[Closed] What sport is more demanding than mountain biking?

Rowing and cross country skiing spring to mind...

Moto-x

You've got an inferiority complex about your hobby, did you know?

Bear fighting.

Chess.

Running

Darts..

If their reference is road cycling the distances sound small...

get some non-cycling friends (aka normal people).. they are impressed if you ride your bike 5 miles into town and back.. let alone off road in the rain..

Maintaining a relationship with a women.

Running, Football, Rugby, Downhill Skiing, Synchronised Swimming,

Triathlon and many many other sports. Every sport is infinity hard at its elite level.

What sport is less demanding?

Assuming you can ride a bike (i.e. pedal and balance without falling off) you can mountain bike. I see (alright, I am) people who are grossly unfit and have very few skills yet are able to go out mountain biking. They (I) might not be fast or very good at it, but they (I) are still doing it...

rugby league
- think of it as football & wrestling for 80+ mins

"You've got an inferiority complex about your hobby, did you know?"

LOL I was thinking this too.

Just doesnt cut the mustard in the office Monday morning chat when everyone asks what they have done at the weekend...

"- think of it as football & wrestling for 80+ mins" What so a pretend sport paid by nancy boys 😀 unlike rugby union

Cross country skiing,windsurfing racing,rowing,triathlon,fell running,mountaineering,enduro mx,speed skating.

I've always thought solo non stop round the world yacht racing the most extreme sport.

Did a 3k sea swim on saturday morn, that seemed to impress the work mob.... Especially as there was a 25mph wind and a 2m swell... 😯

Actually it was pretty easy... it was with the outgoing tide and all you had to do was hang on for the ride... did it in 44min, would take about an hour in the pool.

Is this about that girl in the office?
The one who doesn't notice you?
Have you tried talking to her?

Ask her about herself, maybe see what she did at weekend...

"more demanding" = a bit subjective?

MTB is tough for fish, but they can swim further underwater than I can...

hare and hounds enduro

Fell running.

Haha - quite comfortable with my self - and I know most people are to worried about themselves to care what you do

I just can't think of a sport that challenges legs, core, upper body, aerobic ability, endurance and mental stanima to the same level am happily proved wrong.

Sure every sport taken to an elite level is crazily demanding but I think mountain biking demands more of a variety of strengths.

Lets compare v the Trans Provence

Rowing - not as dangereous / mentally taxing
XC sking - that could be on par - is there upper body work out- never done it...
Moto - X - I guess Paris - Dakar - is it as aerobically demanding? I haven't done it
Running/road riding - doesn't have the upper body demands of a technical downhill
Relationship with a woman - some call that sport ;o)
Football - little upper body - limited time line
Rugby - limited time
Triathalon - yep Iron man is close but not the exposure to possible death
Fell running - probably close but again no upper body work out

I reckon Mountaineering would be up there.

Bring it on...

You're actually after something which sounds more impressive aren't you? How about unicycling?

Ha! spent a while writing, then got distracted. 20+ replies since I started!

I know what you mean. There are other sports which came to mind, though.

Surfing in particular: there's something special about paddling out when it's big and scary with lots of water moving around. Analysis of the currents and the sets to pick a time and a place to paddle out. Anticipation of what a waves going to do ahead of you, timing and technique with your duck diving to minimise the drubbings, and the balls-out determination of paddling past the edge of lactic burn, interspersed with breath-holding and the odd kicking knowing that that it might take 10, 20, 30 minutes or longer to get out (if you do), and that slacking for a few strokes might be the difference between sneaking out back and getting caught by a big set, taking a beating, being washed in and starting all over again.

And if you make it out, constant paddling to stay in position, dodging big sets, being in the perfect spot for the best wave you've seen so far but without enough puff to catch it. And if you're lucky/ballsy enough, maybe some actual surfing. I don't think I'd be alone in saying I've had a few zero-wave sessions when it's been big.

Ski and splitboard touring on challenging terrain I'd say is pretty similar to mountain biking in terms of all over body and mental workout - even lower mileage though, I'd struggle to ski-tour the SDW in 12 hours!) . Long alpine climbs and ocean yacht racing must be pretty tough too.

