White and Blue is the Official Student Publication Saint Louis University, Baguio City, Philippines with editorial office at Rm. 06 Student Center, Saint Louis University

Gone were the days when sports are only limited to those that are common to our sight. Today, sports’ extents have now reached a limitless track. Extreme sports are now existing— the non-the-usual. They involve a high level of inherent danger or difficulty and often involving speed, height, a high level of physical exertion and highly specialized gear or spectacular stunts If you are united with various youth subcultures, you might be an extreme sports lover. An extreme sport is always performed by an individual rather than a team and is usually focused on tricks or stunts.

Paradigm Shift

Due to marketing trends, the meaning of extreme sports has shifted. In the late 1980’s, extreme sports consist sky diving, surfing, rock climbing, snow skiing, water skiing, snowboarding, mountain biking, mountaineering, spelunking, storm chasing, hang gliding and bungee jumping. However, nowadays the term applies more to youth sports like skateboarding, snowboarding and many others. It is closely associated with marketing efforts aimed at the youth. In 2006, the College Park Industries-a manufacturer of prosthetic feet, organized the “Extremity Games” where it was formed for people who had physical disabilities like limb difference or a limb loss (amputees). This annual event held in Orlando, Florida every summer which includes competitions in skateboarding, wakeboarding, rock climbing, mountain biking, surfing, moto-x and kayaking, gives the athletes the feel of competing in these kinds of sports. Even though the levels of danger of a certain sport and the amount of adrenaline generated are high, it would not always fall into the category of extreme sports. Rugby union, though dangerous and adrenaline-inducing, is not under the category due to its practiced image whereas extreme sports have very high levels of speed and feature amazing stunts. Scuba diving is also not viewed as a part of extreme sports these days, in spite of the level of danger and physical exertion, due to its primarily adult demography and it is the fact that it is not classed as a sport as it has no primary objective.

Practitioners would claim that they enjoy developing their physical and/or mental skills, seek mastery of inhospitable environments, and look to escape from the mundane rigors of day-to-day existence, or simple love the wilderness environment in which many of these sports take place. True extreme sports are considered leisure but if mismanaged, could cause death. There are different extreme sports that are now popular among adrenalin thirsty people.

BASE Jumping

Base jumping is the sport using a parachute to jump from fixed objects. “BASE” is an acronym that stands for the four categories of objects from which one can jump. B for building, A for antenna (an uninhabited tower such as an aerial mast), S for span (a bridge, arch or dome) and E for earth (a cliff or other natural formation). This sport is much more dangerous than skydiving from aircraft. The first recorded instance of a base jump was that of Frederick Law who jumped from the viewing platform of the Statue of Liberty in 1912. Base Jumping is a fringe extreme sport because of the inherent high risks of death or injury.

Bungee Jumping

Bungee Jumping is an extreme sport activity which originated in the United Kingdom in 1979. Originating from the land divers of Pentecost Island in Vanuatu who jump from tall wooden platforms with wires tied to their ankles as a test of courage. A person jumps off from a high place–generally of several hundred feet/meters above the ground–with one end of an elastic bungee cord attached to their body or ankles and the other end tied to the jumping-off point. When the person jumps, the bungee cord will stretch to take up the energy of the fall, then the jumper will fly upwards as the cord snaps back. The jumper oscillates up and down until the initial energy of the jump is dissipated.

Zorbing or Sphering

Zorbing originated in New Zealand. This sport does not require any special training or fitness regimes to participants, though a strong constitution could help. The Zorb is a gigantic inflatable Ploy-Vinyl Chloride (PVC) ball standing about three meters in height and contains a smaller ball that is suspended into position by thousands of nylon strands which act as shock absorbers during the ride. The Zorber or Zorbonaut enters the inner chamber through a passage way where they are usually strapped into a harness. The balls are then made to revolve forming the feeling like that of being spun inside a washing machine.

Board Games

Kitesurfing, kiteboarding or flysurfing involves the use of a power kite–a kite large enough to provide a pull–to drag a small surfboard on water, a wheeled board on land (kiteboarding) or a snowboard over snow (kiteskiing). Kneeboarding is an aquatic sport where the participant is towed on a buoyant, convex and hydro-dynamically shaped board at a planing speed behind a motorboat. In the usual configuration of a towsport kneeboard, the rider sits on his heels on the board and secures himself to the deck with an adjustable strap. As in wakeboarding or water skiing, the rider hangs onto a tow-rope. The forte of kneeboarding vis-à-vis other tow sports seems to be an easier learning curve and not requiring as much speed from the boat to have fun. Windsurfing also called boardsailing is a hybrid of surfing and sailing, using a small board of between 2 and 4.7 meter which is powered by wind acting on a single sail that is connected to the board via a flexible joint. The sail board is the most minimalist version of the modern sailboat, with the major exception that steering is accomplished by the wind surfer tilting the mast and sail or when planing, banking the windsurfing board rather than using a rudder.

Spelunking

Spelunking or caving is the recreational sport of exploring caves. The challenge of the sport depends on the cave being explored which often includes pitches, squeezes and often water encounters. Climbing or crawling and even cave diving is often necessary and ropes are used extensively. This sport is often undertaken solely for the enjoyment of the activity or for physical exercise, but original exploration, or physical or biological sciences stand as goals for some cavers. This sport became an extreme sport recently due to the availability of modern protective wear and equipments

Rock climbing

Rock climbing is–obviously–the climbing of steep rocks for recreational sport. Most of the rocks are not slippery and they have lumps and ribs, holes and crack where you could climb easily. Grips are the ones where sport climbers call on every edge. And on every edge, they call it “steps”. You wear climb shoes instead of mountain shoes because of their flexibility and they really fit very tight around the feet. There are tens of different routes on every number of rocks. The higher the number, the difficult the route is. The first one to climb the route makes the name. The hooks that the first climber hangs up stay as they are used by the other climbers to save themselves. The things you need to be an efficient climber include self-confidence, alertness and speed. One must also be in condition and he must wear the complete safety equipments. Rock climbing or any kind of sport climbing enhances our self-esteem, gives us a recreational activity and helps us to rediscover the essence of nature due to its inducing extraordinary human experiences.

Skateboarding

Are you familiar with the anime character, Killua of Hunter-X-Hunter? Well, here’s another type of an extreme sport: board on wheels. Skateboarding was invented when resourceful people brought surfing to land by screwing roller skate wheels on surf boards–and the most popular extreme sport was born. Skateboarding may be the most popular extreme sport known to the Gen-X. However, due to this fact, injuries are all too common. Injuries are obtained if skateboarding is mismanaged. Under this kind of sport, three injuries are categorized. They are the road rash, heavy-impact injury, and the psysio injury. The road rash which are falls often result in grazes. It is the most frequent, and high speed burn which takes weeks and weeks before it heals. It almost seems to burn the underneath. The heavy impact injury may break some of your bones if you hit something hard. The base of the spine gets bruised and stays sore for three months and above. It is the most common injury. This is matched with hyperextension of the wrist due to the falls in all directions. Injuries on elbows and knees are next in line. The psysio injury’s description is likely a strained knee from blading with continuous bending of knees inwards or knock knees. Quad skaters suffer because of extensively exercising on quads with poor posture. For an instance, a back problem like the lowerresults in some twisting of vertebrae from time to time. It will keep supple and pain free if you’ll skate for 1-2 hours a week. And when you stop for a few weeks, it builds pain and stays until you’ve done a few hours again. On the other hand, long term damages due to poor techniques and styles are completely avoidable. Bad knees caused by poor blading style will be commonly recognized within the next ten years. 

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