Joe Decker is an UltraRunner, Strongman Competitor and Guinness World Record Holder. He will be blogging for us here at Search For The Ultimate Athlete. Welcome. Joe!
Who is the Ultimate Athlete? And how do you determine this? This a question that has undoubtedly been pondered from the beginning of time. The Bible had Sampson, the Greeks had Hercules and even the Vikings had Beowulf. Throughout time this person has had to have enormous strength, be fleet of foot, and have unstoppable drive and determination. I do feel that these characteristics are pretty much timeless. We still look to our top level athletes to possess these qualities. Today we have Tiger, Lance and even Lebron, but which one is the Ultimate Athlete?
Having a degree in Exercise Science and having a broke a Guinness World Record for Fitness, I do know that we would look for an athlete that possessed cardiovascular endurance, muscular endurance and strength, flexibility and a low body fat percentage. But this is only the fitness component of it. If we judged it totally by these criteria, it would be hard to argue against Olympic Decathlon Gold Medalist, Bryan Clay. He has all the above and more. That being said, I do think to be the Ultimate Athlete that this person must have more than just extreme fitness but also have incredible athletic skills. The ability to be not necessarily great at just one thing but very good at many different disciplines. I truly feel the only way to determine this and put a halt to the speculation is to put these athletes head-to-head and find out once and for all, “Who is the Ultimate Athlete?!”
