It's not psychological. It's time. If you're taking the bus to work and/or working more than one job, you on average can't spare the time (and energy) for training and events. Furthermore, there's the cost of the gear, event entry fees, etc.
The fact that rich (white) people spin the issue as "psychology" is simply another example of their disconnect.
Yep. Rich people deal only with the things they chose to deal, even when "working" (starting from decising what they work on, and whether they want to work at all -- many rich people give up CEO meetings and the like to managers and trusted people and spend most of the year having fun - not that you'll hear about them, since they spoil the image of the hard working rich).
In other words, if Bezos - or any lesser multimillionaire - wishes to delegate something, he delegates it.
The non-rich don't have that luxury, and this is exhausting.
And I guess all the people that prove otherwise are just “outliers” right? There is a non-zero amount of people without privilege that contribute their success to psychological factors whether you like it or not.
Self-discipline and endurance are big characteristics of many successful people. I agree with the article, but I'm not sure about the causality. I've observed that the same characteristics that make people good (not elite) at endurance sports are those that make them able to get ahead at work. Basically discipline and goal setting. It's not surprising that people who can stick to an exercise program like marathon training are also able to stick to work related goals that get them ahead. So yes, rich people may have more flexibility to pursue training (my experience though is that's not true, the demands on your time in professional jobs is much higher) but maybe they got rich because they were able to maintain focus on their goals.
I say this as a competitive age group (not elite) runner that has not found a way to translate the required discipline into my work life.
>Self-discipline and endurance are big characteristics of many successful people.
You'd be surprised how many poor folks have tons of self-discipline and endurance - almost all miners, for starters...
>but maybe they got rich because they were able to maintain focus on their goals.
Family, education, connections, lucky breaks, friendly favours, and a standard work ethic and "focus on their goals" (which you can found on myriads of poor people) did it for most.
Definitely, good luck is always a factor. But don't discount how hard people in leadership positions have to work. Tech seems to have more variability, but go look at consulting or finance and anyone who is successful is paying a real price for how much they work. I'm not saying it's a good thing, but it takes serious discipline, the same kind that keeps you going in endurance sports.
Surely there are rich people that have a cushy life, but they're not the ones who are endurance athletes.
It is probably the case that both rich and poor people possess the required discipline for endurance sports but poor people have much less opportunity to participate. Training, equipment, travel, etc are luxuries that the rich can afford to pay for. The same is not true of everyone else. If you think that rich people and poor people have similar access to time and resources for these sorts of activities I suspect it is because you've spent more time being in the former group than the latter.
How would you test this hypothesis? If, for instance, endurance sports were more prevalent in poorer countries what would that mean for your prior on the hypothesis.
My thesis is that it just takes certain optimism, perservence and luck to suceed massively.
The most succesful polish startup founder (Booksy) is guy who after 6 months of training ran 5x maraton in desert (he thought it would be just single one but continued anyway).
I also know some milioneres and they either don't care much and drop work on others or care and also do sports to unload. Those who don't are usually fat (eating from stess). This is my anecdotal experience.
IMO first strat is best as luck is dominating factor anyway.
Before you try to explain a phenomenon, you should define it and prove that it exists. Possibilities for "Why do rich people love endurance sports" include
1) They don't. 94% of rich people surveyed say they hate endurance sports. Or,
2) Because they love all sports. Rich people have time and money for sports. Poor people don't. And endurance sports are sports. Or,
3) They don't. We asked rich people to rank their favorite sports. Endurance sports were scattered randomly in the ranking. Or,
4) They don't. We define how much rich people like each sport by the average income of its participants and found that sailboat racing was most liked by rich people and playing tag on a playground was least liked. Or,
4) We define what rich people like this way: we surveyed one rich group and one poor group and ranked each sport by the percentage difference in participation by rich and poor. We find that the sports rich people like most (surprisingly, more than tennis or golf) are polo, yachting, and big game hunting.
While it’s certainly not an exclusive parameter for success, I believe there’s something to this.
Phil Knight for example used to go for a 6 mile run every time he had a big decision to make, and anecdotally, I know a disproportionate number of endurance athletes who are also very successful in their careers.
I think for me to believe the thesis, I'd want them to demonstrate that people who aren't rich and also enjoy endurance sports do it for different reasons than rich people. Otherwise, the question is "why do people love endurance sports", and the focus on white collar workers is just a headline-grabber.
