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We all love superheroes, whether they're from the west like Spider-Man, Superman, Batman, or from the east like Saitama, All Might, or Great Saiyan Man. And before anime became mainstream with their various training scenes for their characters, superheroes primarily inspired many younger people to get their asses into the gym to try to be like them. Whether it be running fast like the Flash, doing rock climbing to feel like the web head, getting jacked to feel like the Hulk, or just building a strong body to be admired like the greats. But have you ever wondered what it truly means to become superhero-level athletic in real life? Your friendly neighborhood Jacks Blade sure has.
While we haven't been blessed with meta abilities yet, as Saitama masterfully said, the beautiful thing about us humans is that we can change ourselves on our own as long as we keep trying to improve and keep moving forward. There are a handful of characters who have no powers yet still whoop superpowered ass. Yeah, I'm looking at you, [ __ ], and they appear to have just worked out to become incredibly in shape that even Olympic-level athletes would be flabbergasted at what they can do, since that's what they always state these unaugmented heroes' physical ability as. And so I got to thinking, what does it take to become the best athlete realistically? What is the toughest sport, and what are the attributes that make it the toughest sport? And how can we add those attributes to our daily training and daily routines so that we become real-life superhero fit like our favorite characters, but also be able to protect ourselves and our loved ones if we really needed to.
So, according to ESPN themselves, they sized up and measured top to bottom the toughest sports in the world and came to a surprising conclusion. Pound-for-pound, the toughest sport in the world is, well, let's count down the top 10. Number 10, soccer. Number nine, baseball. Number eight, gymnastics. Now, this one shocked me personally, cuz we know how athletic you have to be to be a top-tier gymnast, but they explain their reasoning later on. Number seven, tennis. Number six, martial arts. Number five, wrestling. Number four, basketball. Number three, American football. Number two, ice hockey. And the number one toughest sport in the world is boxing. [Music]
So what they did was they got a panel of fitness experts, coaches, and sports scientists who have to study muscles, movement, and various athletes on a daily basis. And they broke it down here. And this is what they wrote: "We identified 10 categories or skills that go into athleticism, and then asked our eight panelists to assign a number from 1 to 10 to the demands each sport makes of each of those 10 skills. By totaling and averaging their responses, we arrived at a degree of difficulty number for each sport on a 1 to 100 scale. That number places the difficulty of performing each sport in context with other sports we rated." These are the 10 skills: Endurance, the ability to continue to perform a skill or action for long periods of time. Example, a juiced-up Lance Armstrong. Strength, the ability to produce force. Example, NFL linebackers. Power, the ability to produce strength in the shortest possible time. Example, Barry Bonds, a baseball player. Speed, the ability to move quickly. Example, Marian Jones and Maurice Green. Agility, the ability to change direction quickly. Example, Derek Jeter and Mia Hamm. Flexibility, the ability to stretch the joints across a large range of motion. Example, gymnasts and divers. Nerve, the ability to overcome fear. Example, highboard divers, race car drivers, ski jumpers. Durability, the ability to withstand physical punishment over a long period of time. Example, NBA and NHL players. Hand-eye coordination, the ability to react quickly to sensory perception. Example, a hitter reacting to a breaking pitch or a drag racer timing acceleration to the green light. And finally, analytic aptitude, the ability to evaluate and react appropriately to strategic situations. Example, Joe Montana reading a defense or a basketball point guard on a fast break.
Quick self-plug. Funny enough, if you want to train all these things, my 90-day hyper training program literally includes ways to improve at all of them, since it was designed with the help of various athletes and fitness professionals. So, check it out. It's on discount this week in the pinned comment.
So, with all of those in mind, here are those top 10 rankings. So looking at this chart, I can actually understand where they're coming from now because, like, you know, there are some things like, for instance, I thought gymnastics would be higher, but because of, you know, the physical like strength it takes to do certain things, but you're not like really incorporating all the stats they listed into that sort of thing. And then like it makes sense why ice hockey would be higher than football cuz it's basically like you're doing football but on ice, like freaking metal blades and stuff like that. And they do beat the crap out of each other in ice hockey though. I don't know if they still do that, but nah. No, this makes sense. This all tracks.
Now, I know some people may wonder, well, why isn't like, you know, MMA or martial arts higher than boxing since it incorporates, you know, more than just your hands. It incorporates, you know, elbows, knees, legs, you know, everything like as various things. And UFC champion Daniel Cormier actually explains this beautifully: "Boxing is more dangerous than MMA." Oh, how could you say that when they're only boxing and they're using their hands and they jump on you and they hit you on the ground when you fall? I said, "I will argue with you that that's safer than you knocking me out." Bang. My body, which has been trained my whole life to get up, gets up. They count to eight or nine and they say, "Go back and fight more." When I'm still concussed, you have hit me so hard that you have knocked me down to the ground. Right. I get up, and then you continue to punch me in the head until one I either fall down again and go to sleep completely or we get to the end of the round where you come back and you punch me in the head again. In MMA, when you get knocked down or kicked in the head or whatever the case may be, the guy jumps on you, boom, boom, fight's over. Fight's over. I don't have that recovery time to where I think my brain is okay. I go fight more, and then I get destroyed more.
That also makes a ton of sense because think about when you do MMA, the damage is being distributed all over your entire body if you're doing things like Muay Thai, kickboxing, etc. Like you're getting hit in the arms, you're getting hit in the body, the legs, all that place. With boxing, you're primarily getting hit in your torso, but mainly the head. The head is constantly being snapped back every time, and then you have to keep getting up and getting smacked in the head again. And that's the most dangerous place to repeatedly keep getting hit because of the brain and stuff like that. I think a great way to say it is like MMA is very brutal because you know people can break like tendons and bones and stuff like that like across the body, but like boxing in general as a sport is more dangerous just because of the repeated head trauma. This also sadly makes sense why there's so many boxing-related deaths, but it's rare to find many deaths from MMA. Plus, if you're a grappler and get a good hold on someone, you can just lay there and apply pressure until they give in and tap.
