Hockey for taking a beating, for sure.
Cycling or cross-country skiing for aerobic ability (the highest aerobic capacity ever measures was in a cross country skier).
Rugby would be up there. The difference between rugby and other team sports is that you don’t take substitutions in rugby. If you are not injured, you play the full 1hr 20min.
Above should be qualified…forward pack is athletic, and fullback. Backs are there to look pretty.
MMA LOL…you mean the sport where grown men lie on their back and kick up at the opponent like little girls?
he may be tough as nails, but can he catch a punt? (Hint: Look at his stats.)
if you have never grappled before you really do not know what kind of energy exertion takes place when you execute moves with the full force of your body against the full force of the body of your opponent im sure you dont feel like a little girl when you are on your back getting 9-3 elbows slammed into your face
Been watching alot of world cup and I think rugby definitely takes the cake here. Watching some Romania dude run, grapple and tackle with his face half torn off right now. It’s like MMA combined with football with no breaks. This might be the greatest sport out there honestly. The other insane sport I watched recently was hurling. These guys beat the sh*+ out of each other with clubs while playing some weird lacrosse/field hockey combo.
I was an elite level endurance athlete for a while (2 years pro triathete, 5x full IM, plus long distance OWS and some ultra running) I was also a collegate track runner… so, I certainly have perspecive on this end of the spectrum. Since this type of sport has almost no skill envolved, the day to day training is focused on one thing… teaching your mind and body to deal with different kinds of suffering. I remember waiting for the day where it would be heat advisory hot and I would ride my bike for 5 hours and then hop off and go run 15 miles… all alone, all without anyone cheering me on… just me facing the signals my mind and body were giving me an learning how to cope with them. Going to the track and facing the fact that you will not be done tearing up intervals unil you have hurt the max amout ( the hurting wan’t the side effect, it was the point!)… that wasn’t easy! My point is this, yes endurance sports are up there but I don’t even think they are the most difficult sports. I might be out there suffering to to point of delution but no one is throwing punches at me! There is also almost no skill or coordination to learn (except swimming). There is only one variable to worry about, maxing out your physiological capacity and having the mental tenacity to cope with the suffering that goes with that. look at some other sports…
ice hockey… endurance +skill+ take a beating + speed
MMA… endurance +skill+ REALLY take a beating
tennis… endurance + skill+ speed
endurance sports… endurance… see, doesn’t quite add up… but that ONE component is a bear!
^respect. Triathelons are no joke - one of my buddies trains for them and i thought was a well conditioned athlete until he took me swimming with currents.
The skills in track are far more complex than it seems. I sprint a lot so i figured i would learn the basics of sprinting and its taking me a while to reverse my old ways of running to become more technical. Your case is strange to me tho, usually track (esp short distance) atheletes are a different breed/look vs the long distance endurance runners.
You ever look into Tom Green’s workout for sprinting?
Several years ago I met a woman who was a triathlete who was training for Ride and Tie. She was, of course, in fantastic shape, but her first 25-mile Ride and Tie race was quite interesting. She hadn’t ridden a horse in 20 years, so, when she was riding, instead of resting, she was fighting the horse the entire time. At the end of the race, she could barely stand, and she’d run less than half a marathon.
Masturbating on pain killers.
i agree with KMeriwether on endurance sports. There are so many dimensions to these other sports so they arent comparable. Black Swan might chime in here and say something different though.
I have a friend who won the Tevis Cup this year; it’s a 100-mile, 24-hour ride across the Sierra Nevada. A few years ago he was riding a friend’s horse and, as he was leaving the checkpoint at the 60-mile mark, was bucked off and broke a rib. He was in first place at the time.
Had it been his own horse, he’d have stopped right then, but, as it was a friend’s horse, he wanted to finish the ride, so that the horse got credit for the mileage. He took as much Vicodin as he thought he could without risking passing out, and continued the ride. I cannot imagine the agony of riding a horse another 40 miles through the Sierra Nevada with a broken rib, Vicodin or no.
At the 96-mile mark – four miles from the finish line – he stopped. He couldn’t ride another step.
Incredible.
sounds like a mentally weak individual. i doubt he was one more step from dying, so he gave up because the self pity induced by a little pain was just too much for his fragile little mind. he let his friend down.
You don’t know Potato.
He wasn’t employing it as a Christian name, I suspect.
Some NoDoz (maybe 200-400mg caffeine) could have helped offset the drowsiness of the Vicodin if he had it at the time.
broken ribs suck - i cant imagine being on a bumpy horse with a broken rib… for that long wow
Wicked! right out of a Zane Grey novel.
this has to be up there
Okay, I’ve come up with the correct answer to this question.
Tlachtli
Can’t think of another game where death is involved. That’s pretty hard on the body.