Skating to me is more of a skill than necessarily a barometer of how "hard" a sport is. I think both soccer and hockey are some of the toughest sports out there to play from a fitness standpoint. Lots of stops and starts, with a random mix of medium/high bursts of energy, which is to me much harder than a consistent medium-level effort.
The thing that I think makes soccer a little harder physically is that there's greater distances to cover, without the aid of gliding, and that there are (almost) no line changes (although they can rest a bit when the action is elsewhere).
|