Why are runners tired from a "long season" consisting of six races when soccer players and basketball players play t

To get back to the question again...

Check all the non-championship years. I would bet that all the runners had more races, and had better results. They were racing into shape/form.

In champ years, they all cut down on the races, because of the 1 final goal. (WC or OG).

Bro - Mama wrote:

No Way wrote:

At the very least, it's a walk-sprint. They also practice and work out during the week.

At the world cup, Nike put chips in some shoes and tracked several players at over 9 mile in a game.

Runners always like to think of themselves as 'harder working' or something.

A 10 miler in the morning and a 10 miler in the evening is 140/week. That seems like a lot. But when you compare to the hours that pro fottball players, soccer players and basketball players put in, it pales.

Most of these guys are working out for 6-8 hour / day.

You don't know much about soccer training. 8 hours is virtually possible if you count the time they spent inside the club stadium or training centre. there are usually 2 practices a day, morning and afternoon, always at the pitch. 2h each is typical. gym work. lunch. nap (not always). stretching. those are your other remaining 4 hours. pretty similar to what a professional runner does. they are not working out 8 hours a day. they are doing all the small things that allow good performances.

the big difference is that workouts are very strenuous for runners. and you do those during several weeks of your training cycle. soccer players only have really strenuous workouts during the pre season, when they actually run a lot.

you are welcome.

Mainstream pro sports pay their players too much for them to be tired.

As a life long runner, I was never an elite runner. I've ran marathons and ultra marathons with peak weekly mileage of 150. I've dabbled in amateur to semi-pro soccer. Playing soccer is very hard. It's very explosive and you do need stamina. You have guys that are anywhere from 5'10" to 6'4" that weigh from 170-215lbs with great physicality and stamina. The athletic ability of many soccer players is pretty amazing. To think that runners are the hardest working athletes is just wrong. All is relative and specific to the sport. I've been dabbling with swimming, and it is very difficult. I just can't imagine swimming 400 meters let alone 2.2 miles like that in the Ironman. We runners always feel we need to make our sport legit so we have to pretend elite runners are the better athletes than other elite athletes. Elite runners are only that, elite runners in that particular niche in the world of sports.

buffalo street harrier wrote:

What I hate is that this attitude of not racing is trickling down to the high school and college level. Runners are always resting, resting, resting for that big moment that may never come. Workouts have become more important than races. I see teams doing ridiculous workouts during the week and then tempoing meets on Saturday. Can you imagine if any other sport did this?

I agree with this. I believe it is important to race as fast as you can in essence using the race as part of your training for the next race. Racing is very different than just training and you have to practice those aspects such as proper pacing, warming up, and race tactics and strategy.

Lots of talk here about elites, but I question why so many HS and small college teams race so infrequently. I ran D3 XC/track. In the fall, we had duals every week and invitationals on the weekends. Too much racing, in retrospect. But these days many D3 teams race only every other weekend. Too little, I think. And not nearly as much FUN.

race pace guru wrote:

buffalo street harrier wrote:

What I hate is that this attitude of not racing is trickling down to the high school and college level. Runners are always resting, resting, resting for that big moment that may never come. Workouts have become more important than races. I see teams doing ridiculous workouts during the week and then tempoing meets on Saturday. Can you imagine if any other sport did this?

I agree with this. I believe it is important to race as fast as you can in essence using the race as part of your training for the next race. Racing is very different than just training and you have to practice those aspects such as proper pacing, warming up, and race tactics and strategy.

Look at it this way, swimming and running are pretty similar when it comes to the type of training. How many injuries happen in the highest levels of swimming compared to running? The stress that swimming puts on your body is much less than what a distance runner has to endure. It's just the nature of swimming in water compared to running on the ground. Why can Katie Ledecky and Michael Phelps swim 6-8 events in a world championship and be competitive in every event? It would be absolutely unheard of for someone to go after the 800, 1500, 5000, and 10000 quadruple in the Olympics. This isn't taking away how challenging the training is, i'm not saying running is easier/harder, but there is just a lot less of a pounding on the body.

For other sports like soccer/basketball, I understand they run around a lot and get themselves in great condition. They also dedicate a lot of time to ball skills, shooting skills, passing skills during practice. They are very technical and more physical sports. Conditioning is a big part, but not the main part of these team sports. How often do you hear, "Well so-and-so really did work this off-season putting on about 5 pounds of muscle and really worked on his mid-range game." Or, "Lebron had a long year so he took more time off and is playing himself into shape these first couple weeks." Most conditioning is done during the off-season so that they can survive the drag of such long seasons and play at a somewhat consistent high level throughout. how many stress fracture injuries do you hear about due to too much training in these sports? I remember a piece they did on Messi during the world cup talking about how one reason he was so good was that he had an advantage because he ran around less than most of the players and saved his energy for those bursts when the ball came to him. Conditioning is secondary, i don't care if you can run circles around everyone on the floor/pitch, if you can't dribble a soccer ball or finish a layup at the rim first you aren't playing in the pro's.

Trying to compare basketball/soccer seasons to a running season is comparing apples to oranges.

With regards to how players are able to survive an 82 game season, look how much harder these players play during the playoffs. They're not going all out every game all season. Sports with more technical skills involved require more specific practice on those skills, they don't solely focus on improving the body's ability to maximize aerobic/anaerobic thresholds like runners do.

they are ducking Webb

Soccer players pass the ball when they get tired and largely jog around with a few sprints thrown in.

