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Comment by erfgh | Hacker News Reader

Actually no, most physical sports are not like that because the human body has limits and exceeding them is counter-productive because it leads to injuries.

Most professional soccer players spend about 1-2 hours per day on training. Off-season they will spend slightly more but that's only for about 3-4 weeks.

Doing anything more leads to injuries.

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1-2 hours of training per day is incredibly low for a professional athlete. Professional cyclists are on the bike for over half the day, and there is even more work to be done on active recovery and strength training. Even runners, who are more limited by their body than nearly any other sport, spend 15+ hours a week just on running. It's a full time job.

I agree, there's no way professional soccer players only practice 1-2 hours a day. I'd guess 1-2 in the gym plus another few hours at least actually practicing soccer. Even something that's fairly brutal like American football involves an hour or two per day in the gym, plus practice. Professional athletes figure out how to practice as much as possible in a way that doesn't lead to long-term injury and "as much as possible" is almost always way more than a couple hours per day.

I also agree. There's a common tendency to overtrain to injury in sports, and it's mostly self-driven, even at amateur level. You look at people training something strenuous every single day, and you'll see a bunch of people who are constantly working around minor injuries, looking for a way to keep getting in the practice. The proliferation of PEDs in sports is not just about enhancing the on-field outcomes but also a quest to recover from this intense, high-volume training faster.

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