ICE HOCKEY
Compare the fitness requirements of the three contrasting sports
Similarities
- The need for strength in both Ice Hockey and Boxing is needed for very much the same reasons. In Ice Hockey strength is needed because it is a very aggressive sport and players are often needing to barge other players or simply smashing them into the protective screens. Fighting seems to be a recognised part of the sport as well and strength is needed in order to get your opponent to hit the ice first (They actually have rules for fighting!!). Boxing needs strength for the same reason in order to hurt and knockdown their opponent.
- All three sports are considered aerobic sports. Therefore professionals training for the demands of the sport would all need a high level of aerobic endurance.
- In all three sports a similar level of flexibility is needed as everyone playing these sports needs a large range of motion.
- All three sports are very physically demanding. In all three muscular endurance is needed in order for players and boxers to compete strongly until the end. A player in any of these sports would find it very hard or impossible to get by without Muscular endurance.
- All three sports need a high level of balance and co-ordination. In football players need good balance and co-ordination when running with the ball and holding off players at the same time. Footballers need to be able to do this and pick out a player at the same time. In ice hockey it is the same with a player needing to skate, dribble and make a pass at the same time. Balance and co-ordination are crucial in boxing. A boxer needs to be able to bob and weave, punch and counter punch simultaneously.
Differences
- Strength is needed in football but not to the degree of Ice Hockey and Boxing. Football is a contact sport and strength is needed to hold of players, dribbling, and most parts of the game but not to the same degree as the other two sports. If footballers shoved players the way they do in Ice Hockey the opponent being pushed would most likely perform “9.8” dive and the other player would get sent of. Contact is limited basically so the demands for strength are not needed as much.
- The difference between the three sports is the time that each person has to last for aerobically. With Boxing a fight can last between 3 and 36 minutes. With Ice hockey a player needs to last three 20 minute periods but gets Rotated regularly. football a player generally lasts the full ninety minutes so needs a higher level of aerobic endurance than Ice hockey but cannot compare to the amount of aerobic endurance needed in a short space of time as needed in boxing.
- Boxing has set weight levels whereas the other two sports do not.
- Muscular endurance is not needed as much in Ice Hockey as boxing and football. Players in ice hockey are rotated regularly and therefore do not need the same level of muscular endurance as the other two sports as adequate rest can be given to a player.
- As football lasts ninety minutes a football player can need a higher level of muscular endurance than the other two sports as Ice Hockey players are rotated and a boxing match can be over quickly.
- Boxers at times can need a higher level of muscular endurance than the other two sports. The other two sports are team games, so a player can have a little team in order to rest. With boxing a boxer is fighting at a very intense level for 3 minutes the equivalent would be to have a footballer or Ice hockey player hold on to the ball or puck for three minutes. It’s never going to happen so they need muscular endurance in a different sense to boxing.
- Agility is needed a little bit more in football than boxing and Ice Hockey. A goalkeeper is for more athletic than a goaltender and needs to be more agile. The player themselves have to be more agile as footballers are constantly challenging in the air and contending for headers.
- Goalkeepers need a greater deal of flexibility than goaltenders as they have a greater distance to cover in which to perform saves.
- Reaction time is needed more in Ice Hockey and boxing than football. A rink is smaller than a football field and the puck is in play a lot more than a football. Ice hockey is player at a more frenetic pace, therefore reaction time must be at an all time high. In boxing a mistake in reaction time is the difference between getting knocked out or not. You can maybe make a mistake with reaction time in the other two sports and only concede a goal which is recoverable. In boxing one punch and you can be out.
- Power is needed more in boxing as the need for devastating speed and strength is higher. It is obviously needed in football as Henry who has explosive power is regarded as one of the best players in the world. But the other best players such as Zidane can get by without it. All the top of the range Ice Hockey players and boxers need power to make it to the very top because they are more high impact sports than football.
Critically analyse the fitness requirements of the three contrasting sports
The requirements for strength are similar between boxing and ice hockey but are needed more so than football. The reason for this is that although football is a contact sport it still is not as physical as ice hockey or boxing. Boxers need strength for harder hitting power. Hitting power is a must as boxers who don’t have it are condemned to a career full of twelve round career shortening slug fests. In ice hockey the average weight of a player is around 210lbs, therefore players need a lot of strength in order to hold up the puck, barge and be aggressive in general. Footballers do need strength but just not to the same to degree.
