By Emily Byrd//Staff Writer

Some days, your favorite sports just start to seem a bit mundane. For me, it happened when I was running sprints on the same loop in my neighborhood, at the same time of day as always, in my favorite T-shirt (which is starting to look a little too well-loved). I sprinted back home, turned off a rerun of last night’s game and started searching for inspiration. Now, my fellow adventurers, I share with you some of my discoveries. I hope these screwball sports will get your hearts beating once more.

Buzkashi (Afghanistan)

After being banned during the Taliban regime, Afghanistan’s national sport is back in full swing. And what they’re swinging is a dead goat carcass. That’s right, “buzkashi” can be literally trans-lated as “goat grabbing” or “goat bashing.” Athletes compete on horseback to gain control of the headless carcass placed in the center of the ring and carry it to the scoring area. Heavy protec-tive gear is needed to shield players from the other rides’ boots and whips. Oh, and from the flail-ing limbs of the lifeless goat. That too.

Seepak Takraw (Southeast Asia)

This is what happens to a game of volleyball when Chuck Norris gives it a roundhouse kick to the face. To get the ball over the 5-foottall net, athletes are allowed to use their feet, knees, chest, or head—just not their hands. Seepak Takraw, native to Southeast Asia, is even included in elementary and high school curriculum in the Philippines. The sport was originally used to help athletes limber up and improve dexterity sans competition, which makes sense once you’ve seen someone deliver a spike with an over-the-head kick.

Muni (Across the Globe)

No back wheel, no gears and no circus jokes allowed. MUni, otherwise known as mountain unicycling, combines the power and endurance required in mountain biking with the finesse and bal-ance needed to unicycle. Mental concentration and core strength are key when every tree root can easily unseat a distracted rider. Not only do these athletes have to constantly keep an eye on the ground ahead, but they also have to be constantly pedaling, since unicycles are direct drive and won’t continue without a pair of legs to keep the wheel circling around. These unicycles are outfitted with rugged frames and high-grip pedals that transform their “quirky” aesthetic into something much more daunting. So finish that set of crunches, hit the trail, and be undaunted.

Fierljeppen (Netherlands)

Translated as canal jumping, this sport began and still thrives in the Netherlands, where it was originally used to make navigating the many waterways — there are 165 canals in Amsterdam alone — more time-efficient. Participants use 8-to-13-meter-long poles modified with a flat round plate at the bottom to traverse the muddy waters. Although Fierljeppen is mostly practiced now only to entertain tourists, there’s still an intense national championship held once a year in the Netherlands. The current overall record holder is Bart Helmholt, who leaped a distance of 21.51 meters in the 2011 Dutch Championships. There is not yet a consensus on whether this counts as jaywalking.

Parkour (France)

Watching parkour aficionados flip, vault and twist feels like watching a high-energy dance rou-tine. The oddity lies in the setting: The stage can be the stairwell of a parking garage or the roof of your office building. That’s the beauty of it. This sport combines travel (getting from point A to point B as efficiently as possible), athleticism and artistic expression. Otherwise known as freerunning, parkour was developed by French actor David Belle after he served in the French military and spent three months studying kung fu in India. By combining his knowledge of both performance and martial arts with his familiarity of military obstacle-course training, Belle created a sport he believes to be one of the freest forms of expression, written out as poetry in motion on an urban landscape.