14 hours of circuit training would probably do it too!

Won't see any overweight I.T managers up there...

Is Willy Waving a sport?

I guess you could do unicycling while lifting weights... for that all round workout ;o)

xc skiing/ ski-touring - definitely an upper body workout! on a par at least with mountainbiking, I reckon.

Is Willy Waving a sport?

I certainly find it very good for cardio and works my core pretty well.

billysugger - Member
Won't see any overweight I.T managers up there...

Yeah, or for another recent example how about the 24 days it took to do this:
http://www.alpinist.com/doc/web12s/newswire-superbalance

Yeah I reckon surfing ticks most of the boxes..

Willy waving - Depends on your endurance

Mountaineering / free climbing - yeah that's a whole different league

Just tell her you've been reading 50 shades of grey and you've got some ideas for a date. Bish bosh, job done!

Posting on this forum can be quite a menatally demanding sport at times... takes some core strength to sit properly in your office chair too. And to spend all day doing it whilst avoiding colleagues working out what your doing takes quite some skill !

... not that I would know 🙄

OP you really need to try more sports. Mountain biking is just riding a bike, nothing more I'm sorry to say.

Road riding and cyclocross

Mountain biking/cycling (unlike a number of sports) is as hard as you make it, it can be pretty easy (hence all the fatties that manage just fine), but if your idea of mountain biking is the Iditabike it's rather tougher.

WGAS?

Rugby league

Mountain biking is just riding a bike, nothing more

It's all just sport - a pastime we're lucky to be able to do - and not something that I think is that impressive in the scale of things.

But it is fun! and I'd take any opportunity to try more!

[i]Football - little upper body - limited time line[/i]

Yep, as demonstrated by those weedy looking wendyballers, who essentially do a bleep test for at least 90 minutes.

Darts..

If their reference is road cycling the distances sound small...
get some non-cycling friends (aka normal people).. they are impressed if you ride your bike 5 miles into town and back.. let alone off road in the rain..

Indeed, I told a non-cycling friend the other day that I regularly ride 15miles each way to work. Judging by the look on his face he'd not have been more shocked if I told him I'd just got back from the Moon.

Indeed, I told a non-cycling friend the other day that I regularly ride 15miles each way to work. Judging by the look on his face he'd not have been more shocked if I told him I'd just got back from the Moon

I guess, part of the reason I brought this up is that often I get to work and I think there is no way anyone could even relate to what I've done (even if they cared).

Of course I would struggle to relate to someone who has young children, or a loved one die, etc...

Totally depends how you do each sport.

I would actually say there's only been 1 or 2 races I've done which have been physically harder than either an average football match or a descent run for me.

Obviously other people would push themselves harder MTBing and just stand about when playing footy.

Mountain Biking is incomparable.

How many other sports can get you to the top of a mountain and back down again whilst sitting down?

Mountain biking/cycling (unlike a number of sports) is as hard as you make it, it can be pretty easy (hence all the fatties that manage just fine), but if your idea of mountain biking is the Iditabike it's rather tougher.

WGAS?

+1

Plenty of families on Llandegla red on Saturday, some even making a day out of it and having a picnic just before where the red/black seperate for the dirtjumps. Equaly anyone with resnoble fitness probbaly does the black in well under 2 hours.

It's just fun. It doesn't however impress the laydeeezzzzz, unless the mountainbike too, in which case you have to be a riding god to impress them.

It depends on how you're doing it.

This sort of sailing:

[img] [/img]

Hurts a lot more than this sort of sailing:

[img] [/img]

I'd strongly suggest you give up trying to impress people with what you did at the weekend and concentrate on having a decent conversation with them instead. Unless they're complete do-dahs, in which case you should carry on beating them over the head with your (and anyone elses') member whilst stood at the water cooler.

Synchronised soggy biscuit?

How many other sports can get you to the top of a mountain and back down again whilst sitting down?

🙂 I know this is a joke, but it does quite accurately express how MTBing can be as easy or as hard as you make it.

If your going to run up a mountain you have to run, you cant run slower if you do your walking up a mountain and thats a totally different sport/hobby.

Bull fighting.

