Who do work more, top soccer leagues' players or nhlers?

[Kshahdoo]

What do you think?

Click to read more...

 

[Midnight Judges]

Probably about the same.

 

[Kshahdoo]

Probably about the same.

EPL players have about 1 month long summer vacations, though. And that's it.

 

[member 329811]

Likely the same - there's little doubt that top athletes in either league are in absolute World Class condition.

 

[1865]

I think it's pretty clearly the footballers. Shorter seasons overall but when they play they're invariably on the pitch for 90 minutes for (in some cases) ~50 games a season and they only get 8 weeks off at the end of the season - less if there's an international tournament.

A full NHL season run of 110 games at 22 minutes is 2,402 minutes with frequent breaks. Even if you only play 30 full football games it's 2,700.

 

[KlefDown]

Soccer players from top flight leagues I'd reckon but probably pretty close

 

[Ceremony]

EPL players have about 1 month long summer vacations, though. And that's it.

They play one or two games a week, not 3 or 4. No cross-time zone travel either. The two situations can't really be compared.

 

[1865]

They play one or two games a week, not 3 or 4. No cross-time zone travel either. The two situations can't really be compared.

Two football games a week is 180 minutes. Four hockey games for a player is at most 100.

Not to suggest hockey players aren't super fit of course, but football really is the elite physical peak.

 

[Ceremony]

Two football games a week is 180 minutes. Four hockey games for a player is at most 100.

Not to suggest hockey players aren't super fit of course, but football really is the elite physical peak.

But a hockey player's moving a lot more for those minutes than a footballer. It's a different kind of performance with players moving/stopping so it's still difficult to compare.

 

[1865]

But a hockey player's moving a lot more for those minutes than a footballer. It's a different kind of performance with players moving/stopping so it's still difficult to compare.

They are moving more, but they're on ice with momentum. Getting up to skating speed is a bit energy drain of course, but you can't glide on a football pitch.

You're right, it's tough to compare but there's a pretty large gulf between minutes and type of exercise.

 

[Mickey Marner]

For the top athletes the difference is likely minimal, they're in peak physical form year-round. But the role players in hockey have a much lower bar than starters/reserves in football, who have to be able to play 90 minutes competently at any time, rather than just 10-15 in a compartmentalized role.

 

[tenken00]

Not every soccer player/footballer constantly moves the whole game.

But midfielders do the most work out of any position in the 2 sports. I know skating takes a lot of effort and is more strenuous an activity than running, but the amount of distance that a midfielder covers during a match is mindboggling. Boggles the mind mindboggling.

 

[GM Armchair]

Well the NHL has players like Phil Kessel who I doubt could run a full soccer pitch

 

[Kshahdoo]

But a hockey player's moving a lot more for those minutes than a footballer. It's a different kind of performance with players moving/stopping so it's still difficult to compare.

Kovy once said, he would be able to play a pro soccer game for about 20 min and then die.

 

[Vegan Knight]

Not every soccer player/footballer constantly moves the whole game.

But midfielders do the most work out of any position in the 2 sports. I know skating takes a lot of effort and is more strenuous an activity than running, but the amount of distance that a midfielder covers during a match is mindboggling. Boggles the mind mindboggling.

It's difficult to say. Those midfielders are running in shorts and a shirt, hockey players are skating in pounds and pounds of equipment.

If I had to guess I'd probably say soccer players tend to have slightly more endurance and hockey players are probably stronger.

I understand there's being strong on the ball in soccer but it's nowhere near the same as hockey just because of what you can get away with within the rules on the ice, then the fact that the rules aren't always enforced so you really are fighting for ice and the puck while trying to stay balanced from a guy trying to knock you over. Plus the ice is so much smaller you're always nearer somebody in hockey and the space you're fighting for is smaller.

 

[WarriorofTime]

All of them train really hard. Soccer players a bit more of "endurance athletes" as far as how they condition themselves whereas hockey players are a bit more in the way of high intensity interval training

 

[tarheelhockey]

Taking a slightly different angle on this, think about this in terms of the "natural selection" of top league athletes from the general population.

Soccer is drawing its top-league players from a pipeline many times larger than that of hockey -- current estimates are that there are 100-200 times as many organized soccer players as hockey players in the world, and soccer also has a more efficient development system to boot, so we could be talking about even larger proportions than that.

Given the wildly different proportions, it can be assumed that there are a lot more soccer players than hockey players with a professional-level skill set. If we say the top 0.1% of the pipeline is our "most skilled" tier, we are looking at hundreds of times more soccer players who have maxed out their skill levels.

