Image by kelsey e.
Mainstream sport can be pretty tame. Although there are some big hits in American football, the players have more padding than a teenage girl in a training bra. In Europe, soccer players will collapse to the floor in apparent agony at the slightest hint of physical contact. Here at Just A Guy Thing, we like to see sports that challenge men to push themselves beyond the mental, emotional, and physical boundaries of these rather soft sporting occasions.
With this in mind we have scoured the four corners of the globe to find our favorite manly sports that will literally kick your ass. (Technically, some of these are not actually sports but the headline 5 Manly Physical Activities That Will Seriously Kick Your Ass just doesn’t have the same ring to it.)
#5 Sepik War Canoe Racing in Papua New Guinea
What is it?
Exactly what it says. Competitors have to race 14km upstream while standing in a canoe in the finale to the War Canoe & Kundu Festival. In terms of flow, the Sepik River is one of the largest in the world, just to make it a bit more challenging.
Why is it so manly?
Forget for a second about the crocodiles and other dangerous creatures lurking in the river and focus on the race itself. Have you ever tried standing up in a canoe? It’s not as easy as it looks to keep your balance! Add that to the fact that you’ve then got to row yourself almost 9 miles against a very strong current and you’re looking at a very grueling afternoons work ahead of you. To complete the race you’ll need balance, stamina and the mental strength to continue when you really don’t want to.
#4 Nguni Stick Fighting in South Africa
What is it?
This is a martial art practiced by young men in South Africa. Combatants are armed with two long sticks. One is used for defending blows and the other is used to whack your opponent without mercy until they bleed or give up from the pain.
Why is it so manly?
Didn’t you hear what we just said? You hit your opponent with unrelenting fury until they either bleed in copious amounts or give up due to the extreme pain of being repeatedly battered across the shins with a long stick. The Zulu guys are hardcore. They wear no armor or protective padding. They are also looking to develop this into a recognized martial art with rules and competitions so look out for an Nguni stick fighting school near you soon.
#3 Laamb Wrestling in Senegal
What is it?
It’s a Senegalese martial art that combines orthodox wrestling with bare-knuckle boxing. Traditionally, young men fought to prove their manliness, court the ladies and bring honor to their village. Nowadays, they fight for money.
Why is it so manly?
Well, aside from the funny dancing the competitors perform prior to the fight, it’s a true display of strength and courage. You have to beat your opponent down so that both knees or his back are touching the ground. This is done by punching them constantly with bare-knuckles and then flinging them around like a rag doll in the hands of a devilish 6 year-old girl. Proper macho mano-a-mano alpha male type shenanigans.
#2 Self-Transcendence 3,100 Mile Race in Jamaica
What is it?
Well it’s a 3,100 mile race around a track in Queens, Jamaica of course. What were you expecting from that title?
Why is it so manly?
Strictly speaking, it could be womanly too - seeing as more than one woman has completed the course. Regardless, it’s manly because runners must complete 5,649 laps of a .5488 of a mile course in a mere 51 days. That equates to about 61 miles a day, every day, for almost two months. You’ll need tremendous courage, physical stamina, concentration and the capacity to endure fatigue and boredom. You might also need to rest your feet for a while before going back to your 9-to-5.
#1 The Tough Guy Survival Course in England
What is it?
It’s an endurance race based just 30 minutes from our HQ (that we had never heard of until researching for this article) that involves an eight-mile cross country run before being faced with an obstacle course requiring ‘the athletes‘ to crawl under barbed wire, run over burning bales of hay, swim in underwater tunnels full of icy water and negotiate their way through underground pipes.
Why is it so manly?
You mean besides the regular broken legs and bouts of hypothermia? Well, according to the Tough Guy organizer Billy Wilson, there is no other one day survival course as grueling as his. The closest, he says, is the Navy S.E.A.L’s ‘Grinder’ Assault Course but even that pales in comparison to the Tough Guy circuit. Don’t believe it? Check out the website and decide for yourself.
