Best Endurance Sports
How is this not number one? I mean, people actually DIE doing marathons because they don't have enough endurance and get dehydrated. It's mind-boggling to me how a race that depends solely on endurance is not number one.
Hands down, this should be number one. I have completed a 5K race, and I was in the 5th spot. You cannot imagine how much effort and endurance it takes to achieve a position in the top 5 spots in a marathon.
Marathon should be the sport requiring the most endurance. Soccer (football) players stop for about 10 seconds for a 'break' every time they sprint.
I would say Ironman triathlon is definitely the most demanding endurance sport and probably the reason just 0.001% of the population has completed it. It is continuous strength from beginning to end and can take 17 hours to complete. What other sport are you continuously doing for 17 hours straight with no breaks?
People say swimming takes a lot of training, but try adding running and cycling training to that. If you want to compete at a high level, you have to be 100% dedicated. Many of the top athletes could do well in any of the three disciplines in the Olympics!
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a sport played between two teams of eleven players each. It is played with a spherical ball. The objective is to score the ball in the other teams goal. As far as team sports go, football/soccer requires the most endurance. It's 90 minutes of nonstop running with only a 15-minute break. Basketball has significantly smaller courts and is 48 minutes long in total. Football/Handegg is only 60 minutes in total, but if you tally up the time when the ball is actually in play, the action amounts to a mere 11 minutes.
Baseball still requires skill, like all the sports mentioned before, but is vastly less physically demanding than the rest. There is a lot of standing, waiting for the ball to be hit, and running a short distance for bases.
This is my breakdown of why football/soccer is more demanding than the most popular sports played in the States.
Boxing is a martial art and combat sport in which two people wearing protective gloves throw punches at each other for a predetermined set of time in a boxing ring.. As a boxer myself, it should be number one. It's a mental and physical sport. People who say it's not an endurance sport have never been in the ring or seen a match. Three minutes per round can feel like hours. It should be number one.
Boxing has to be one of the hardest sports out there, not only mentally but physically. You're playing chess, and you are the piece. Dancing, punching, pushing, and even worse, you can't kick.
Other sports like lacrosse and hockey have short shifts. In boxing, you go for 3 minutes for a lot of rounds. You're using your arms a lot too, which takes you out.
Arguably the most hardcore sport one can subject themselves to. 15th is a large understatement, almost as large as THESE GUNS. Skiing is the epitome of endurance. Feel free to fight me on it because I'll probably win.
Cross-country skiing has been proven a number of times to be the most cardio demanding sport there is. Absolutely no unfit athletes, rock-hard abs, and training every day of the week, not to mention racing at -20, sometimes for as long as 50 km. The best in the world can do this in 1 hour and 30 minutes. Yes, that's 50 km!
Swimming is an individual or team sport and activity. Competitive swimming is one of the most popular Olympic sports, with events in freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke, and butterfly. Most people are afraid of eating too much. We swimmers are afraid of not eating enough. I burn 2 days of food I ate in only a sixth of my practice. We burn the most calories of all sports.
We are glad that the pools we swim in are cold because, after a while, your entire body is pretty much giving off steam. The young kids who decide to quit because swim is too hard still have no idea. They swam 25's. We swim 500's and more at a time.
When people think of swimming, they think of diving to the bottom and coming back up. NO. It is nothing like that. Try to imagine this: You are running an 800. You are holding your breath and can only breathe once every 100. You are kicking a 3-pound weight ball as you run. That is equal to a 200 freestyle.
On top of the fact that swimming is hard enough from lap to lap, you have to continue to pass and shoot on the move. Water polo is one of the most enduring sports, in which you are constantly on the move. While eggbeating, you are swimming lap to lap and passing without any breaks! Can you imagine doing all of that with no stop?
To make matters worse, water polo is a very rough sport and involves a lot of contact, including punching, kicking, and drowning.
Believe it or not, studies have proved that synchronized swimming is just as hard as water polo, but it requires your strength in different ways. A water polo player needs violence (sort of), but a synchronized swimmer needs to use all their strength and look like it's easy and graceful meanwhile.
Wrestling is a combat sport involving grappling type techniques such as clinch fighting, throws and takedowns, joint locks, pins and other grappling holds. I run cross country, I've played football, and I've tried soccer, but nothing compares to the difficulty of wrestling. Wrestling doesn't receive a lot of credit, but it sure requires more than every other sport I've tried. Imagine working full force in practice, then going home to constantly monitor your eating habits just to make weight. I've never seen that in any other sport in high school.
Go and ask one of your buddies to wrestle for two minutes. Then see how winded you are afterward.
Then, imagine doing that against someone who's better than you and won't quit until the whistle blows. Toughest sport I've ever done.
Tennis is a racket sport that can be played individually against a single opponent or between two teams of two players each. The longest tennis match lasted 11 hours in 2010 at Wimbledon. With little break, tennis is an extreme feat of endurance.
You can be on that court for 2-3 hours, with barely any break. That's pretty tough.
The Newcomers
American football is a sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end.
Mixed martial arts is a full-contact combat sport that allows the use of both striking and grappling techniques, both standing and on the ground, from a variety of other combat sports and martial arts.
