The system works by giving you honor depending on what rank you have. Based on this its upto the top player's on how much they want to punish you.
Every week your total honor will decay by 20%. So if you are rank 9 and you hardly play you will lose your rank and maybe fall to rank 7/8/6. After rank 8 your rise is very slow and this is where only the ultra hardcore stay on as even as one of the top 20 players on your server the increase will be very very small each week. 11-14 is basically taking on WOW PVP as your life(full time work is an understatement) for many many months. To have chance at the top ranks you need to hit the top 10 ranks every week.
I have reached rank 9 but its permanently put me off the game now since i ranked really high and my rank rose by only 20% in rank 9. Which means the rise gets smaller as you go up i dont think i should waste my life on something like this. A rank 11 player who is my freind always ranks top 10. His rank only rose by 8%. Which means it will take many months yet to reach rank 14. The top players on my server have other people play their accounts or honor farmers play their accounts to get high. You cant compete against them. Showed how messed up this game is after 60. Instead of providing new content Blizzard make people play old rubbish a million times over.
a program called rankplus i think will help calculate what you roughly need to do inorder to get the rank required. This program can save you from torturing yourself if you think you could do rank 10-14 but are mistaken.