Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Extreme Sports' Mental Hurdles

For most action sports, getting over the mental hurdle can be the hardest part. For me, that hurdle was the biggest with free-diving. When you're diving down 60ft+ on one breath of air, it takes very strong mental fortitude to not only convince yourself you can keep going, but that you'll be able to make it back up. Of course, as soon as you turn around and your lungs start to expand, you realize that you probably could have gone even farther that your target. You're frustrated and relieved at the same time when you get to the surface, and can't wait to do it again.

 

Many extreme sports are like that. You just have to commit to it, knowing that the odds of survival, if you do everything like you've planned for, trained for, or read about, it will be okay. Once you go "over the edge", you realize that your fear was holding you back from an amazing experience, and after, you just can't wait to do it again. Mentally, bungee jumping was more nerve racking for me than skydiving, because, even though I'd been skydiving multiple times before I went on a bungee, I'd never experienced the ground rush, nor had the ground for reference. It was one heck of a thrill and makes me believe that, once I've done some more research, I'll be stoked to try BASE jumping. Just don't tell my parents; I've given them enough gray hairs already.

 

The rest of the list from 5 to 10 is somewhat self-explanatory, and decreases the hurdle with the speed of the sport. If you're looking for a way to build up your fear tolerance, I'd start from the bottom with rock climbing and work my way up.

1. Free-diving

2. Bungee Jumping

3. Canyon Swinging

4. Solo Skydiving

5. Motorcycle Driving

6. Ice Climbing

7. Tandem Skydiving

8. Scuba-diving

9. White-water rafting

10. Rock Climbing

 

As I stated in the first article of this series, all of these rankings are based on my subjective experience and should only be used as a guide when deciding whether to get into a particular sport. If you don’t do your homework and make an uneducated decision, any of these sports can kill you. However, with proper training and awareness of the potential danger, these sports can become some of the most amazing experiences of your life. I only rank sports I have personally done, and I agree that there are other sports that could fall somewhere on this list; I just haven’t done them yet!

Thanks for reading.

Ethan J. DeLano “The EJDe”

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Most Physically Challenging

For looking for a workout to accompany their adrenaline rush, I'd recommend ice climbing and rock climbing.

Ethan Ice Climbing in New Zealand

In addition to being a great rush, ice climbing is one of the more killer work-outs you can do. The effort that it takes to drive the ice pick into the sometimes inverted wall you are climbing with enough force to hold your body, can explode your forearms, especially if you're not a regular climber. Also, you have a kick into the wall with the crampons on your feet, and removing those, along with the ice picks, after every move takes a fair bit of effort. After climbing up and down 50 feet of ice 6 times in New Zealand, I was spent and slept well the following night.

Rock climbing gives you a similar burn in your forearms and is a great workout as well, but I can climb up and down many more times on a rock wall before I call it day than I did on the glacier.

Free-diving requires a fair bit of training in order to be successful at it, and for that alone, it is the third on the list. Your body is physically capable of holding your breath for much longer than you think, which is more of a mental barrier, but the physical training can be intense.

The remaining sports on the list are not that physically demanding, but you should be in decent shape to do all of them. White-water rafting takes group coordination and some physical exertion. The amount of physical strain from driving a motorcycle depends on your riding style, but it does take some coordination as your are using all for limbs to drive it: 1) right hand for throttle and front brake 2) left hand for clutch 3) right leg for rear brake 4) left leg for shifting gears.

Solo skydiving requires body awareness and technique more than physical strength, and just about anybody could do it with proper training. Scuba-divers can be some of the most pot-belled "athletes" of all the sports I've listed that require active participation; especially with the amount of drinking some scuba-divers do to "decompress." Bungee jumping doesn't require much skill, just a simple bunny hop or fall forward, and the same goes for canyon swinging. And of course, for tandem skydiving, you don't have to worry about a thing, since you've got someone strapped to your back the whole way down, controlling the whole process. They even jump out of the plane for you!

1. Ice Climbing

2. Rock Climbing

3. Free-diving

4. White-water rafting

5. Motorcycle driving

6. Solo Skydiving

7. Scuba-diving

8. Bungee Jumping

9. Canyon Swinging

10. Tandem Skydiving

 

As I stated in the first article, all of these rankings are based on my subjective experience and should only be used as a guide when deciding whether to get into a particular sport. If you don’t do your homework and make an uneducated decision, any of these sports can kill you. However, with proper training and awareness of the potential danger, these sports can become some of the most amazing experiences of your life. I only rank sports I have personally done, and I agree that there are other sports that could fall somewhere on this list; I just haven’t done them yet!