Organized suffering for people who have never suffered. Lack of suffering is associated with shame and illegitimacy. Showing people that you have suffered is a way to shed guilt.
I've played sports my whole life, and there's nothing I dislike more than endurance sports. Doing anything repetitive for a long length of time is just incredibly boring to me, and I highly prefer learning and mastering a set of skills that can then be combined in various ways, usually in real-time, like one sees in basketball, taekwondo, racket sports, etc.
I have a running theory that many become interested in endurance sports as adults because they actually don't know how to play other sports. So in a way, these endurance sports are the so-called "easy" way in because they don't require the skill refinement that more skill-based sports require like basketball, martial arts, etc. So these endurance sports are actually the low-hanging fruit of sports or on-rails sports in a way. I'd love to see stats on how many of these sports are started as adults. I am not demeaning the endurance sports at all, but I would seriously guess from my observations that this is the case of getting involved in them. Endurance sports are also ones that one can stretch into later life easier.
And I think another thing is that once one starts in these endurance sports, it becomes an obsession of tinkering and "getting the gear" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3SFqV0hMyo), which can get quite expensive. You gotta make sure you got the right shoes, clothes, bike, bottles, earbuds, glasses, etc., and there's endless tinkering of workout and eating strategies. I feel it's just different than grabbing a glove to go play softball, having a basketball and shoes to play basketball, a racket for tennis or badminton, or just having a dobok for taekwondo or whatever else uniform for a martial art. Gear obsessions for ball sports or martial arts really only go so far. Endurance sports sort of favor tinkering of the body and gear because of the timelines in the sports and the idea, real or perceived, that every bit of gear matters. So participants in these sports become obsessed with this tinkering, which is obviously enabled by certain socioeconomic factors.
I grew up playing soccer but have gravitated more toward cycling, hiking, and trail running as an adult and I was kind of ready to argue with you, but I realized I pretty much agree if you narrow the statement to triathletes specifically.
But in general I find endurance fitness is a broadly applicable skill that can take you to a lot of interesting places, geographically and psychologically. I find a lot of rich triathletes are gear and finishing time-obsessed and miss out on the spiritual or aesthetic aspects.
Haha. There are bound to be exceptions to any generalization, particularly one made off of a running hunch.
Like I also alluded to and someone else mentioned, certainly the more skill/team/ball sports can take their toll over the years. I myself have transitioned to taekwondo, which you can sort of manage to be more or less "impactful". There is also a personal bias in my generalization in that I personally simply get bored when taking walks, running, etc. Hiking can be okay depending on the destination. I simply enjoy the beauty of dynamic movement, which is why I have become rather drawn to taekwondo.
I know a number of very successful people who were not at all sporty in their youth but have taken up endurance sports as adults.
Playing team sports subjects you often to losing and it's also often pretty hard to improve objectively. Also if you haven't played a fair bit of sport in your youth it's probably hard to get good at them. Team sports are also hard in that training and games are on a schedule that may be hard to combine with work and family life.
With endurance sports you can work hard to improve your personal times.
Also many team sports are pretty bad from an injury point of view as you get older. Explosive speed and even the contact of football (soccer) or basketball can be an issue.
It'd be really interesting to see detailed stats about adult sport involvement vs income.
Endurance athletes also have a pretty high injury rate from overuse, poor techniques, and falls or crashes. My local triathlon club email list is full of requests for physiotherapist recommendations and advice about injury rehab. I crashed my bike a few weeks ago and got a nice collection of road rash. Overall it's healthier than being sedentary but injury risk comes with the territory.
So many people in my tri club kept getting run over or crashing on road rides that I actually got a mountain bike and started mainly riding on fire roads because it seemed safer. At least if I fall off the trail it will be my own damn fault unlike getting mowed down by some teenager texting.
> they actually don't know how to play other sports.
I think there's truth to that.
I was a high school athlete in medium distance events. About the only thing I learned was how to stretch, though I was recruited for the soccer team as a "role model" since the soccer coach saw me running laps. :)
I tell people that running or going to the gym for years on end is largely a waste of time because you don't learn a skill, like karate. (However, if you're in shape from running or lifting, it can help with karate.)
