Are NFL players the most poorly conditioned professional athletes?

you won't see any fat coxswains at even middle levels of the sport, nor poorly conditioned equestrian riders. have you tried to ride a horse? what sort of advantage is it to be heavy on a horse? Baseball players are drafted from the best athletes in high school, but by the time they reach the majors, they have gained a lot of weight and many of them are completely out of shape within a few years of being in the league, especially pitchers and dh's, but also first basemen, because they realize that the advantage gained from speed on the basepaths is rarely that significant and that extra speed, as in cases like Jose Reyes, often leads to more injuries. Still a shame to see Mike Trout gain weight to hit a few more homers but thereby lose the ability to steal 40+ bases with hardly a caught stealing.

Roger Goodell wrote:

In what other sport is it common or even acceptable to see a guy sucking oxygen through a mask after having run a few yards? Any well conditioned athlete shouldn't need supplemental oxygen to play.

You mad brah??

This is up there with the dumbest things i've ever heard.

Yeah so a 255 lbs person running a 10.4 in the 100 electronically timed is not conditioned?

Or a 225lb football player running a 10.22 in the 100 electronically timed is not conditioned?

You're prob so deluded into thinking that distance running is the best thing for the human body.

That's why you have people like me to tell you that you're wrong.

First off anything over 100 meters done all out creates too much lactic acid build up within the muscles thus destroying the muscles from the inside out. And gradually making them weaker and smaller to be able to handle the stress.

Then not only that but anything over 100 meters starts to prohibit protein synthesis within the muscle fibers thus making them weaker and smaller.

It's pretty obvious. Look at distance runners and then look at the builds of sprinters and football players.

Do you walk around your whole life blind to these obvious facts?

The human body was not designed to run anything over 100 meters all out and anything over 100 meters all out is pointless.

How do i know? Well for your simple mind just go ahead and look at the body types of 200 meter sprinters compared to 100 meter sprinters.

200 meter sprinters look almost like 400 meter sprinters because of how skinny the majority of them are.

The biggest track athletes in running are in the 100 meter dash. Then it just gets worse the higher the distance.

There is no point in thinking that you're going to be fitter or stronger or more conditioned than a football player or sprinter if you go out there and start running distance.

And no I don't run even the 400 anymore. I stick with the 100 and below. And i'm not faster, stronger, and bigger than ever naturally without the use of any steroids ever.

Do you think I know what i'm talking about ? Or are you going to tell me that i'm wrong?

And if your comeback to this is that distance runners lungs are stronger. Then guess what? You're wrong again.

The only reason why it appears that a distance runners lungs are stronger is because of the fact that most distance runners have destroyed basically all muscle tone in their body thus reducing their overall mass.

It's not hard to move through the earth when you're only 105 lbs. It's basic physics. It has nothing to do with your lungs being superior or anything.

A sprinters lungs are a billion times stronger than any distance runners lungs because they look like what they are suppose to look like.

Distance running is like some kind of disease that people get addicted to and it literally destroys their bodies from the inside out.

It makes even their lungs weaker. Think about it. If you're making your body weaker overall by doing distance running and you're stressing out your body and your mind repeatedly for no reason then what makes you think that your lungs are not also becoming weaker?

Just because there are two points on earth A and B, doesn't mean that the human body was ever designed to run it.

And if anyone brings up some crap about well early humans needed to run far then you're wrong again.

Because if you didn't have any type of elemental escapability to start then it doesn't matter how far you think you can run.

Maybe NASCAR drivers are in worse shape...

I once saw a whole team of college baseball players running 400s indoors during the winter. Those guys are fast and in great shape!

It does help it if you are 22!

You do have to respect baseball/softball players though. It's hard to stand for an hour and then to suddenly have to sprint 90 feet all out!

There are not many people that can do that w/o popping a hamstring!

The Jones boy ran distance in hs/college/

For all the health benefits of being BUFF and SHREDDED like a pro NFL player, they sure die young.

Are distance runners the weakest of all professional athletes? At least we done need a separate thread to debate that one.