You’re hanging from a cliff, iron in hand, the steam blowing into the abyss. This isn’t just regular ironing at home on a Sunday morning. It’s extreme.

This is no joke to Extreme Ironists, it’s their life. They do it underwater, on top of cliffs, while strapped to moving cars, in very big tall trees, hanging upside down from a tree, and in many other extreme places that are not your average ironing environments.

The sport was started in the United Kingdom by 31 year old Phil “Steam” Shaw. Shaw believes that extreme ironing should be an Olympic sport. “If you can have synchronized swimming, then why not extreme ironing?” Shaw is quoted as saying in the Toronto Sun.

In 2002, Germany made history by hosting the Extreme Ironing World Championships, where iron-ically a German by the name of Hot Pants scooped a gold medal.

The sport has made its way to the United States as well and is sweeping the nation. There was even a short segment about extreme ironing on Best Week Ever on VH1. It is all over YouTube and Facebook,

“The only reason I am not a gold medalist is because real sports (freeze tag and extreme ironing) are excluded from the Olympic Games,” Jim Chootypanya wrote on the Extreme Ironing group of Facebook.

Extreme ironists are frequently asked where the power for the iron comes from. “In the beginning Extreme Ironists used (very long) extension cords, but soon realized that unless they wanted to be limited by taking a generator with them, a new solution would be needed. Starch and Hotplate are the forefront for battery powered irons,” said one ironer on the extreme ironing website.

There are many groups on Facebook for extreme ironing, the largest has 350 members. It is popular with young and old, men and women. “I’ve got an ironing board for my dorm. I will be doing the ironing off the side of the building,” wrote Drew Gallucci from Oklahoma State.

But this sport is not without risks. Irons-a-lot, a Navajo Indian man from Arizona, said on one of his many extreme ironing outings his iron slipped and his iron burned his hand. But don’t let Irons-a-lot’s story discourage you from taking up extreme ironing. To find out more about extreme ironing, you can visit Phil “Steam” Shaw’s website “www.extremeironing.com” which features action photos of hardcore extreme ironists like deep sea diver Iron Lung, who dove 15 meters underwater into the Mediterranean with his iron in hand.