Extreme Sports List

Here at Nerve Rush HQ, we’ve put together an unofficial extreme sports list for your viewing pleasure, in a never-ending attempt to catalog all-things-adrenaline.

In the past, cataloging an extreme sports list was easy — there wasn’t much to work with. A skateboard here and a parachute there. Now, curating a list of extreme sports is much more difficult, what with sports like bossaball, ZORB globe riding, WiSBASE and trampoline bridge jumping. I know, this whole extreme sports thing is getting a tad ridiculous. We love it.

Aside from keeping track of the new and zany fringe extreme sports, there’s the matter of opinion. Is skateboarding an extreme sport? What about open-water swimming? I imagine the level of extreme-ness matters, but even that can be arbitrary. Some sports are undoubtedly extreme, but many of them, well, it simply depends. Does hopping on a mountain bike and taking a nicely groomed single-track trail through the woods count as extreme? I’m not sure. But this gut-wrenching and insane video of a Chilean downhill race — THAT IS EXTREME. Don’t get me started with semantics.

I digress. Enough waxing philosophical — let’s get to the extreme sports list.

extreme sports list

Extreme Sports List | Nerve Rush

Water Extreme Sports

Freediving – Freediving is an underwater diving sport where the diver does not use oxygen but instead has to hold their breath until they resurface. You’re going to need to learn to pop your ears for this one!

Windsurfing

Kitesurfing / Kiteboarding - Kitesurfing is a water sport where you attach a large kite to your harness and use the kite to generate power and velocity to raise you out of the water. Once out of the water, you have a kitesurfing board (similar to a snowboard or wakeboard) attached to your feet in order to skim over the water.

Big Wave Bodyboarding

Kayaking

Surfing

Big Wave Surfing

Wakeboarding - Wakeboarding is a surface water sport where an athlete is pulled behind a boat or jetskit while riding a wakeboard – which is similar to a snowboard for water. It combines surfing, waterskiing and snowboarding techniques and skills.

Jet Skiing

Waterskiing – Waterskiing is being towed behind a boat or jet ski with a tow-rope and skiis attached to your feet to help you stay up and out of the water.

Barefoot Waterskiing – Barefoot waterskiing is exactly what it sounds like. It’s water skiing without skiis (better toughen up those feet!)

Kneeboarding

Skimboarding

Surfskiing

White Water Rafting

Bodyboarding

Jet Skiing

Parasailing - Parasailing is where an individual with a parachute is towed behind a water vehicle such as a motor boat and rises into the air. The passenger has little to no control over the parachute so you better trust your boat driver!

Powerboat Racing

Whitewater Rafting

Whitewater Kayaking

Stand Up Paddle boarding (SUP)

Scuba Diving

Extreme Skiing

Air Extreme Sports

Hang Gliding

Bungee Jumping/Bungy Jumping – Bungee Jumping is a sport where athletes jump off a (usually) fixed object such as a bridge, crane or building and fall towards the earth while attached to an long elastic cord that makes them bounce. Athletes have also been known to bungee jump off hot air balloons, helicopters – heck even James Bond did it in the Goldeneye video game (you know exactly what we’re talking about).

BASE Jumping – BASE jumping is one of the most extreme sports we know. Athletes hurl themselves off objects and pull a parachute before impacting the ground. BASE stands for buildings, antenna, spans (bridges), earth (cliffs & mountains) – the four main types of objects that athletes jump off of.

Ski Jumping

WiSBASE / Wingsuit Flying – Wingsuit flying is a variation of BASE jumping where athletes hurl themselves off cliffs or other high objects and then “fly” through the air using their wingsuits (sometimes called “flying squirrel suits”) only to pull their parachute before narrowly crashing into the ground.

Proximity Flying

Sky Surfing

Stunt Flying

Balloooning

Hot air ballooning – Familiar to Richard Branson adventure terrain. Fill a big balloon up with a ton of hot air, catch the wind currents and you’re off to the races. Get after it!

Parascending

Paramotoring

Microlight

Ultralight

Extreme Ironing

Skydiving - Jump out of a plane. Fall to the ground. Hopefully you’ll open up a parachute somewhere in between. Skydiving is one of the standard extreme sports. You gotta try it.

Indoor Skydiving - Want to skydive without jumping out of a plane? Indoor skydiving allows you to experience freefall indoors so there’s no need to hurl yourself out of a plane (or pee yourself for that matter).