In 2 years wrote:

To get back to the question again...

Check all the non-championship years. I would bet that all the runners had more races, and had better results. They were racing into shape/form.

In champ years, they all cut down on the races, because of the 1 final goal. (WC or OG).

Runners had a bit more races in non-championship years. That's their way to make money that year.

But not better results. Not obviously.

We just had a great 1500 this championship year. Men and women.

The best 5000 in years was 2012, an Olympic year.

The sprints are better in championship years.

Nearly every world record was set in a championship year.

Of course 75% of years is a championship year now.

It's really not that complicated.

Running is a sport where success is almost entirely dependent on fitness and how much of that fitness you can access on race day. You get into the best shape you can get into, and then you race as close to 100% as you can manage. There is a small skill component (tactics, etc), but none of that matters if you aren't fit and don't push on race day.

Team sports require fitness, but it isn't the only thing that matters. That's why there are a lot more soccer players who are still near the top of their game as they approach 40 than there are runners in that situation. The soccer players have developed their skill and understanding of the game to an extent where they can make up for small physical declines. (This is the same reason Lagat remains successful, discussions about drug use aside). On a day to day basis, this means that soccer players won't run themselves into the ground as often since they can work on skills and team strategies instead of fitness, and they can lean on the skill to conserve their fitness for when they need it.

But there is a huge skill component in swimming compared to distance running. The better swimmers are better across a wide range of distances because they are fundamentally more efficient than their rivals, not necessarily because they have more power or better fitness. An 11 year old girl with perfect technique will absolutely kick your arse in the pool over any distance despite having far less power and stamina than you, if you don't know how to swim efficiently.

The answer to the OPs question is that sports which require skill allow the players to choose how and when to use their energy most efficiently to make progress.

The only direct comparison I can think of to distance running is cycling, and even then often that is a team event where strategy means it is not always necessary or desirable to be going flat out.

I guess time trialling might be the best comparison, how many individual time trials would Froome do in a year? What about team and individual pursuit track races, how many of those would an athlete contest in a year, maybe there is a cyclist here who would know.

I'm surprised that no has explicitly said this yet, but I think that a major part of the answer is attrition. Distance runners race so that they are pushing themselves all the way to their limit (and sometimes over it) for an extended period of time.

No one in a basketball game is working so hard that they can barely think for the last quarter.

So essentially, it's because most visits to the medical tent in an XC meet are due to over-exhaustion whereas most visits to the training room during a basketball game are due to a sprain/break.

I can't speak to other sports, but I can speak to burnout for a "long" 6-race season.

In running, training is just as hard or harder than racing. Burnout comes from a combo of training hard, racing hard, and not enough recovery. We're talking about going to the well both physically and mentally. They feed into each other. If you go to the well three times per week for a couple months, you're likely to burn out no matter who you are.

My speculation is that sports like basketball and soccer involve a different type of mental, emotional, and physical fatigue. The mind and body are not in direct conflict -- there is not much mental energy spent on digging deeper into the well, and pure fatigue and exhaustion are not as often the limiting factor in winning a game.

If you ask a basketball or soccer player about what they would've done differently, they usually talk about strategy or teamwork. They don't usually say "try hard" or "push my body harder". Yet you hear this from distance runners all the time (at least in private conversation). So there is a mind-body struggle going on that is not as pronounced in other sports.

i played soccer and ran cross country. did both in college actually (soccer freshman yr, xc soph/jr yr)i can say that soccer is a lot easier in terms of general fatigue but you get more bruises, abrasions, potentially broken bones...this makes you feel sore, sometimes more so than xc. so, you're not sore from mileage, but the bumps and the short sprints you are constantly doing....which definitely makes you sore, especially as you get olderxc has the mileage, the races, the discipline the general fatigue. knowing how tiring xc is/was, i was able to put soccer into perspective and never really felt the same fatigue or tiredness. i wasn't exhausted at the end of the season.but if i played a 90 minute soccer game today (i'm 33) i would be incredibly sore for a week because i'm not in soccer shape-although i could easily run 60 miles a week without much fatigue/soreness

Fenway4ever wrote:

OP

do both

do soccer. then do xc. see why xc is much more taxing. it's not the races, it's the required daily mileage.

I've done both. It's not even close.

Because running 2-3 miles in 60 minutes for basketball WITH breaks and timeouts, and running 4-7 miles in soccer in a 90 minute game is a lot easier than racing 3 miles in 14-18 minutes and 6 miles in 28-34 minutes.

Your question is essentially "Why is jogging 6 miles in a 90 minute soccer game easier than running 6 miles in a 29 minute race?"

What a stupid question.

Wow this has to be the dumbest thread ever! Hehe. That being said.... I LOVE IT! Anyway Mi amigos, I have done it all( not bragging at all, lettered in soccer, basketball, and track and cc) went on to run college, track and cc.(credentials) the answer to the question is easy.... VO2max. Measure a runner vs any one

Else in the world. Athlete or not. Top runner wins, because of the stress of training of everyday. After all... Our sport is the punishment of their sport. Hahaha. I laugh because after getting punished in another (basketball) sport and already started track a year before, it was so easy. Every sport I did after track and cross, was super easy, breathing. :-)

If you think our sport is tough, chess players play sitting down with their heads on their hands and their elbows on a table in air conditioned comfort, but yet routinely collapse in exhaustion after 12 matches or less....