The reaction time requirements for all three sports are different. Firstly with the two team sports there is a difference between the size of the rink and pitch and a difference between the tempos of the games. A rink is a lot smaller than your general football pitch because ice hockey is a 6-a-side game whereas footy is 11-a-side. Regarding ice hockey this leads to a high tempo game and is played at an even faster tempo than a 5-a-side game. The players aerobically can afford to go out due to rotating subs and these 200lbs players are skating at tremendous speeds therefore a quick reaction time is needed on behalf of both the players and the goaltender. A goaltender needs a quick reaction time in order to save a fast moving puck. A goalkeeper in football needs reaction time for the same reasons but a puck moves faster than a football. An ice hockey player needs to react quickly when the puck is being dumped into space a lot like in football when a defender pumps the ball into space for a striker to run onto. The difference being an ice hockey player has to react quicker as the distance needing to be covered is shorter. Reaction time is needed the most in boxing of all three sports. A boxer needs a higher degree of reaction time as a boxer without it is simply a sitting duck. The best boxers in the world such as the fallen Roy Jones Jr. had excellent reaction times and always seem to see a punch coming even before its been thrown. Reaction time can make or break a boxer a lot more than a footballer or ice hockey player.
The cardiovascular requirements of all three sports are all different. A boxing fight can last between 3 and 36 minutes. A boxer gets a breather between rounds but needs to work to their maximum aerobic capacity for each of those rounds. It is possible for a boxer to take a breather of sorts but they will lose the round and take a few hits, because of the demands put on a boxer a boxer has to train aerobically even more than a footballer. Second in line I feel comes football which also needs an extremely high degree of cardiovascular endurance. A player needs to be able to last for ninety minutes and especially if playing in the premiership need to maintain a decent tempo. But to separate the two sports I feel that a boxer needs his aerobic endurance in a shorter more compact space of time than a footballer. A boxer always tends to look more tired at the end of a fight than a footballer does at the end of a football match. Lastly comes ice hockey and as a player gets rotated regularly and a match only lasts for 60 minutes the need for aerobic endurance is no where as near as high as a footballer or a boxer.
The main component needed in football is aerobic endurance. In football, a significant amount of training time is used to improve players' aerobic capacity. I once knew a player called Greg who used to be a goal-scoring machine as a youth soccer player despite being rather uncoordinated. We called him legs in reference to his gangly, awkward build. He had no touch, limited speed, and below-average creativity, and yet he averaged a goal a game as our teams starting centre forward thanks to the one virtue he did possess: He never got tired. In terms of its physical demands, football shares more in common with marathon running than it does with other ball sports such as boxing and ice hockey. Football has a bigger playing field than any other major sport and less stoppage. In a typical game, a football player might spend a cumulative two minutes in possession of the ball and more than 30 minutes' running, covering a few miles in the process.
For all of these reasons, there are few greater advantages one team can have over another than better running endurance.
Body composition is the most important component in Ice hockey as you have to be a big man to play in many of the positions because you are allowed to check (skate into a player to try and knock him down) and board people (skate into somebody and knock them into the edge of the ice rink). If that wasn’t enough if you are a small guy, fighting is allowed as long as you "drop your gloves". So because ice hockey is such a physical game you need to wear a lot of armour to avoid injury and having the right body composition is a must.
In boxing body composition is the most important component. The ability to be able to put on weight quickly after a weight in is an envious talent. In a fight in 1998 between Arturo Gatti and Joey Gamache, Gatti had put on a staggering 19lbs since the weigh-in. Gatti boasted a frightening 16lbs advantage over Gamache. For a welterweight that represents an extra 10% of body mass, an enormous amount. Watching the fight myself, I was immediately struck by how much larger Gatti was than Gamache. Chest, biceps, forearms, neck, shoulders, back, legs - in every part of the body where a fighter generates strength and punching power, Gamache was dwarfed. Gatti was teeing off at will, and a series of frightening knockdowns later, Gamache was left stretched on the canvas. He later announced he would never fight again. It illustrates how important this component is in boxing because it legal to do this, anyone using their body composition to their benefit can effectively cheat their way to the top.