That's fair. I lack the coordination to ever be good at ball sports. But I can be decent at triathlon just by grinding away. I actually enjoy most of the training and don't get bored, except for pool swimming. There's usually something interesting to look at and if you're following a structured workout you're changing targets every few minutes.
Just to be clear, I didn't mean anything as in one way is better or superior than the other. I was only seeking to explain why I think these certain sports may be popular amongst adults, but I also meddled my own opinion in there too in that I personally find certain sports to be boring, which is a quirk of my personality.
Growing up as a kid I hated sports because I had zero hand-eye coordination. I also didn't like competing against people. Nowadays I enjoy hiking, cycling, and roadwalking. I love the fact that none of the three sports require much in the way of skill, and you can pretty much just compete against yourself. The thing that I like the most about them is the exploratory aspect. I love discovering a place on foot, or not knowing where I am until I make a corner and suddenly see somewhere familiar. It's like filling out the blank spaces on a map in an RTS game.
I grew up playing sports too mostly full contact sports and ball games like football. Haring the endurance part really resonates with me too. I absolutely hated the endurance training in those sports. It's really the skills I learnt and the competition in the pitch that kept me in them.
>” I have a running theory that many become interested in endurance sports as adults because they actually don't know how to play other sports. So in a way, these endurance sports are the so-called "easy" way in because they don't require the skill refinement that more skill-based sports require like basketball, martial arts, etc”
that’s the only theory notable enough for mention and just so happens it paints endurance athletes in a negative light…
How about this theory, those who don’t take up endurance sports don’t have the mental strength and dislike the meditative quality of them and instead favor short term gratification and rewards.
Of course that’s accurate for a subset just like the first theory was but a very gross generalization
As an adult those sports you mention sound fun, but they require other people. Other people at roughly similar skill levels, who are available at the same time and place. That's not trivial to arrange.
Whereas with running I just put on shoes and leave the house.
Grew up as a standout soccer and volleyball player. Got burned out before college and switched sports. Found endurance sports in my late 20s and love it bc I can go out and disconnect from everything. Still play competitive sports, but being out in nature is what I love.
> I've played sports my whole life. ... I dislike more than endurance sports. Doing anything repetitive
You are comparing doing vs playing. In some languages there are two words for sport. One for game/competition and one for physical activity. Obviously there is physical activity in game but my point is: do not try to find game when there is not one.
Anyway I have other anecdote. I've played sports since childhood but got bored with repetitive games and stayed with endurance sports because they offered excitement from new environments. It was not something I discovered as an adult. Running was basically second thing I did after I had learned walking.
There is obviously expensive gear with all those bikes/skis etc. But running really is low-hanging fruit of sports. Just tie your shoes, open the doors and you can just start.
I used to think that. Then I got into endurance sports.
It’s akin, I guess, to bodybuilding. You’re building a well-oiled machine (you). You’re tweaking your training plan and seeing how you respond. You monitor your resting HR and see it go down as you get fitter. It helps to go do the sport someplace picturesque.
While it’s true that you can spend any money on a bike, I bought my best bike for £180. Running is even cheaper, I buy a pair of shoes every 18 months or so for about £100 and that’s more or less it.
Being rich already enables you to be good at endurance sports. Time to burn and train is the limiting factor. They're also no directly PvP, which insulates the ego.
Can we separate being endurance sports from being sports that can be practiced individually? E.g. I'd say climbing is not really an endurance sport but attracts a lot of the same kind of people (money-rich but time-poor, frequent travellers, ...).
Many of the comments on this page indicate why endurance sports are popular: "I GREW UP PLAYING [hockey, basketball, taekwondo another contact/competitive sport]"
Once you get into your forties and fifties you can't compete or even play in many sports against people in their twenties due to fitness/energy and it may be hard to commit to a specific evening for a club night every week.
Running, Cycling, Swimming can be done at anytime, can get you outside, can be easy on ageing joints, and you can compete against/compare your performance against yourself (how much did I run last week?, how fast did I do my morning circuit compared with last month?). They are also pretty good aerobic exercises that let you live longer.
I participate in ultra endurance cycling. (1200km is my record!)
Most of the athletes are older, some participating into their 80s. It's a very time intensive sport so it's very hard to do with a young family. It's possible to do with just a bike so you see lower middle class people, but you'll also see upper middle class people with flashy bikes and all the gadgets.