Paragliding

Hang gliding

Sky surfing

Soaring

Gliding

Ball Extreme Sports

Bossaball

Sepak Takraw

Jai Alai

Biking Extreme Sports

Mountain Biking

Endurance Cycling

BMX

Unicycling

Motoring Extreme Sports

Motocross

Motorcycle Racing

Rallying

Potholing

Boarding Extreme Sports

Skateboarding

Longboarding – Longboarding is similar to skateboarding, but the boards used tend to be much longer (hence the name).

Sandboarding

All-Terrain Boarding

Snowboarding – Snowboarding is essentially skateboarding (minus the wheels), in the snow down a mountain. Snowboarding grew in popularity in the 1980s and became an olympic sport in 1998.

Luge

Flow boarding

Mountain Boarding

Street Luge - Street luge is very similar to luge, but instead of it being a winter sport, you do it whever you can find a street with a downhill long enough for your liking. Have fun.

Kneeboarding

All-Terrain Boarding – Off-road skateboarding

Freeboarding

Winter Extreme Sports

Skiing

Ski Joring

Heliskiing

Winter Alpinism

Snowmobiling

Snowskating

Skeleton

Dog sledding

Ski Joring - Ski Joring is skiing over snow while being pulled behind a vehicle or horse.

Kite skiing - Kite-skiing is like kitesurfing, except with skiis through the snow in the winter. Insane.

Snowcross

Dog sledding

Snow Cross

Skeleton Luge

Ski Boarding

Ski Jumping

Climbing Extreme Sports

Free Climbing

Rock Climbing

High-Altitude Mountaineering

Speed Climbing

Ice Climbing

Rappelling

Bouldering

Abseiling - Run down the side of a building while holding on to a rope with a harness attached. This might sound like suicide, but it’s actually quite fun (or so we’ve heard).

Via Ferrata

Overlanding

Mountaineering

Orienteering

Mountain Boarding

Balance Extreme Sports

Parkour – Parkour is the practice and discipline of efficient movement in, around and between obstacles. Parkour athletes are also called “traceurs.” PARKOUR!

Freerunning - Freerunning is similar to parkour (some consider it an off-shoot), but is more focused on creativity and individuality whereas parkour is more focused on speed and efficiency.

Slacklining – Slacklining is a balancing practice that involves a 1 inch nylon type webbing between 2 anchor points – usually trees. Athletes then use the dynamic attributes of the slackline (similar to a long skinny trampoline) to not only balance but complete impressive tricks, stunts and feats.

Stunt Pogo – Stunt Pogo is awesome. Imagine the X-games with a pogo stick. Athletes perform stunts and tricks with a pogo stick and can get up as high as 8 feet in the air. The sport began in 2004 and there’s been a world championship – Pogopalooza – every year since.

Aggressive Walking – Aggressive Walking is similar to both freerunning and parkour but is much less organized and there are far fewer rules. The only rule there seems to be for aggressive walking it to..uh..walk aggressively – jump off poles and poles and do spins if possible.

Slamball – Slamball is a version of “full-contact” basketball played on a court with 4 trampolines in front of each net

Canopying

Canyoning

Cave Diving

Spelunking

Breakdancing

Adventure Racing

Endurance Racing

Ultrarunning

Ultradistance Running

Triathlon - A triathlon is a swim, bike and run one after another. In triathlon, you can choose between a super sprint distance, a sprint distance, an olympic/international distance, a half distance (or half-Ironman), or a full distance (full Ironman) race. If you want to get started training for your first triathlon check out Impossible TRI.

Ironman - The Ironman is 140.6 miles of swimming biking and running. 2.4 mile swim. 112 mile bike ride and a full marathon – 26.2 miles – to finish it all off. Do you have what it takes to be an Ironman?

Pentathlon - The pentathlon is a modern sport that involves 5 disciplines – pistol shooting, epee fencing, 200m freestyle swimming, show jumping, and a 3km cross country run. Athletes are given a point score on each of the disciplines and the athlete with the highest score at the end of the 5 events wins.

Decathlon – A decathlon is a 10 sport initaitive that differs for men and women. For men, the decathlon consists of 100m sprint, long jump, shot put, high jump, 400m sprint, 110m hurdles, discus throw, pole vault, javelin throw and the 1500m race. For women, the decathlon consists of 100m sprint, discus throw, pole vault, javelin throw, 400m sprint, 100m hurdles, long jump, shot put, high jump, 1500m race. Athletes are given points based on their performance in each contest and the athlete with the highest number of points after the events wins.

Heptathlon

Fell Running

—

Yes, this extreme sports list is undeniably inconclusive. Help the Nerve Rush team by telling us what other extreme sports we should add at hq@nerverush.com. That would just be swell.