The way to understand sport in today\u2019s society possibly lies in increasingly building in humanistic approaches that provide explanatory and interpretive arguments about the phenomenon. This paper forms part of this line of research and is designed to lay down some of the basics of physically demanding sport from the perspective of social and cultural anthropology. Rooted in a vision of contemporary sport as a complete social fact and using a qualitative (observation and open interviews), analytical and documentary research methodology, its findings allow the inclusion of these emerging sports as a philosophy of life in its most existential sense.<\/p>\n\n