OP- You are SurferMatt and I claim my £5

I was up at 02.30am for work yesterday AND I cycled in. I'll have another £5 for that or a Bluepeter badge at the very least.

Water polo, toughest sport in the world, simple as!

Matt

Bull fighting.

Underwater chess-boxing.

Or Octopush. I was always knackered after a game of that when I was learning to dive.

Be good if they did mind u...

Fight bulls I mean.

Oh yes... 😀

I think you'd defiantly need Bombers..

What was it? "Mountaineering, motor racing and bullfighting are the only real sports, all the others are just games"

Running is way more nackering than biking.

Triathalon - yep Iron man is close but not the exposure to possible death

Is drama queenery a sport? I think we've found a world champion.

crikey - Member
Just tell her you've been reading 50 shades of grey and you've got some ideas for a date. Bish bosh, job done!

Urm supposed the beating her up is quite hardwork

also for those girls playing rugby league it must be hard running away from the ball, and you have to admit pushing a pack weighing over 130 stone up a field isn't easy

"Mountaineering, motor racing and bullfighting are the only real sports, all the others are just games"

Moto X is way tougher than Mountain Bike on the majority of muscles in the body.

I'm not doubting the aerobic fitness levels of top MTB riders, but as far as strength and mental endurability . MX Enduro beats all.

yeah - motorbike enduro. Done some 2 day events at an okay level and never felt so physically trashed. I think because it is so hard to train for - you trsain for cycling on a turbo / commuting etc. It's difficult to get out on the motorbike and emulate enduro conditions

And when you get stuck you are really stuck. If you're up to the seat in a bog you just have to haul yourself out somehow. on a mountain bike you can pick it up...

Sort of like one continuous DH eh?

To me MTB isn't about distance (unless you're competing/willy waving/ competitively willy waving). I would only mention distance to a fellow cyclist if it was relevant.

You can have a demanding session just playing about in the same small area or a relaxed long XC ride. There are too many variables to isolate distance as the factor of difficulty. Much like rock climbing; bouldering is super concentrated climbing but not too high and there are routes over 100m which are dead easy but continuous. An outsider may be more impressed by the 100m slab, a climber would be more impressed by the 8a 3metre bouldering problem.

It's all about the crux 😉

singlespeeding

[img] [/img]

+1 for motorcycle enduro. The bike's more sluggish to steer, hard to pick up when you fall off, bogs itself into mud and has lots of power you can get into trouble with, especially when you're tired. The course designers put in lairy obstacles that test your trials skills but put them on the uphills as well as on the downhills. You're putting in the same effort and concentration going up as down.

You're timecarded, meaning that you have a start time and a set of times to do each lap or series of laps within. On shorter courses, your times might look like this:

Start: 10:04am
1 lap - 50 minutes
2 laps - 65 minutes
1 lap - 25 minutes
1 lap - 23 minutes
1 lap - 14 minutes

If you finish a lap early, you're not allowed to cross the line and start your next lap or you're penalised, as you are for being late. If you do come across late, you have to "carry" that lateness into the next lap's time, and so on. So, you have to get good at mental arithmetic, while riding fast.

There's an MX style individually timed "special test" that directly affects your overall result. Very often, you have to include this in one of your timed laps, including the queueing to start.

And notice how the lap times shorten throughout the race. So, while you're riding hard and trying to stay on top of the machine and the maths, you're given shorter and shorter times to complete a lap. You end up utterly knackered and having to ride a trashed course in a faster time than at the start.

But it's damn good fun.

I just can't think of a sport that challenges legs, core, upper body, aerobic ability, endurance and mental stanima to the same level am happily proved wrong.

Boxing
Tennis
Rugby

to name three

MTBing is not technically that difficult in the grand scheme of sports - obv the top men are on another planet but as far as getting generally proficient it's plain sailing. You could take it up at 25 and get to a decent standard no problem.

Something like football is far more difficult - not a sport you can get a late start on IME. Stuff like gymnastics or some of the martial arts are in a different solar system to mountain biking for aerobic / technical challenge.
It wouldn't be termed a sport, but I used to do a traditional Kung Fu style that was half awesome, half totally depressing at how hard it was to do properly. It would take total dedication over many years to get to mediocre.