But being a professional player isn't just about skill set, it's also about athleticism and mental skills. Which sport selects more heavily for pure athleticism? The answer to that should be fairly obvious, even if we don't love it as hockey fans. Mental skills is a different question which I will leave for a different thread.

So if soccer selects more heavily for athleticism, and soccer has a prospect cohort multiple hundred times larger than hockey's, it would seem to follow that the players who make it to a top-level soccer league have a dramatically smaller margin for error athletically than their hockey counterparts. So it follows that a soccer player at the top professional level has reached a higher athletic "bar" than his hockey counterpart. It takes more work to reach a higher bar, all else equal, so we can conclude that it requires a greater level of work to attain and sustain a top-level soccer career than an NHL career.

Of course that doesn't mean that any given specific NHL'er has done less work than any given specific soccer player. But I bet this logic would prove sound if it were possible to measure how often professional players in either sport "cheat" their exercise regimens, diets, etc.

 

[Goomba]

Two football games a week is 180 minutes. Four hockey games for a player is at most 100.

Not to suggest hockey players aren't super fit of course, but football really is the elite physical peak.

elite physical peak?

Its a non contact sport, they dont use their upper body at all

 

[MadLuke]

I am not sure the in game amount of work would necessarily be a large percentage of the yearly work of a professional athlete.

The amount of competing talent is astronomically different between the 2 sports, so one could imagine that for the average pro top soccer have to do more to keep is job and inside a team to be one of the starter has well, but the amount of professional team inside top league is also I imagine quite the different amount that maybe balance most of it, many country have interesting top league to play in for top players.

How much they work outside the gametime is probably what feel more like working and most of the yearly work and in that regard there is little to no limit to how much they can and obviously some nhler work more than some top soccer player and vice versa in that regard, the answers here would be either the median or average amount of work (would it be counted in hours or calorie or mental-body pain effort formula while training and playing, travel, press, team meeting and so on). Seem almost impossible to answer without having been closely involved with a large sample size of both world.

For the in game work, the average pro soccer player run 11 km during a game and hardest working one:
The Premier League’s 15 hardest working players revealed!

Go to 11-12 km a game.

typical nhler do around 8km of skating, apparently running and skating tend to be similar tier of effort/calorie activity:
You burn nearly as many calories on skates as you do running (for a 125-pound person, that's 210 calories inline skating for 30 minutes versus 240 calories running 12-minute miles for the same duration, according to Harvard Health Publications).


age distribution in an elite soccer league:
https://www.frontiersin.org/files/A...10-00076-HTML/image_m/fpsyg-10-00076-g001.jpg

NHL:
https://www.tsn.ca/polopoly_fs/1.14...e/image.png_gen/derivatives/default/yost1.png

This premier league starting line-up average age:
Premier League - Average age of the starting XI

All between 24.4 to 25.4 year's old, nhl roster are between 25.4 and 28.3 and vary much more.

 

[koyvoo]

Two football games a week is 180 minutes. Four hockey games for a player is at most 100.

Not to suggest hockey players aren't super fit of course, but football really is the elite physical peak.

It’s two completely different types of exertion, and cannot be compared like that. A minute of football is not equal to minute of hockey. That’s why one can play the entire 90 minute and the other plays in 45 seconds spurts.

It’s like comparing a minute for a marathon runner vs a minute for a sprinter. Doesn’t work.

 

[Kristopher Letang]

I’m not sure about soccer but the NHL average strenght and fitness standards are much lower compared to the NFL/NBA players.

You are really trying to compare apples to oranges tho.

 

[1865]

elite physical peak?

Its a non contact sport, they dont use their upper body at all

Thats really not true, at all. It’s firmly a contact sport and the upper body comes into play all the time. You’ve clearly never played the game, which is fine and all but don’t make sweeping statements like that.

 

[ItWasJustified]

I think it's pretty clearly the footballers. Shorter seasons overall but when they play they're invariably on the pitch for 90 minutes for (in some cases) ~50 games a season and they only get 8 weeks off at the end of the season - less if there's an international tournament.

A full NHL season run of 110 games at 22 minutes is 2,402 minutes with frequent breaks. Even if you only play 30 full football games it's 2,700.

There's only around 55-60 minutes of actual playing time. The rest of the games the play is dead in different ways.

 

[Goomba]

Thats really not true, at all. It’s firmly a contact sport and the upper body comes into play all the time. You’ve clearly never played the game, which is fine and all but don’t make sweeping statements like that.

Sure thing boss

those throw-ins, huge arm pump

 

[Mick Riddleton]

Hockey players, soccer players do not always play a full game and when they do it is short bursts of energy with periods of inactivity. Pushing the ball around standing still is different then attacking a 6'4 deeman.