<p>Water Polo</p>
<p>A lot of people are choosing gymnastics and ice skating, but I have a hard time agreeing. Dominant athletes in those sports are often teenagers who have been practicing for a decade. Top baseball players are generally in their mid 30’s and have been practicing for 30 years. Top golfers are almost never younger than 30 and have generally been practicing for 2-4 decades.</p>
<p>If hardest = most grueling, I think rowing or long distance running have to be at the top.</p>
<p>Personally, I like swimming the best but I’d have to say for toughest: gymnastics and diving. Those are the physically most demanding. Just look at how many aspiring gymnasts and divers get washed out for injuries. A significant amount of divers get detached retinas in the middle of their career because of the impact of hitting the water, and they go get surgery and then continue competing. Plus for synchronized divers, think of how much practice that took. And for gymnastics: think about supporting your whole body weight with your arms and then not only that but being able to swing your whole body around vertically, or performing multiple somersaults in a row…</p>
<p>People in all sports get injured and need surgery.</p>
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<p>I won’t say this isn’t difficult - I certainly could never do it - but it’s not like this is a rare skill.</p>
<p>Gymnastics, absolutely NO contest. To be a professional athlete in anything you have to put in lots of time, but Gymnastics requires both time and aesthetic understanding. You have to put your body through workouts more grueling than most other sports’, AND look graceful, AND keep time with the music, AND watch for the tiny rules that could cost you the entire meet… all the while twisting your body in ways most of us cringe at, throwing yourself around in hundreds of different ways that can kill you instantly, and at the very least leave you paralyzed.</p>
<p>This is all while in high school most of the time.</p>
<p>I don’t know if it’s the hardest but distance running is pretty hard. If you’re a competitive runner, you’re likely averaging 50-60+ miles a week in high school. Then abs and weightlifting is extra time spent. And you have to watch your diet. Then the mental toughness to fight tiredness and soreness and sprint the last 300 meters after running the other 3 miles pretty damn fast… It takes some serious dedication and willpower. In a way that’s good though because what you put in during preseason is what you get during race phase. Oh and many runners take only about 2 weeks off after cross country ends before they start training for track and vice-versa. I run and it takes some serious mental resolve to get up everyday and go on a run in 90 degree or -20 degree weather.(running on a treadmill is very boring so I always run outside as do most runners I know)</p>
<p>^ aluminum_boat</p>
<p>i completely agree…in other sports, one may have a natural advantage (if you’re 7 feet tall, you’re gonna be good in basketball, if you’re thin and 5 feet tall, you could do well in gymnastics, etc.)…in running, its ALL work and motivation with very little natural talent involved (this is excluding kenyans, lol)…what you put in is what you get out of it, pure and simple (but still hard as hell)</p>
<p>triathlon…I’ve competed in 12 races, and they are HARD CORE!</p>
<p>i do football, wrestling, and track and wrestling is by far the hardest. The thing with wreslting is that not only are the practices hard, but most people i know lose about 15-20 pounds to be in their weight class. The fact that you have to loose 15-20 pounds in less than a month and maintain it, makes it, as far as i believe, the hardest high school sport</p>
<p>bicyclekick- And that’s why I love running lol.
lightzout- I couldn’t starve myself like so many wrestlers do. I agree it’s pretty hard.</p>
<p>I heard wrestling tough. I know some wrestlers who starve themselves.</p>
<p>This is my one friend’s diet to be in the right weight class</p>
<p>Breakfast:half a bar of energy bar
Lunch:other half of energy bar
Dinner:piece of watermelon</p>
<p>This is not a lie, this is crazy. If I followed that, I’d probably faint the first day or so.</p>
<p>I don’t know how I made those faces.</p>
<p>A parentheses and a thingy like this : (</p>
<p>Track/Swimming because there is ALWAYS someone better than you</p>
<p>PShap91- that’s pretty much true with everything</p>
<p>But it’s much more objective. Say you train hard and get a 5:00 mile. You can look online and see other high school students are running 4:15s. With team sports and everything else its purely speculation.</p>
<p>yea thats true. you get one number in track. the only arguement you have is altitude. unlike something like basketball wheres theres lots of stats</p>
<p>Well I totally agree with golf, you have to really know what you’re doing and concentrate hard. I’m just surprised so many people have actually said golf because around here it seems like no one thinks so besides me.</p>
<p>Otherwise I’d probably say wrestling because of the combination of technique and brute strength</p>
<p>What about Academic Decathlon? There are people that study hard all day every day. Literally. And they get 8500, which is very good.</p>
<p>Kris Sankaran got 9453.</p>