If you’ve uncovered a sport or physical activity more brutal than these then please let us know in the comments. We enjoy nothing more than seeing grown men beating each other to death or weeping from exhaustion and dehydration. Sadistic, we know.
Related posts:
March 15th, 2008 at 3:57 am
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vend%C3%A9e_Globe
Around the world sailing, solo, unassisted. Bad. Ass.
March 15th, 2008 at 4:37 am
Mondern Military Pentahalon. You have five events to mimic a front line calvary scout traveling from the front lines to Headquaters during battle. You must jump horses, run 5k, swim 200m, shoot a pistol and fence.
Why it is manly: First all of the event are separate Olympic events on their own. Second, you get to use a sword and gun! And you use the sword on your opponent! With only one touch determining the winner! Third, this was an event that hardass manly man, George S. Patton took fifth place in. That meant there were four guys tougher than PATTON out there, probably Chuck Norris and three other guys.
March 15th, 2008 at 4:53 am
the first 3 were featured (and competed in) on the discovery show last one standing.
March 15th, 2008 at 5:18 am
Those are some tough events, but I’m not sure how many of them are sports? I guess it comes down to what we define as sports, but I would argue the martial arts and rugby would be in my top list of “manly sports.”
March 15th, 2008 at 5:55 am
How about Freestyle motocross!!
March 15th, 2008 at 5:57 am
How about Muay Thai? As it’s practised in Thailand, fighters usually end up in wheelchairs by their 30’s
March 15th, 2008 at 7:00 am
You obviously never played waterpolo.
March 15th, 2008 at 7:35 am
http://www.goshen.edu/rugball/
Coolest sport ever.
March 15th, 2008 at 7:42 am
@Noah - That looks pretty awesome! Just a man and the open seas.
@rob - 4 guys beat Patton? Wow, that’s hardcore stuff.
@maxwell - Yep, we found out about the Last One Standing while researching the Nguni stick fighting and liked it so much we included a couple of events. Never seen the show though.
@Ryan - Yeah they’re not all sports per se, I suppose we could have included something like Australian rules football or something tough like that.
@Mike - I’ve only ever seen them fall off those Motocross bikes and it does look extremely painful.
@Jason - Muay Thai is a great one. How about the underground scene in Kickboxer with the glass covered hand wraps? Hardcore.
@Oly - Nope we’ve never been into Waterpolo. Is it really that tough?
March 15th, 2008 at 8:56 am
One word: Calvinball
http://www.simplych.com/cb_rules.htm
Okay, so it might not be an organized sport, but it should be.
March 15th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
You missed the most obvious of all - marriage!
March 15th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
water polo is for queers
March 15th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
you are definitely forgetting the Calcio Storico. Grown men beating the hell out of each other in historically accurate Renaissance costumes is truly a great sight.
March 15th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
How about Navy SEALs’ Hell Week? Five straight days of continuous activity with no more than 4 hours rest. Sounds a lot tougher than a One Day Tough Guy Survival Course.
March 15th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
The Kyokushin Karate 100 man kumite. “The hardest challenge in the hardest style of Karate.” You fight 100 battles in a row against some of the most serious martial artists in the world: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1274302017525395825
March 15th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
How about downhill mountain biking? Some people take crazy 20 foot drops and eat shit. Gravel and dirt can be very unforgiving. Plus the environment is way less controlled then motocross with loose dirt and rocks everywhere.
March 15th, 2008 at 11:47 pm
You’re missing “Calcio in costume”, that’s a game that’s played every year in Florence, Italy, and it’s basically a mix of soccer, rugby, american football, ultimate fighting and a bar brawl. The rules claim that two teams of 27 people compete against each other (there’s four teams, so only three games every year), and you score when the ball goes in the net. Apart from that everything’s permitted: you can beat your opponent unconscious to get the ball from him, you can rip his ear off for no apparent reason, you can drop kick an opponent in the head just for the fun of it (and all of the above really happened in the past). The winners win a chianina calf.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcio_Fiorentino (english wikipedia page)
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcio_fiorentino (italian wikipedia page)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chianina
March 16th, 2008 at 10:16 pm
Irish Hurling. Rugby with long curved sticks and an unforgivingly fast rock. Manly
March 17th, 2008 at 1:14 am
hurling, lacrosse, Thai stick fighting.
