Extreme sports can be a difficult thing to understand from the outside.
If you have never felt that impulse for thrill-seeking and adrenaline-inducing activities, then it’s easy to be confused about the appeal.
There’s a risk of serious injury or even death in almost all major extreme sports—that’s the whole point, after all.
So, are they really worth the risk?
The answer is going to depend on you as a person. Thrill seekers engage in extreme sports, at least indirectly, precisely because they are risky. Without the risk factor, there would be no real thrill. But you can end up with broken bones and permanent injuries that prevent you from doing anything at all, let alone just sports.
Clearly, people enjoy extreme sports, and there will always be a market for this kind of thing.
If everyone was dying all the time during these sports, then obviously no one would run the risk except the most extreme adrenaline junkies.
But you’ve got to ask yourself if you’re prepared to deal with the consequences.
Why should extreme sports be worth the risk?
This is not an easy question to answer.
As I said, the answer is simply going to be different for each person, and you can only arrive at your own answer through a great deal of self-reflection.
Let’s look at why extreme sports could be worth the risk.
There is a spectrum of extreme sports, with relatively safe activities at one end, to extremely dangerous activities at the other.
For instance, we might consider something like skydiving an extreme sport.
However, the fatality rates are incredibly low—around 1 for every 100,000 jumps ends in death.
For some people, skydiving is their whole life.
They live and breathe the thrill of the jump and couldn’t live without it.
The same is true of any enthusiast of any extreme sport.
Obviously, the risk is well worth it for them.
But it’s easy to understand the other side of the argument, too.
Extreme sports, some more so than others, come with serious risks of enduring injury.
You might become paralyzed, you might lose limbs, and, of course, many extreme sports come with a serious risk of death.
This affects not just the participant, but their family and loved ones, too.
But extreme sports are like many other things in the sense that there’s no hope of arguing it away.
People enjoy and devote their lives to these activities.
You can’t quarrel with love in this way.
So, great importance ought to be placed in education and safety.
What about for kids?
Are extreme sports worth it for kids?
Well, there certainly are benefits for kids.
Any outdoor activity has a whole range of benefits for kids that enjoy that sort of thing.
Fresh air, physical activity, and keenness to try new things are all good benefits of extreme sports.
However, the risks are also always greater, too.
Kids are far more likely to have an accident during extreme sports, and far more likely to suffer worse injuries as a result.
The benefits of extreme sports are, also, mostly found in other sports and activities, too.
Of course, affinities for certain extreme sports do very commonly start in early childhood, and parents have every right to nurture such a passion.
Again, it’s about emphasizing the importance of safety and responsibility.
We want to encourage safe sports, especially in the case of extreme sports.
However, you also shouldn’t try to push your child into enjoying something that you do if they don’t seem to want to.
Extreme sports can be very scary for children.
So, it’s really an individual decision for the parents.
What risks do extreme sports athletes take?
It depends on the sport, of course, but the risks are about as extreme as you could expect from any sport.
Death, paralysis, loss of limbs, head injuries and resulting brain conditions—there are many injuries you can sustain while engaging in extreme sports that preclude your ability to experience that sport ever again.
This is horrifying to many extreme sports people, since, as I said, it can be their life.
But any such athlete must also understand the dangers involved. No one wants to get injured, but no one, no matter how careful or experienced, can ever completely reduce the risk of extreme sports.
Should we ban extreme sports?
Naturally, there are many who think extreme sports should be banned.
However, even in the most technical legal sense, there isn’t much of a pathway to this.
It would be extremely unpopular as a political move, denying many consenting adults the ability to take risks as they deem fit for themselves.
Many would see these risks in the same light that, say, smoking cigarettes or drinking alcohol.
Outlawing these things doesn’t work, as it also doesn’t for illegal drugs.
Banning extreme sports would just mean people continued to do them in less safe conditions.
Again, there should be initiatives for education and safety in such activities, not bans.
It’s a difficult question, then. Injuries associated with extreme sports are no joke, not to mention the fatality figures.
You have to ask yourself if the potential risk of lifelong injury is worth the thrill ride.
Some people, just live for it, and couldn’t imagine life without such sports.
If you’re considering getting into any extreme sport, that is a conversation you must have with yourself, first of all, but also with your family and loved ones.
