Obstacle

An obstacle (also called a barrier, impediment, or stumbling block) is an object, thing, action or situation that causes an obstruction. Different types of obstacles include physical, economic, biopsychosocial, cultural, political, technological and military. As physical obstacles, we can enumerate all those physical barriers that block the action and prevent the progress or the achievement of a concrete goal. Examples: architectural barriers that hinder access to people with reduced mobility; doors, gates, and access control systems, designed to keep intruders or attackers out; large objects, fallen trees or collapses through passageways, paths, roads, railroads, waterways or airfields, preventing mobility; sandbanks, rocks or coral reefs, preventing free navigation; hills, mountains and weather phenomena preventing the free traffic of aircraft; meteors, meteorites, micrometeorites, cosmic dust, comets, space debris, strong electromagnetic radiation or gravitational field, preventing a spacecraft from navigating freely in space. In sports, a variety of physical barriers or obstacles were introduced in the competition rules to make them even more difficult and competitive: in the athletics, there are barriers in obstacle running contests of 110 meters and 3000 meters, as well as in high jump and in pole vault; in equestrian competitions, there are also jumps over obstacles; in tennis and volleyball, a net stands as an obstacle that divides the court; in the cycling, motorcycle and motor racing, circuit designs are interposed with difficult paths to obstruct and render more difficult the competition; in team sports, like soccer, football, basketball and volleyball, attack players are hampered by defensive players, that make it difficult to move or throw the ball towards the goal; in other sports, such as Parkour, the competitor aims to move from one point to another in the most fluid and fast as possible, jumping obstacles of urban architecture that get in the way.