I must honestly say I am shocked and the lack of strength and endurance of some of the greatest hockey players ever. In Gretzky's autobiography he said he ALWAYS came in last in strength and endurance tests on the Oilers. A video I saw on the Great One actually said you could find some GIRLS out in the crowd who could beat him in arm wrestling!
An article I read on Lemieux said he couldn't even bench 180 lbs. as a rookie and he's 6'4"! I recall from high school at least 3 or 4 17 yr. olds smaller than Lemieux who benched 300 lbs.! Lemieux also couldn't even run 3 miles and he dropped out after a mile and a half!
One of the top NHL draft picks this summer couldn't even do ONE pull up! Not even ONE! It gives the impression you can be a weakling and still be a great hockey player! As a freshman in high school I could 5 or 6 pull ups. Are hockey players as weak as soccer players when it comes to upper body strength? It's really shocking the 2 greatest hockey players EVER weren't even as strong as many high school kids!
There are a lot of different ways of measuring strength and endurance.
I have a weakness in my shoulders and shoulder blades that makes pullups or bench pressing extremely difficult for me, but I can easily leg press more than 3x my bodyweight. My arm-wrestling technique is probably such that I would lose an arm-wrestling match to Gretzky's wife, yet I can lift heavy furniture.
So which tests do you feel are a more accurate measure of strength? Do you only measure "strength" by one static metric involving a specific arm motion, or are other metrics of force and power involved?
As far as endurance goes I recall something Janet Jones Gretzky said. She was new to hockey and she wondered why they only play a minute and keep sitting down! LOL! Do pro hockey players have enough endurance to play 10 or 20 minutes in a row?
Do hockey players have enough endurance to play 10 or 20 minutes in a row? Yes, they certainly do. The problem is just that the speed and quality of the play would drop off significantly. It creates better results to put out a fresh pair of legs to sprint around after one minute than to have the same person sprinting for 2 minutes.
The same is true of soccer. Sure, those guys CAN all run around for 90 minutes, and they do....but the game would look a lot faster and a lot more intense if both teams had something like 20 players on the bench and an unlimited number of line changes such that soccer players could sprint as hard as they could all over the field for a minute or two and then come off the field to recover. A soccer player who sprints for a minute requires the same recovery time as a hockey player who sprints for a minute. The only difference is that the hockey player leaves the surface to recover on the bench while another teammate takes his place, whereas soccer players recover by walking around and lightly jogging on the field while sacrificing potential opportunities to take an advantage (or by faking the severity of injuries to extend stoppages).
Endurance:
1. Soccer
2. Basketball
3. Hockey
4. Football
5. Baseball
Strength:
1. Football
2. Baseball
3. Hockey
4. Basketball
5. Soccer
I welcome your opinions, observations, and how you would rank strength & endurance among major pro sport athletes.
I generally agree with your lists, except I'd probably put Hockey at #2 on both. Frankly, I'd put basketball 4th below football for endurance. There's just way too much standing around and walking in basketball for me to give it high marks for endurance. You're rarely ever moving that fast in the first place, and there are a ton of drawn out stoppages to recover from whatever minimal exertion you do put forth. Football requires less constant motion than basketball, but the physcial contact element takes a serious toll on the body. Getting knocked to the ground 3 times in 2 minutes takes far more effort to recover from than lightly jogging for 2 minutes with the occasional jump.
As for strength, again it comes down to how you want to define and measure it. Baseball requires a specific set of arm & hand strength, but not much else. And while strength does play a role, for baseball it is more about a certain set of mechanics. Is a baseball player or a golfer stronger than a defensive lineman just because the former can use a club to hit a ball further? I think the ability to deliver and battle through body checks requires more physical strength than simply a mastery of the mechanics and specific muscles involved with hitting a ball 300 feet, 300 yards, or throwing it 90mph.