It's hard, but mainly mental. Once you figure out the logistics it's just pedaling over and over and enjoying the scenery and either conversation or solitude depending on the ride.
Endurance sports are more individualIstic. If you suck, you only let yourself down. You can make mistakes and learn at your pace. Team sports, you let yourself and the team down. Team sports are less flexible and require a lot more organization to engage in.
One more hypothesis: rich people socialize with rich people, poor people with poor. Groups of people tend to end up doing similar kinds of sports as their friends do. Friends give you advice, motivate you or just make you think about that sport.
The selection has something to do with needs of the group, but has also large random factor.
They don’t, only upper middle class people do. And virtually all of them are liberal. And liberals almost always are drawn to hurting themselves in the name of virtue. It goes back to the penitents of 14th century Germany who would flog themselves walking along the streets in order to appease god. I never realized that this was so until I experienced life in a place where people don’t have this inclination at all. This concept of self inflicted pain being good for ones self is at the core of why liberal people are usually upper middle class. It promotes success and excellence. But it is so deep that most people don’t even realize they have it.
48 comments
[ 1.5 ms ] story [ 123 ms ] threadThe fact that rich (white) people spin the issue as "psychology" is simply another example of their disconnect.
Sad. But true.
In other words, if Bezos - or any lesser multimillionaire - wishes to delegate something, he delegates it.
The non-rich don't have that luxury, and this is exhausting.
I say this as a competitive age group (not elite) runner that has not found a way to translate the required discipline into my work life.
You'd be surprised how many poor folks have tons of self-discipline and endurance - almost all miners, for starters...
>but maybe they got rich because they were able to maintain focus on their goals.
Family, education, connections, lucky breaks, friendly favours, and a standard work ethic and "focus on their goals" (which you can found on myriads of poor people) did it for most.
Definitely, good luck is always a factor. But don't discount how hard people in leadership positions have to work. Tech seems to have more variability, but go look at consulting or finance and anyone who is successful is paying a real price for how much they work. I'm not saying it's a good thing, but it takes serious discipline, the same kind that keeps you going in endurance sports.
Surely there are rich people that have a cushy life, but they're not the ones who are endurance athletes.
I also know some milioneres and they either don't care much and drop work on others or care and also do sports to unload. Those who don't are usually fat (eating from stess). This is my anecdotal experience.
IMO first strat is best as luck is dominating factor anyway.
1) They don't. 94% of rich people surveyed say they hate endurance sports. Or, 2) Because they love all sports. Rich people have time and money for sports. Poor people don't. And endurance sports are sports. Or, 3) They don't. We asked rich people to rank their favorite sports. Endurance sports were scattered randomly in the ranking. Or, 4) They don't. We define how much rich people like each sport by the average income of its participants and found that sailboat racing was most liked by rich people and playing tag on a playground was least liked. Or, 4) We define what rich people like this way: we surveyed one rich group and one poor group and ranked each sport by the percentage difference in participation by rich and poor. We find that the sports rich people like most (surprisingly, more than tennis or golf) are polo, yachting, and big game hunting.
Phil Knight for example used to go for a 6 mile run every time he had a big decision to make, and anecdotally, I know a disproportionate number of endurance athletes who are also very successful in their careers.
I have a running theory that many become interested in endurance sports as adults because they actually don't know how to play other sports. So in a way, these endurance sports are the so-called "easy" way in because they don't require the skill refinement that more skill-based sports require like basketball, martial arts, etc. So these endurance sports are actually the low-hanging fruit of sports or on-rails sports in a way. I'd love to see stats on how many of these sports are started as adults. I am not demeaning the endurance sports at all, but I would seriously guess from my observations that this is the case of getting involved in them. Endurance sports are also ones that one can stretch into later life easier.
And I think another thing is that once one starts in these endurance sports, it becomes an obsession of tinkering and "getting the gear" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3SFqV0hMyo), which can get quite expensive. You gotta make sure you got the right shoes, clothes, bike, bottles, earbuds, glasses, etc., and there's endless tinkering of workout and eating strategies. I feel it's just different than grabbing a glove to go play softball, having a basketball and shoes to play basketball, a racket for tennis or badminton, or just having a dobok for taekwondo or whatever else uniform for a martial art. Gear obsessions for ball sports or martial arts really only go so far. Endurance sports sort of favor tinkering of the body and gear because of the timelines in the sports and the idea, real or perceived, that every bit of gear matters. So participants in these sports become obsessed with this tinkering, which is obviously enabled by certain socioeconomic factors.