Thanks for reading.

Ethan J. DeLano “The EJDe”

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Top 10 Best Adrenaline Rushes

Following up on my last post about the Top 10 Extreme Sports for Amateur Athletes, I would like to explain how I ranked the Best Adrenaline Rush category.

Skydiving with Tate

Bar none, the best way to raise your adrenaline is to GO FAST! The more you are aware of the sensation, the higher the adrenaline rush, and looking at my list, the top 6, except for ice climbing, are essentially ranked according to top speed achieved in each sport. Of course, there are other things that raise your adrenaline, such as real (or perceived) danger, and that's where ice climbing gets a boost.

For canyon swinging and bungee jumping, you are strapped into a system that essentially does the same thing over and over, day after day, and if you've seen someone use the contraption before you, except for your completely (ir)rational fear of falling, there's no reason to be afraid. Ice climbing requires quite a bit of physical exertion and the potential that your ropes, boots, and ice picks could become detached from the glacier or frozen waterfall at any time heightens your senses. Every time you climb, the course is different, and that adds quite a bit to the rush you get when you climb.

 

The other sports on the list are not so extreme in the adrenaline rush department, though in short bursts in particular situations, can achieve a pretty big rush. For instance, if you are setting a new personal best depth in free-diving, the feeling for the last few feet before you reach your target can be insane: "There's no way I can make it back up!" you might think; but when you turn around and head back up, your lungs slowly expanding as the pressure decreases, you realize that you probably could have gone even further. White-water rafting and scuba-diving are also relatively low adrenaline sports, though rough rapids or running into a shark respectively could give you a fair jolt of adrenaline. Rock climbing is mostly an endurance sport, and if you do it properly, you'll never get an "adrenaline" rush; though falls can be pretty scary if you've got a lot of slack in the line or are climbing top-rope.

 

What are your thoughts? Did I get it right? I've only ranked the sports I've done. What should I try so I can add it to the list?

 

Let me know in the comments down below and be ready for my post next week which deals with the Top 10 Most Physically Challenging extreme sports.

 

The List:

Top 10 Best Adrenaline Rushes

1. Solo Skydiving

2. Motorcycle Driving

3. Tandem Skydiving

4. Ice Climbing

5. Canyon Swinging

6. Bungee Jumping

7. Free-diving

8. White-water Rafting

9. Scuba-diving

10. Rock Climbing

 

 

As I stated in the first article, all of these rankings are based on my subjective experience and should only be used as a guide when deciding whether to get into a particular sport. If you don’t do your homework and make an uneducated decision, any of these sports can kill you. However, with proper training and awareness of the potential danger, these sports can become some of the most amazing experiences of your life. I only rank sports I have personally done, and I agree that there are other sports that could fall somewhere on this list; I just haven't done them yet!

Thanks for reading.

Ethan J. DeLano "The EJDe"

Saturday, September 29, 2012

Monday, September 3, 2012

Top 10 Extreme Sports for Amateur Athletes

Top 10 Extreme Sports for Amateur Athletes (and even non-Athletes)

This is the first part in a series of posts for my quest to find the best extreme sport. Declaring something as "The Best" is always a subjective decision and ultimately depends on more than one factor. Acknowledging this, I have only ranked sports that I have actually done personally, limited my list to sports that anybody can do with less than a month of preparation, and ranked the same sports in each list.

Each of the following categories will be written about in the upcoming weeks and will address any comments or questions you have. For example, next Monday, I will write a post that explains in detail how I ranked the "Best Adrenaline Rush" and the following week will discuss how I ranked "Most Physically Challenging" and so forth.

Best Adrenaline Rush

What would an extreme sport be without that adrenaline rush?



