Is wrestling harder than cross country?

Obvioulsy not a wrestler nor an ardent follower of the movie (great flick btw) from which your handle hails. Louden cut 2, maybe 3 weight classes to wrestle Shute. Same is true in the real world. Everyone is cutting and dropping down so if you stay @ your natural weight, you are taking on guys whose natural weight is 10-15 lbs what yours is. They are almost always stronger and regardless of how "tough" you are, advantage to the stronger opponent.

luv2run wrote:

I never got a cauliflower ear from running.

Going with wrestling. Getting slammed to the floor is not fun. Rolling around on a mat with another sweaty guy--not fun either. Very homoerotic sort of thing.

VisionQuest was awesome though. Better than any running movie.

Vision Quest was awesome. I still have it on VHS and watch it from time to time. The 80's were funny and awesome.

Wrestling is certainly more unpleasant, including the actual wrestling, the training, and making weight. If hard = unpleasant, then yes.

Never saw this thread before and can't add any more except to vigorously agree that it's wrestling and that it's not even close.

And there was only just one stupid homophobic comment by saidjamaicanmecrazy which is of course far from the reality. If anything all the wrestlers I knew were them most down to earth/least uptight people. The opponent contact has a way of humbling you.

The indisputable truth is it's much harder to win in Cross Country at an international level. Kenyans suck at wrestling. In fact, has there ever been an East African Olympic wrestling medalist?

has been who never was wrote:

Obvioulsy not a wrestler nor an ardent follower of the movie (great flick btw) from which your handle hails. Louden cut 2, maybe 3 weight classes to wrestle Shute. Same is true in the real world. Everyone is cutting and dropping down so if you stay @ your natural weight, you are taking on guys whose natural weight is 10-15 lbs what yours is. They are almost always stronger and regardless of how "tough" you are, advantage to the stronger opponent.

Having wrestled up in weight a couple of times and losing pretty badly to a physically stronger opponent, you do have a point. My point is that many wrestlers are cutting weight to go to easier compeition (Swain in Vision Quest is the exception here) and increase their odds of winning. I dont think that cutting weight seeking easier compeition is a great idea (if it is a lot of weight), but if it is to fill a varsity spot on your team's roster if have a bit more understanding.

There are good wrestlers that don't worry too much about the cutting weight thing, and there are others that take it to an unhealthy extreme. Of course it is natural to try to seek an "easier" weight class to improve your chances of winning more matches. This phenomenon is similar to moving up/down to a weaker distance so that you have a better chance at a title (think steeplechase...sorry, i just couldn't resist:)

Wrestling is, without a doubt, the tougher sport. It doesn't even compare

Wrestling has far more injuries, you feel physical pain, it's all about beat the other.

Cross Country you get less injuries (at least less severe), you do not feel physical pain like in cross country but feel exhausted in a different way, it's all about beating yourself.

The wrestling coach at my school says that the only sports that compare to wrestling are cross country and swimming.

I wrestled all 4 years in high school. Finally was ablt to win region my senior year. Got beat by the the guy that placed 2nd at state in the prelims and got knocked out of state.

I ran track 3 years in high school and won the 3200 at state twice.

Ran cross country 2 years and won state once.

I'm in a smaller division so some may say it was weak. But its the same division for track/xc/wrestling.

I'd go like 4 days only eating a few crackers and drinking a cup of apple juice to make weight. I'd be so tired that I'd come home from wrestling practice and fall asleep without taking a shower, at 6pm, and wake up at 7:30am and go to school.

Running track was EASY after being punished everyday during wrestling.

Did both in HS. As for practices, wrestling practice was harder for sure. As for the actual events, my matches were over pretty quick (I was pretty bad at wrestling), so cross country was tougher there.

What is this hide in the pack nonsense? If you want to win you can't hide in the pack, and when you do puss out you know it. Racing isn't easy, and if it is, you aren't doing it right.

