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16th-June-2007, 17:12
Measuring Toughness in Sports - A Top Five List
http://www.chicagosportsreview.com/inthemeantime/contentview (http://www.chicagosportsreview.com/inthemeantime/contentview.asp?c=196710) .asp?c=196710
BY Steve Appelhans (appelhan.stev@students.uwlax.edu)
<DIV =inprint-text>Any sports fan knows that certain qualities are desirable in elite athletes. Characteristics such as speed, power, and agility are a few that stand out. Another trait associated with various sports is toughness. Being tough means different things to different individuals, but the idea that you need a certain level of fortitude to engage in sports is universal.
Since there are so many different interpretations, I elected to create some criteria by which to judge the toughness any given sport requires. After careful consideration, I have come up with five ways to measure how tough a sport is.
The first criterion is risk of injury. You can get injured playing virtually any sport - the threat of injury, however, differs greatly between sports. Clearly you're much less likely to get hurt playing ping-pong than you would be playing football. In my eyes, a sport that has a high risk of injury takes a tougher person to play.
Second is tolerance for pain. This factor has to be looked at in the broadness of the sport, rather than the narrowness of any particular individual. Some athletes can endure more than others, but sports such as marathon running and Olympic lifting innately require a high pain tolerance.
The third aspect is the nature of reckless abandon in the sport. We have all heard about "sacrificing your body," and that's exactly what I'm referring to. For example - going after a puck when you know you will be smashed into the boards takes an awful lot of toughness.
The next indicator is career length. In most cases, the shorter the career, the more physically challenging the sport. Boxing is notorious for early retirement because of the physical demands it makes on fighters.
The final criterion is the average person's willingness to participate in the sport. The less willing a person is to try the sport (for reasons primarily associated with fear), the tougher it is. I am basing this off of my own assessment, but I would be willing to bet that most would agree with me when I say that all things being equal I would play basketball long before I would head down to Australia and get assaulted playing rugby. One exception would be rugby players, of course.
I ranked twenty of the more physically demanding traditional sports from one to ten in each of these five categories. After totaling up the numbers for each sport, I am prepared to declare which sports are the toughest, with two caveats: I don't consider mixed martial arts (ultimate fighting), which would probably be number one; and mental toughness is not a factor in this assessment because it amounts to a completely different story.
Wrestling, Olympic lifting, and lacrosse narrowly missed the list, but without further delay, here's the top five:
5. Marathon running - Tolerance for pain and a lack of desire for the average person to participate were major factors here. While there isn't much physical contact (other than the hundreds of thousands of times your feet hit the ground) remember how miserable it was running the mile in middle school gym class? Well, it's that - 26.2 times.
4. Football - Reckless abandon and risk of injury are certainly high in the real American pastime. Careers tend to be relatively short, and I'm not sure I would like going across the middle with Urlacher waiting to decapitate me. Naturally, a lot of the risks depend on the position you play, and wearing pads helps prevent some injuries, but you still have to be tough as nails.
[B]3. Hoc
http://www.chicagosportsreview.com/inthemeantime/contentview (http://www.chicagosportsreview.com/inthemeantime/contentview.asp?c=196710) .asp?c=196710
BY Steve Appelhans (appelhan.stev@students.uwlax.edu)
<DIV =inprint-text>Any sports fan knows that certain qualities are desirable in elite athletes. Characteristics such as speed, power, and agility are a few that stand out. Another trait associated with various sports is toughness. Being tough means different things to different individuals, but the idea that you need a certain level of fortitude to engage in sports is universal.
Since there are so many different interpretations, I elected to create some criteria by which to judge the toughness any given sport requires. After careful consideration, I have come up with five ways to measure how tough a sport is.
The first criterion is risk of injury. You can get injured playing virtually any sport - the threat of injury, however, differs greatly between sports. Clearly you're much less likely to get hurt playing ping-pong than you would be playing football. In my eyes, a sport that has a high risk of injury takes a tougher person to play.
Second is tolerance for pain. This factor has to be looked at in the broadness of the sport, rather than the narrowness of any particular individual. Some athletes can endure more than others, but sports such as marathon running and Olympic lifting innately require a high pain tolerance.
The third aspect is the nature of reckless abandon in the sport. We have all heard about "sacrificing your body," and that's exactly what I'm referring to. For example - going after a puck when you know you will be smashed into the boards takes an awful lot of toughness.
The next indicator is career length. In most cases, the shorter the career, the more physically challenging the sport. Boxing is notorious for early retirement because of the physical demands it makes on fighters.
The final criterion is the average person's willingness to participate in the sport. The less willing a person is to try the sport (for reasons primarily associated with fear), the tougher it is. I am basing this off of my own assessment, but I would be willing to bet that most would agree with me when I say that all things being equal I would play basketball long before I would head down to Australia and get assaulted playing rugby. One exception would be rugby players, of course.
I ranked twenty of the more physically demanding traditional sports from one to ten in each of these five categories. After totaling up the numbers for each sport, I am prepared to declare which sports are the toughest, with two caveats: I don't consider mixed martial arts (ultimate fighting), which would probably be number one; and mental toughness is not a factor in this assessment because it amounts to a completely different story.
Wrestling, Olympic lifting, and lacrosse narrowly missed the list, but without further delay, here's the top five:
5. Marathon running - Tolerance for pain and a lack of desire for the average person to participate were major factors here. While there isn't much physical contact (other than the hundreds of thousands of times your feet hit the ground) remember how miserable it was running the mile in middle school gym class? Well, it's that - 26.2 times.
4. Football - Reckless abandon and risk of injury are certainly high in the real American pastime. Careers tend to be relatively short, and I'm not sure I would like going across the middle with Urlacher waiting to decapitate me. Naturally, a lot of the risks depend on the position you play, and wearing pads helps prevent some injuries, but you still have to be tough as nails.
[B]3. Hoc