1. Solo Skydiving

2. Motorcycle Driving

3. Tandem Skydiving

4. Ice Climbing

5. Canyon Swinging

6. Bungee Jumping

7. Free-diving

8. White-water Rafting

9. Scuba-diving

10. Rock Climbing

Thursday, August 30, 2012

The Best Experience I've Ever Had

The Best Experiece I've Ever Had - Solo Skydiving I wrote this post after leading an experience for Everest on August 26th, 2012. Everst's Dream Series Two weeks ago, I learned about Everest's awesome Dream Series for people "who believe in living life today, not someday." I'd like to think I fall into that category, living by my constantly evolving impossible list, and I have had the pleasure of meeting quite a few doers in the last two weeks at different Everest events. My part in the experience started when I met up with Matt Levene, a friend from my days at BU, to rock climb at Planet Granite in San Francisco. While climbing, our conversation turned to skydiving, something he had thought about doing for awhile, but had never gotten around to following through. "Let's go this weekend!" I said. He hesitated, and asked me a few questions about it, but ultimately said, "Alright, let's do it!" Skydiving with Everest The next thing I knew, Matt had found 9 other people from the Everest community, excited about the opportunity to jump out of an airplane and plummet 14,000 feet to the ground at over 120mph! You know it's a great group of go-getters when you can assemble 11 people to go skydiving in less than a week. This was easily the biggest group I've taken to the dropzone and I look forward to being a part of the Everest community now and in the future. I'm already taking at least two jumpers back this weekend to do it again! Skydiving is an amazing experience that is difficult to describe to those who have not experienced it yet. If skydiving is something you've considered, but still are unsure about, I've listed some of the most common questions I get asked about skydiving below. Hopefully my answers encourage you to go out there and turn that bucket list of things that often fall by the wayside, into a lifestyle, influenced by an impossible list of far reaching, achieveable goals. Why would you jump out of a perfectly good airplane? That's probably the hardest question for me to answer. Skydiving is an experience like none other, and when I tell someone how much fun skydiving is, it is hard to convey in words just what the feeling is like without an experience to compare it. The closest comparison I have found is saying that skydiving is like standing on top of a car driving at over 120mph, but with the ability to move on all axes. It does not feel like falling, and is just a pure adrenaline rush from takeoff to touchdown. When people who ask me this question say there is no way they would ever be able to do it, I tell them about my Mom. She was deathly afraid of going skydiving, so afraid in fact, she thought that if the jump didn't kill her, a heart attack during the jump would. It took six months of persistence and three trips to the dropzone with her, watching me take flight and land safe and sound every time, before I finally convinced her to give it a shot. What happened, you ask? She loved it so much, she jumped TWICE!! ON THE SAME DAY! Okay, but how safe is skydiving really? This is another great question and one I love to answer. A common skydiver idiom is, "You are more likely to die driving to the dropzone than you are skydiving from the plane." Is that really true? Well I did a research paper on skydiving safety in college to find out the fatality rates of skydiving, scuba-diving, and motorcycle riding. You can read the whole report if you don't believe me, but going for a tandem skydive is the safest of them all and you would have to go on over 100 tandem skydives EVERY YEAR, for it to be as dangerous as driving your car on the road in an average year. Something most people don't know is that all skydives are done with two parachutes. The main parachute is re-packed for every jump under very strict packing guidelines. During this process that occurs hundreds of thousands of times a year, wear and tear or a packing mistake can occur. To prevent a potential mishap from being fatal, skydivers can cut-away their main parachute and deploy a back-up parachute. This reserve chute is repacked at least every six months, whether used or not, under even stricter guidlines to keep skydiving as safe as possible. Great. Now you've convinced me that I won't die. What's so great about it anyways? I've been skyidiving 28 times and the 28th jump was just as fun as the first. Of all the extreme sports I've taken part in, ice climbing, bungee jumping, motorcycle driving, white water rafting, and some even more obscure extreme activities, skydiving gives me the biggest rush by a long shot. Given what I've just said, you might think I'm only into skydiving since I'm an adrenaline junkie looking for bigger and better rushes. That may be true, but of the 31 people I've taken tandem skydiving, all 31 have said in one way or another that it was one of the best experiences that they have ever had, if not THE best. Two jumpers have even started down the path of solo skydiving, and hopefully many more will join them in the future. How much does it cost? And where is the best place to jump? "And What should I wear? Pants? Shorts? Sunscreen?" Most skydiving dropzones charge anywhere from $200-$300 for a jump and pictures and/or video are usually extra, between $30-$70. There are dropzones all over the world, not to mention all over the United States, and a simple web search will get you the information for your local area. Beach jumps are usually the most expensive and the most breathtaking, so take that into consideration when you look at dropzones. Trust me, it's worth every penny! For me, of the two countries and six states that I've jumped in, my favorite place to jump is The Parachute Center in Northern California. This is also where I've taken 18 of the 31 tandem jumpers who went with me, including the Everest event last week. Not only is it just $100 for a tandem jump, their efficiency in getting you up in the air is unmatched. All 11 Everest skydivers were up in the air on Sunday less than 30 minutes after signing-up. Jumping anywhere, you can wear whatever is comfortable for the appropriate weather, as long as you wear closed toe, non-sandal/high-heeled shoes. Otherwise, your tandem master will take care of all other preparations and you can focus on having fun!
The Best Experience I've Ever Had - Tandem Skydiving Collage - Blue skies Ethan