracy

[Built]

Playing devil's advocate, endurance work builds mitochondrial and capillary density, which serve to enhance strength training.

It surely is true that you can build a killer endurance base a LOT faster than a killer strength base. I brought myself from nothing, to running a 10K in less than four months. It took me a year to squat my weight, two years to do a pushup and three years to chin myself.

[Sleepy Guy]

Makes sense. Cardio fast to gain and easy to loose. Muscle is hard to build and hard to loose.

My first thing to go is conditioning when it comes to taking breaks from lifting.

[KingJustin]

Ok, I think the consensus would be that strength takes longer to develop, and stays longer than endurance/cardio.

That in mind, how would we rate everything? I'm going to try, feel free to change my order.
Coordination
Strength
Accuracy
Balance
Flexibility
Power
Agility
Cardiovascular/Respiratory Endurance
Stamina

Balance/Flexibility/Accuracy/Coordination training don't really fatigue the body, though, right? So they don't really matter on the list... They can be done year-round without the others suffering as a result.

[Adam]

Ok, I think the consensus would be that strength takes longer to develop, and stays longer than endurance/cardio.



Long shot here but the I think the mind is what covers a lot of the performance maxes.
Like its easier for a newer person to push themselves and learn to push past pain on endurance events (any event that is not instantaneous)
Whereas with strength typically it takes longer to 'know' how to really push yourself on instantaneous events, like going for a one rep max.


Because when I used to train a lot of people my own age, when I was more psycho haha, I could push people mentally to drive past the pain.

My 2 cents.