But in general I find endurance fitness is a broadly applicable skill that can take you to a lot of interesting places, geographically and psychologically. I find a lot of rich triathletes are gear and finishing time-obsessed and miss out on the spiritual or aesthetic aspects.
Like I also alluded to and someone else mentioned, certainly the more skill/team/ball sports can take their toll over the years. I myself have transitioned to taekwondo, which you can sort of manage to be more or less "impactful". There is also a personal bias in my generalization in that I personally simply get bored when taking walks, running, etc. Hiking can be okay depending on the destination. I simply enjoy the beauty of dynamic movement, which is why I have become rather drawn to taekwondo.
I know a number of very successful people who were not at all sporty in their youth but have taken up endurance sports as adults.
Playing team sports subjects you often to losing and it's also often pretty hard to improve objectively. Also if you haven't played a fair bit of sport in your youth it's probably hard to get good at them. Team sports are also hard in that training and games are on a schedule that may be hard to combine with work and family life.
With endurance sports you can work hard to improve your personal times.
Also many team sports are pretty bad from an injury point of view as you get older. Explosive speed and even the contact of football (soccer) or basketball can be an issue.
It'd be really interesting to see detailed stats about adult sport involvement vs income.
I think there's truth to that.
I was a high school athlete in medium distance events. About the only thing I learned was how to stretch, though I was recruited for the soccer team as a "role model" since the soccer coach saw me running laps. :)
I tell people that running or going to the gym for years on end is largely a waste of time because you don't learn a skill, like karate. (However, if you're in shape from running or lifting, it can help with karate.)
that’s the only theory notable enough for mention and just so happens it paints endurance athletes in a negative light…
How about this theory, those who don’t take up endurance sports don’t have the mental strength and dislike the meditative quality of them and instead favor short term gratification and rewards.
Of course that’s accurate for a subset just like the first theory was but a very gross generalization
Whereas with running I just put on shoes and leave the house.
You are comparing doing vs playing. In some languages there are two words for sport. One for game/competition and one for physical activity. Obviously there is physical activity in game but my point is: do not try to find game when there is not one. Anyway I have other anecdote. I've played sports since childhood but got bored with repetitive games and stayed with endurance sports because they offered excitement from new environments. It was not something I discovered as an adult. Running was basically second thing I did after I had learned walking.
There is obviously expensive gear with all those bikes/skis etc. But running really is low-hanging fruit of sports. Just tie your shoes, open the doors and you can just start.
It’s akin, I guess, to bodybuilding. You’re building a well-oiled machine (you). You’re tweaking your training plan and seeing how you respond. You monitor your resting HR and see it go down as you get fitter. It helps to go do the sport someplace picturesque.
While it’s true that you can spend any money on a bike, I bought my best bike for £180. Running is even cheaper, I buy a pair of shoes every 18 months or so for about £100 and that’s more or less it.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19025386
Once you get into your forties and fifties you can't compete or even play in many sports against people in their twenties due to fitness/energy and it may be hard to commit to a specific evening for a club night every week.
Running, Cycling, Swimming can be done at anytime, can get you outside, can be easy on ageing joints, and you can compete against/compare your performance against yourself (how much did I run last week?, how fast did I do my morning circuit compared with last month?). They are also pretty good aerobic exercises that let you live longer.
I participate in ultra endurance cycling. (1200km is my record!)
Most of the athletes are older, some participating into their 80s. It's a very time intensive sport so it's very hard to do with a young family. It's possible to do with just a bike so you see lower middle class people, but you'll also see upper middle class people with flashy bikes and all the gadgets.
It's hard, but mainly mental. Once you figure out the logistics it's just pedaling over and over and enjoying the scenery and either conversation or solitude depending on the ride.
The selection has something to do with needs of the group, but has also large random factor.
1. They missed out on high school sports and are circling back for the experience.
2. Fear of death. If I can do Death Valley to Whitney Portal, surely death is far from me!
3. Because they can. Most of us have joint issues or some other malady that keeps us from doing it.