So can we expand the thread a bit to include other tough sports i.e. ones that require both mental toughness and athletic ability that includes strength/speed (quickness)?

XC/Track (notice I just list Track and certainly NOT Field - could probably limit track to 400 meters and over as well. Yes, you sprinters should simply be thankful for your ability and keep quiet)

wrestling

swimming & water polo (polo is absolutely brutal - would say it rivals wrestling and is harder than straight swimming)

boxing (put on some gloves and slug it out with someone for 2-3 minutes and you'll understand - repeat x 10 and you'll really understand)

MMA

What else?

I would say that cross country and wrestling would be about equally tough for people doing each activity at a similar effort. For example, the guy winning state in wrestling and the guy winning state in xc are probably working at similar levels. However, I think both of these sports are as hard as you make them. While most wrestlers are tough, there are plenty of kids that do it but refuse to push themselves, just as we've all seen the kids that float through workouts and races and only really start to try on the finishing straight.

Now, wrestling might be harder if we include the idiots that hurt their bodies and cut unhealthy amounts of weight, but I think that can be separated from the sport itself. Malnourishment isn't required for wrestling, nor does it make you better in many cases.

My friend was VA state champ in wrestling and in the 2 mile.

He trained really hard for wrestling. He had stories (103lbs. and under:(

Good Rick wrote:

I would say that cross country and wrestling would be about equally tough for people doing each activity at a similar effort. For example, the guy winning state in wrestling and the guy winning state in xc are probably working at similar levels. However, I think both of these sports are as hard as you make them. While most wrestlers are tough, there are plenty of kids that do it but refuse to push themselves, just as we've all seen the kids that float through workouts and races and only really start to try on the finishing straight.

Now, wrestling might be harder if we include the idiots that hurt their bodies and cut unhealthy amounts of weight, but I think that can be separated from the sport itself. Malnourishment isn't required for wrestling, nor does it make you better in many cases.

In my experience this is incorrect. Getting pushed to my limit as a wrestler was dramatically more difficult and painful than getting pushed to my limit as a runner.

I love running, but there's just no comparison.

Like I said in my post, if hard = unpleasant then it's wrestling. At least in my experience, wrestling is just not fun - you go through so much crap in the training, making weight, the bruises, abrasions, injuries, just plain getting beat up, and so on, that it's just not ever much fun. Running, on the other hand, is usually fairly fun, even if it's sometimes painful at the end of a race, doing intervals, etc.

If hard = difficult to be the best at it, maybe there's an argument for XC, because it's hard to be the best at either one, but that's not the definition I'm going by.

And that thing also wrote:

Like I said in my post, if hard = unpleasant then it's wrestling. At least in my experience, wrestling is just not fun - you go through so much crap in the training, making weight, the bruises, abrasions, injuries, just plain getting beat up, and so on, that it's just not ever much fun. Running, on the other hand, is usually fairly fun, even if it's sometimes painful at the end of a race, doing intervals, etc.

If hard = difficult to be the best at it, maybe there's an argument for XC, because it's hard to be the best at either one, but that's not the definition I'm going by.

Matter of opinion, I guess. I found wrestling to be great fun, though very hard. Part of it was the fact that I had good friends on the team.

An additional benefit to wrestling is the level of fitness one achieves--the combination of strength, endurance, and mental toughness is like nothing any other sport has ever produced for me, including running.

Rhat, you can't settle a subjective issue with your own personal experience. Yeah, I bet you pushed yourself extremely hard in wrestling, but do you really think guys like Geb, Bekele, El G, etc. don't work just as hard as any champion wrestler? I'm not trying to knock wrestling at all, but any sport is going to be very difficult at the highest level.

Wrestling may involve more physical pain than cross country, and I respect that, but as runners we sometimes forget how much a lot of people hate running as an activity. I've seen plenty of wrestlers that seem incapable of pushing themselves in a race, and some of those guys were very good on the mat. Obviously this question can't really be answered, so I guess I'll just say that it depends on the person.