Football. American football is a series of collisions on every snap of the ball. There is no avoiding physically demanding blocking and tackling on every play. Football players need maximum speed, endurance, explosive strength and a killer instinct to succeed. The multitude of hitting that takes place on an every-game basis has been compared to the force involved in car collisions. Plays last only three-to-five seconds, but there may be 90-to-120 plays in a given game.
Mixed Martial Arts. MMA requires as much strength, power, explosiveness and quickness as all the other sports but the endurance needed may be double or triple. In many mixed martial arts bouts, fighters go at each other for three or five rounds of five minutes. This requires maximum conditioning. There are no timeouts once a round begins and five minutes of brutal fighting can cause significant injury every time fighter steps inside the mixed martial arts cage. A fighter has to develop his own strategy and then come up with counters for his opponent’s moves. A misstep or failure to recognize what an opponent is doing can result in a loss, or worse, a devastating injury.
