9 ms·

Why Do Rich People Love Endurance Sports?

39 points by redwoolf 5y ago

mogadsheu 5y ago
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.
chiefalchemist 5y ago
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. Sad. But true.
- coldtea 5y ago
  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.
- GaryTang 5y ago
  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.
version_five 5y ago
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.
- coldtea 5y ago
  >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.
  - version_five 5y ago
    > Family, education, connections, lucky breaks, friendly favours 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.
- idiotsecant 5y ago
  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.
Iefthandrule 5y ago
Sounds like the setup of a joke whose punchline is "So they can dodge paying taxes better."
karaterobot 5y ago
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.
hogFeast 5y ago
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.
- Justin_K 5y ago
  Are you serious or joking? That's like saying rich people diet so they know what it's like to be hungry.
bmitc 5y ago
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 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.
- sien 5y ago
  This is a really interesting take. 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.
whateveracct 5y ago
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.
tqi 5y ago
The top comment thread from the last time this was posted[1] pretty succinctly explains why the premise of the article is wrong. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19025386 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19025386
lmm 5y ago
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, ...).
helsinkiandrew 5y ago
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.
- TrueGeek 5y ago
  This is very accurate. 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.
swader999 5y ago
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.
schwartzworld 5y ago
All I know is I started to run because I couldn't really afford to pay for a gym.
watwut 5y ago
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.
elzbardico 5y ago
I should be poor then. Because I absolutely, completely abhor pain in any form.
supperburg 5y ago
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.
pmdulaney 5y ago
I attribute the popularity of endurance sports with Boomers (whether rich or not) to three things: 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.

39 points by redwoolf 5y ago

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.

chiefalchemist 5y ago

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. Sad. But true.

coldtea 5y ago
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.
GaryTang 5y ago
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.

version_five 5y ago

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.

coldtea 5y ago
>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.
- version_five 5y ago
  > Family, education, connections, lucky breaks, friendly favours 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.
idiotsecant 5y ago
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.

Iefthandrule 5y ago

Sounds like the setup of a joke whose punchline is "So they can dodge paying taxes better."

karaterobot 5y ago

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.

hogFeast 5y ago

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.

Justin_K 5y ago
Are you serious or joking? That's like saying rich people diet so they know what it's like to be hungry.

bmitc 5y ago

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 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.

sien 5y ago
This is a really interesting take. 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.

whateveracct 5y ago

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.

tqi 5y ago

The top comment thread from the last time this was posted[1] pretty succinctly explains why the premise of the article is wrong. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19025386 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19025386

lmm 5y ago

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, ...).

helsinkiandrew 5y ago

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.

TrueGeek 5y ago
This is very accurate. 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.

swader999 5y ago

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.

schwartzworld 5y ago

All I know is I started to run because I couldn't really afford to pay for a gym.

watwut 5y ago

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.

elzbardico 5y ago

I should be poor then. Because I absolutely, completely abhor pain in any form.

supperburg 5y ago

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.

pmdulaney 5y ago

I attribute the popularity of endurance sports with Boomers (whether rich or not) to three things: 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.