But with that said, we now know what to incorporate into our superhero fit daily training routines to get like our favorite characters. So, what I'll do now is because we're all in different tiers and have different things we need to improve upon, is I'll give you a quick summary of how to train them. And if you want an in-depth video talking about how to improve on that subject specifically, I'll tell you which video of mine can help you, and I'll put them all in a superhero body playlist that you can watch whenever.
If you're trying to get fit like an athletic superhero, the first thing you need is endurance and speed training. You need to do this: aka distance interval sprints, long-distance forms of cardio, interval training cardio where you alternate between medium intensity and high intensity, and high-intensity short-burst cardio where you go 80 to 100% of your max with a lot of rest time. An easy way to add this to your routine, just do 20 to 30 minutes of this cardio after your resistance training. If you want to learn how to do all of this in depth, check out this video here.
Then, being hero fit, you got to have that strength and power training. Remember, there are different attributes of strength. Lifting heavy is one attribute that many people think is the end-all be-all when that's not the case. Even if you can't lift heavy weight, you're also very strong if you have explosive power for jumping, sprinting, punching, and kicking, or being able to carry weighted things for long periods of time, or how strong you are relative to your body weight. Doing freestanding handstand push-ups will forever be impressive. The way to add this to your routine is to alternate rep schemes and rest times for your exercises. So, for example, if you're doing a stronger one for four to six reps, make sure you're resting 2 to 3 minutes. If you're doing like intermediate for muscle building and strength, 8 to 12, make sure you're resting 90 seconds. And if you're doing something that's like 15 to 30 plus reps, make sure you're resting 60 seconds or less. If you want to learn how to do all that stuff and improve all those things, check out this video here.
Agility training. Personally, my fave way to do this is by doing football drills where you go forward and back, side to side, or even racing friends or even jumping rope fast side to side. You'll start to feel like Spider-Man and Nightwing with how quickly your body starts to move for you. And you can just mix this in with your endurance and speed training right after you finish your resistance training.
Flexibility training. 5 to 10 minutes of daily yoga and mobility flow work can help you casually increase your flexibility in all aspects and also help prevent injuries. Just do it in the morning or before bed or after your resistance training. I got a ton of follow-alongs on my channel and helpful videos for people wanting to do that here, but there's tons all over the web.
Nerve training. This is basically overcoming a fear you have. And there's a great quote I heard that said, "If you can't beat the fear, do it scared." Now, of course, this is within reason. Safety is first and foremost present, and you are in a controlled environment. This doesn't mean going out in the African savannah to fight a lion or something stupid, but just doing little things along the way to help you overcome any fear that may terrify you. A fear of heights, fear of getting punched in the face, fear of bugs, fear of rejection. The more fears you overcome and conquer, the stronger you will become.
Durability training. This really comes from training in a demanding sport like boxing, MMA, American football, etc. You can build bulk from weightlifting and then eating enough foods that will make you thicker and makes it less easier to get concussed. But that true durability comes from consistently training in those types of environments. The best way to get this is by working with professionals. And if you want to learn how to fight like any specific character, check out this video here I made. It helps you specifically with that.
Hand-eye coordination training. You can do various things: tennis ball and a string punching. This is great for helping people build up the reflexes and all that jazz. Also, hitting at the batting cages and doing reflex lights all help you build this. So, do those consistently. You can find stuff like that at Amazon or your local like sports store. And if you want something more in-depth with how to like practice that stuff, you can check out my One Piece hockey video. I have a full thing that you can do that has already helped a few people increase their hand-eye coordination. Make sure you do those activities daily.
And finally, analytic aptitude training. This really comes from how you pay attention and how your brain is processing information. So there are various things you can do. You can play brain games. You can read more. You can stimulate your brain in various ways to challenge it and really improve yourself. And literally this year I started off this year with a freaking video to help everyone increase their brain power to the max. And it's been helping folks so far that I've been reading in the comment section. So, I really appreciate that everyone's doing that, especially with that new thing that said Chat GPT is making people's brains like, you know, not respond and they're becoming empty-headed and like the people who scroll TikTok all day, like their brains are starting to slowly like actually get brain rot, which is something I don't want to see. We need to stop this right now or just take a break. Like again, we have to learn how to like catch this stuff immediately and then start working on building it. But yeah, this is something that you can do to help improve all those things, and then you got this and it's easy enough to play those games daily. But again, if you want something more streamlined that includes all this type of training, just check out my hybrid theory program in the pinned comment down below. It'll make you super, just saying.
So with that said, becoming athletically fit like a superhero would take a lot of work, but that's what makes it special cuz not everyone is down to do that. It takes time and effort, and it always pays off in the end. And if you made it this far in the video, type meta down below. It shows me who watched all the way to the end. And if you want a real-life coach to help guide you like freaking Batman did for Nightwing or Roshi did for Goku or Mike Guy did for Rock Lee, then check out my coaching link down in the description box down below. We'll talk on Zoom. See if I can help you. I've been doing this since 2010. So, I've been a trainer for over 15 years and just helped so many people so far, and I would love to help you. I make you super, just saying. That's what I always say cuz I always help people out. But thank you to my patrons. Be sure to hit that bell icon, subscribe if you like my vibe. And remember, like I always say, keep calm, booyah on, and don't forget momentai. And tell me who's your favorite non-powered superhero cuz we know this boy is clearly gassed on something. Where the dark?