Dude, there is no competition for cycling. And really? Soccer?
You can stand in soccer. The best thing you can do in cycling is stop pedaling. For hours at a time, you are either sitting on your couch or out of the saddle, pulling many watts. If you are a competitive cyclist, you could be riding up to 24 hours a week or 772 km (480 miles) a week. If you're not riding, then you are recovering, eating, and stretching.
I'd like to see a soccer player ride 100 km (60 miles) averaging at least 30 km per hour (18 mph). I would love to take up a challenger's kick, a ball, and run around a field.
Nope... Have any of you ever felt like throwing up and kept pushing yourself until you did? Never stopping... And continuing on afterward? Rowing is pure hell of a sport, but it's addicting, so there's no quitting. 5Ks are the worst. In the blistering heat, your whole body aches. You feel like quitting, but you have too much pride to let the rest of your boat and your team down, so you continue on and push yourself harder.
I personally have rowed until my hands bled from blisters and thrown up while on a rowing machine (erg). Although it sounds all bad, I wouldn't trade it for the world because rowers have the BEST teammates!
Basketball is a sport played by two teams of five players on a rectangular court. The objective is to shoot a ball through a hoop 18 inches in diameter and 10 feet high mounted to a backboard at each end. I did it, and I did football and others too. Basketball and swimming are really hard!
Only moto riders would rate this at number 1. You are going 100% nonstop for 30 minutes. People might say that all you are doing is holding on to a bike with a motor, and that's wrong.
I've been dirt biking for 6 years now. I can jump 10 feet, and even with all that hard training for 6 years, I can't ride 100% for 15 minutes. Every time I have a friend ride my little 110 Kawi pit bike, they get tired after 5 minutes of slow riding.
Motocross should be at #1, and every single moto rider out there would agree with me. I also do track and field, and was the best in my 6th grade. Motocross is 10 times harder than track and field. Even when everybody calls me a try-hard because I try so hard, Motocross is still 10 times harder, and you need so much endurance for it. So, I think this should be at the #1 spot.
Field hockey is the most revolutionary sport in terms of speed and intensity. Rules are changed frequently just to speed the game up! Professional teams require around 22 on a Yo-Yo test, much higher than most other sports.
Horseback riding (or Equestrian) is one of the most intense sports known to man. Not only because it's physically challenging, but it takes more than athleticism. Horseback riding takes commitment, time, patience, and most importantly building a bond with your horse. If you don't have a good relationship... read more To ride, you must NEVER lose control of your mount. This includes using leg muscles for whatever time you are on. If you let go, the horse doesn't know what to do. If you are riding a green (inexperienced) horse, they could throw you off. You must keep directing this horse with your leg muscles the whole time you are on. You cannot stop.
Horseback riding gets breaks, but you don't dismount when you're on a break. When you're on break, you're actually just waiting for other people. You always have to be on alert. I know someone at my barn who was just waiting normally, and her horse spooked, and she broke her arm. You always have to know you are on a living, breathing soul.
You think it's easy until you try it. I went in already fit from years of soccer, swim, volleyball, and other sports, but none had prepared me for this.
Training starts in May and continues throughout the entire summer, even though the season officially begins in September. Practice is every day for at least 2 hours. Regardless of how hot, cold, rainy, or muddy it is, meets and practices are never canceled. Truly one of the most physically and mentally demanding sports.
Case A: Our sport is your sport's punishment.
Case B: It's all about endurance.
Case C: Run 70+ miles per week without an off-season and come back and complain that your sport is harder. These are quality miles, not just a 15-minute jogging pace. I think that marathoners do deserve number 1, but this should be second. We do all the ab and arm conditioning as other sports, in addition to one or two running workouts a week.
Lacrosse is a contact team sport played between two teams using a small rubber ball and a long-handled stick called a crosse or lacrosse stick. You run so much more than in most sports, mainly in midfield. Players also have to check, shoot, and hit people simultaneously. My coach told us that if he ever sees any of us walking on midfield, we'll be taken out and won't play again. It's like we have to run, or we don't play.
You run up to 5 miles as a midfielder. Yes, there are breaks, but you are always running as a middie on the field.
Rugby 7s requires you to run non-stop for 7 minutes, then take a water break, and then another 7 minutes. Within this period, you often need to tackle other players going their fastest (takes a lot out of you), or you need to be sprinting and throwing the ball. This sport works everything! It definitely should be #1.
Rugby is #22?! I'd like to think it's one of the manliest, grittiest sports out there.
Badminton is a racquet sport played using racquets to hit a shuttlecock across a net. Although it may be played with larger teams, the most common forms of the game are "singles" and "doubles".
Volleyball is a team sport in which two teams of six players are separated by a net. Each team tries to score points by grounding a ball on the other team's court under organized rules.AFL is a clear #2 behind Marathon, perhaps because people don't know about the sport.
An average AFL player runs ~15km (9.5 miles) per two-and-a-half-hour game. Along with incorporating the physical hardness of tackling, bumping, and fighting, AFL is EASILY the #2, if not #1.