March 17th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
Since manly sports is the topic i think Tour de france cycling race can be considered in it.The amount of muscle strength and sheer mental toughness required to overcome the biological implication of huge amounts of lactic acid in body is incredible. evry day some 130 kms covered and whole tour is about 2600Kms+ with ave speed of 40kmph done in 21 days,thats prety manly.No wonder guys doing it resort to doping the most,coz it can’t be done by just any tough guy.u need to naturally gifted to be a champ there.It can make men cry in pain.
March 18th, 2008 at 2:44 am
Badwater Ultramarathon
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Badwater Ultramarathon describes itself as “the world’s toughest foot race”. It is a 135 mile (215 km) course starting at 282 feet (85 m) below sea level in the Badwater Basin, in California’s Death Valley, and ending at an elevation of 8360 feet (2548 m) at Whitney Portal, the trailhead to Mount Whitney. It usually happens in July, when the weather conditions are most extreme and temperatures over 120 F (49 C) in the shade are not uncommon. Consequently, not many people—even among ultramarathoners—are capable of finishing this race.
The Course
Originally, the run was conceived as being between the lowest and the highest points in the contiguous United States: Badwater, Death Valley (-282 ft) and Mt. Whitney’s summit (14,496 ft). The two are only eighty miles apart on the map, but the land route between the two points is substantially longer, 146 miles, because of detours around lakebeds and over mountain ranges. Additionally, since the finish-line is 11 miles from the nearest trailhead, anyone who competes over the 146 mile race-distance must be capable of a total physical effort of 157 miles. Due to the two mountain ranges that must be crossed between Badwater and Whitney, the course’s cumulative elevation gain exceeds 19,000 feet (5,800 m).
In later years, as the United States Forest Service required summit permits to climb Mt. Whitney, the official course was shortened to end at Whitney Portal. The Badwater-to-Portal course is 135 miles long, with 13,000 feet (4,000 m) of cumulative elevation gain. Forest Service regulations do not allow competitive events in the John Muir Wilderness, however, many runners choose to continue tradition and complete the ascent to Mount Whitney’s summit on their own.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badwater_Ultramarathon - “So far there have been no fatalities.”
March 19th, 2008 at 7:01 pm
Shin Kicking.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIym3B87SdI&feature=related (and this is just the kids)
June 3rd, 2008 at 8:49 pm
Best Rainger Competition at Fort Benning, Georgia USA. It takes about 60 of our best soldiers, puts them in teams of two and runs them in the ground over three days. Pure hell. The teams that win this (heck even the ones that compete) are togh as hell.
October 21st, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Hi! kevin trudeau coral calcium
February 4th, 2009 at 4:45 pm
Cherokee stickball. It’s what inspired the game of lacrosse–without the wussy preps LOL. Known as the little brother of war traditionally, it only has one rule–you can’t pick up the ball with your hands. Us being matriarchal, both men and women play (we are all-inclusive people.) Pretty sweet if you get to see it.
February 27th, 2009 at 12:12 am
That’s a nice list, I agree with all of ‘em. Though SMOG is right, Calvinball is the only sport that real dudes would play. Because there isn’t an international federation of calvinball to ensure that no rules are made whatsoever, we have to make do. Here are a few more that may interest you http://www.supertightstuff.com/02/11/tightsports/8-of-the-manliest-sports/
March 3rd, 2009 at 8:01 pm
If you ever go here you have to go to the annual wine tasting festival
April 23rd, 2009 at 3:34 am
Recently one of my friends started an obsession with the actor Nicholas Cage (mostly because their names are both Nicholas - sounds strange but he is strange and that isn’t the point). After asking around the rest of my friends he seems to be a very controversial figure.
What does the forum think? do you love the all action superhero? Or do you hate the droning voice of the man who does nothing but action shooters?