For me, the hardest thing has been long-distance motor-cycle reliability trials. I can honestly say that I have never been quite so done in after anything as much as I have riding them.

Nothing like being completely unable to put a sentence together after 100+ miles and 12-15 observed sections in the freezing cold / wet / dark mud of a December Sunday ... and having to be helped of the bike at the end. 'Bonk' doesn't come into it.

Tho' Water Polo comes a close second.

I always found the 2-3 games of football a week I used to play pretty easy by comparison ... (hmm, tho' we did seem to loose a of our fixtures, thinking back 😉 ).

Another vote for Enduro.

I got my first MTB to help with a bit of fitness training before my first ISDE.
I entered a race on it after i'd had it a few weeks and came second.
My first thoughts were this is a bit easy. 😉

I'd say motocross. Your body takes an absolute pummelling from the terrain, to the point where on occasion you can end up pissing blood as your kidneys hve been rattled around. Arm pump after 2 laps is like nothing I've ever experienced cycling. The intensity of sitting on a startling with 40 other riders all hoping to get to the first corner in the lead beats the start of an xc race hands down. After an xc race I would often have a slight cough and aching legs, but after racing motocross, everything would ache. Not to mention the size your balls need to be if you want tot b competitive.

XC sking - that could be on par - is there upper body work out- never done it...

So essentially you're ignorant. The upper body demands of MTBing are insignificant compared to XC skiing. In fact I'm still not sure why you think MTB particularly gives you an upper body workout - if you find it tires out your upper body then that's only because you don't do any sports which do provide that workout.

Oh, and if you don't think triathlon is dangerous enough, how about its close cousin, multisport - check out the Speights NZ Coast to Coast with whitewater kayaking and mountain running.

multisport - check out the Speights NZ Coast to Coast with whitewater kayaking and mountain running.

Is that a bit like those "tough mudder" and "rat race" events for IT types who're too unfit for tri?

*lights touch paper and leggs it*

I've XC skiied a bit, I did not find it as hard as MTBing hard. The effort seemed to be distributed nicely all over rather than concentrated in the thighs. Hard to explain, but I was able to go flat out for an hour or two without feeling the need to grimace in pain like I do on the bike.

However I'm sure aracer will tell me how wrong I am in a few minutes 🙂

Running OTOH, that's much harder for me than MTBing - a 10km run has me in as much pain as an XC race.

Don't get me wrong, the Trans-Provence is a tough week but it's a million miles a way from the benchmark for a tough sport event.

Climbing is less than 2000m per day (some days more like 1000m) and untimed. If you're reasonably fit then you can cruise this without too much effort at all. It's incredibly scenic.

The special stages are amazing riding, some of the best trails on the planet, but they are not tremendously technical. Sure, they're physical and riding them fast uses all your skills (and more) but they're certainly not pushing the boundaries.

Trans-Provence is an amazing holiday and something which every serious biker should aspire to do but completing it doesn't make you an extreme sportsman.

The most obvious sport which is "tougher" than mtb is road riding.

Is Willy Waving a sport?

Surely its more about what you actually enjoy and what fits around your own lifestyle etc,

I've always quite admired people competing in those multi-day/multi-sport adventure races; a bit of cycling, bit of swimming, kayaking, climbing, running, sleeping in a tent in between all conducted over several days of pretty much constant activity... But I doubt I'd actually enjoy the training for one, let alone actually competing...

I am a mountain biker, I like Mountain biking, if someone is un-impressed/un-interested by this it doesn't really matter, I'm the only one who has to enjoy it.

Edit:

The most obvious sport which is "tougher" than mtb is road riding.

Per mile covered? not sure I'd agree there easy enough to expend the same amount of energy per hour on a Road or MTB and cover very different distances... So they're really on a par IMO...

It's difficult to relate to someone how physical it is. A combination of aerobic fitness, leg strength for climbing, upper body and core and mental concentration for descent for extended periods of time.

Seeing the general state of the average mtber who rides past my house, I'd say Nordic Walking is probably tougher.

How about cage fighting or karate?