Ice Hockey Hardest Sport to Play at the Professional Level.

In my final argument I would like to reflect to the reader's that all sport's involve some aspect of hockey in their difficulty and gameplay, but hockey is the one sport where it all comes to together and is tested at a higher level than sports that have similar qualities. Skill 1: Swimming versus Ice Skating Con indeed I made an assumption that there are more swimmer versus ice skater because of conditions around the world, but let's look at which is harder since you seem to have latched onto swimming as your main sport. Swimming is a non weight bearing activity in a medium that supports the body. Ice skating is certainly not this. In swimming you pulled down less by gravity therefore there is less strain on the body than there is in ice skating. Also the water supports the body via buoyant force where as the open air of the real world does not support hockey players. Ice skating is a mutli direction, mutli skilled, serial skilled sport. This requires many changes in body position, direction, stance, coordination, balance, explosive potential. Swimming is a continous skill, which requires speed in a single direction. Therefore you need a lot less athletic ability to be able to professionally swim. Also your max heart rate will be lower in the pool compared to that ice skating(due to the non weight bearing activity). Therefore swimming is great for injured pro athletes to their little water aerobics in but as far as athletic ability goes ice hockey players are far more superior to swimmers, hands down. Skill 2: Hand-Eye Coordination Hand-Eye coordination is involved in all sports to some extent, but ice hockey takes it to the extreme. In Soccer you need hand-eye coordination to kick the ball, in basketball you need hand-eye to catch the ball and shoot, in football you need hand-eye to catch and throw, and in baseball you need it to hit. Now let's look at these examples. Which one sticks out? Baseball! The only other sport in this list that is similar to ice hockey in anyway is baseball. How so? Because the bat acts an extension of the body, in all other sports the athletes have the luxury of actually using their body. So throw the other sports out. Now baseball you only need hand-eye coordination to hit, throw, and catch. In hockey you need much more hand-eye coordination to perform a more wide range of abilities like: blocking shots, passing(w/stick), shooting(w/stick), one-timers(look it up), receiving the pass(w/stick), catching the puck(when necessary)and especially goaltending. I can not stress how much more you use hand-eye in this one particular sport than you do in any other sport, which makes ice hockey harder than them all. -So what? One skill that you need more than any other sport, that doesn't make it most difficult. Skill 3: Balance Football, baseball, soccer, and ice hockey are the main sports that I can think of off that top of my head that involve using intense balance. But soccer and baseball involve far less contact than football and ice hockey, so we'll focus on these two. Football is a fast-paced sport that involves brute contact and is probably one of the more dangerous sports in the world, you definitely need balance in football in order to break tackles, tackle, and stay on your feet. Wait, did you say feet? Oh, yes I forgot you have the luxury of using your feet on solid ground. You see folks, in hockey, players do not have this luxury as they are practically balancing themselves on two swords while other 200-pound men are coming at them try to murder them on ICE. Football players do not need nearly as much balance as hockey players do because they are on their feet, which are considerably wider than a skate blade therefore they have more surface area to balance on the ground which has more friction than ice does. Meanwhile hockey players are doing virtually the same thing only they are on thin blades of steal, on a almost friction-less surface. In addition players need great balance to simple things like shoot and pass whereas balance is not nearly as crucial in the acts of catching and throwing in football. Therefore we can conclude hockey players need more balance than football players. Skill 4: It's A Team Game I will concede defeat here con this where difficulty can be the same. But let me quickly rattle of some sports than are not a team game. Tennis(singles), Extreme Sports of any kind, NASCAR, SWIMMING! , gymnastics, boxing, UFC Wrestling, Martial Arts, Rodeo, Running, Cycling, and Golf. So we can throw all these sports out of contention because they have the luxury of only relying on their own talents, and not the talents and abilities of others as well as their own. Skill 5: Durability Soccer, Basketball, and Hockey are the only sports in the same hemisphere when it comes to durability, because they are the only sports that are constantly moving while the game clock is counting down. It is said that by the end of a soccer game, a soccer player has run 11 miles. I dont have a stat like that for basketball or hockey but that is pretty damn impressive. This is the part of the argument where I will also concede that these sports are similar in the way that all involve running or skating back and forth, but this is where I will call your attention, people of debate. org to our list. All these skills are in hockey, but some of these skills barely apply to all sports, and if they do not to the extent that they do in hockey. Hockey is the most intense sport out there and it involves are far more great range of athletic ability than any other sport. According to ESPN, this is the list of most difficult sports. . http://sports.espn.go.com... According to this article by ESPN, THE WORLD WIDE FREAKING LEADER IN SPORTS, boxing is harder by 1 point while hockey is in second and harder than football by a full 3. Now last I will destroy boxing to make sure you all know hockey is better than them all. First boxing has and is known to have fixed matches. So that hurts boxings credibility as the hardest sport right off the bat. . http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com... In addition boxing gains most of its points in the article in strength and power which I would assume boxing would have being a sport based on strength. Also boxing accumulates eight points in the nerve category which requires no athletic ability what so ever. Meanwhile hockey scores no lower than a 6 in any category except flexibility which I highly disagree with considering NHL netminders are some of the most flexible men on the planet. Conclusion: I have provided an article that shows hockey is the second hardest sport according to ESPN. I then took the number one ranked sport boxing and showed you that it is in indeed inferior to hockey and ESPN made a mistake in their order of one and two. In addition hockey is a team sport where boxing is not, making accomplishments in hockey far more challenging. I have also shown the readers that swimming is far easier than ice skating, making ice hockey a harder sport than swimming, which is con's prime sport. I also took several skills and broke them down to show that ice hockey utilizes those skills to a far great extent than any other sport and that ice hockey uses more of these athletic skills than other sports that only use one or two of the main skills.