Jake Yono

JY Journalism

6/12/23

Combat And Endurance Sports Are the Toughest Mankind Has Ever Seen.

As a sports writer, I know a lot about sports, I watch them, train at them, analyze them, and write about them. I have seen many sports in my life but I think the hardest physically and mentally are endurance and combat sports and in this article, I am going to back my claim up.

Most sports include a ball and/or goal of some kind such as soccer, basketball, hockey, etc. Endurance and combat sports are individual sports and they rely heavily on the human body to succeed in them such as Running, MMA, Cycling, Swimming, Boxing, and wrestling. In all of these sports, it’s you pushing your body to the limits and putting it on the line to achieve victory and it is only you and you do not have a team to carry you on. To be good at combat and endurance sports your body must be in tip-top physical shape, for sports like baseball and football you do not half to as there are different positions.

Now let's get into the goals of sporting competitions, in team sports there is an object you must get into a goal and whichever team does that gets the most points and win, In endurance sports there is a finish line and the fastest athlete or team to cross it wins, in combat sports however there are rounds and fights are either judged or scored. In endurance sports the clock is always going to move and never stop, in combat the rounds are long but both fighters are getting beat up and there is not much time in between rounds. All other teams sport half periods of halves and there are breaks in between them. In my opinion, this makes them look very weak.

Now let's talk about the human body’s involvement in all of these sports. In all team sports, there is way more skills training than endurance and combat sports such as kicking, passing, and shooting. These skills take practice and repetition to get good at. There are some skills for combat and endurance such as hills, striking, and wrestling. In combat sports, you also cut weight which takes a lot of training.

In the end, team sports are more popular among kids starting sports for the first time, they are easier on the body but take more skill and technique. Combat and endurance sports make you push yourself and you barely get a break and they test your body and mind. Let's compare two computations, a professional Half Marathon time is around an hour, in this grueling hour there are so many breaks and the athlete must be running the whole time at a 4:35 mile pace. Compared to an NFL game with 60 minutes of playing time but with stoppages every play, for timeouts, and the end of periods and halves. Which one is harder, I think it's combat sports but if you guys want you could still argue this.