"Michael"
800m Run
50 Situps
50 Back Extensions
3 rounds for time.
Last night at 10pm, while we were trying to coax my 1-year-old to sleep, I checked the WOD and the Catalyst email box. I found this, from Simon Jones. Enjoy.
“The Wall”
It’s a term that can encompass every situation that life can throw at you. From financial constraints, production at work, to mental well-being. It’s there in the basics of everyday life: fighting traffic, politely dismissing those annoying telemarketing calls, and walking past that house where the dogs snarl and bark at you every single day.
It can sap the strength of the strongest weightlifters. Discourage the efforts of entire teams. It can even stop highly trained and elite soldiers right in their tracks.
As both an intellectual and physical barrier, the “wall” can be devastating. People wither and buckle, their motivation is weakened, and their level of discomfort skyrockets. They feel as though they’ve lost control.
Dozens of times at Crossfit, about halfway into a WOD, the “wall” has come calling on me. As I stand ready to clutch the bar for the next reps, my body begins to plead with me to stop. Everything seems to slow down. The stinging sensation in my eyes from sweat seems stronger than ever. The pulse of my heartbeat is so prominent it feels like the organ has somehow relocated to my ear. I can see the red digits of the clock ticking away out of the corner of my eye, and vaguely hear those around shouting at me to continue. I’m a long way from being comfortable, and that voice inside my head is growing louder: “Enough!”
Back in 1947, the U.S. Air Force took on one of the greatest “walls” in modern history. Until that time, planes flying at ordinary speeds in level flight would handle perfectly. But when pilots put them in a high speed dive, they would experience severe buffeting and control problems that led to several deaths. The sound barrier was a very deadly wall.
The U.S. Air Force employed the Bell X-1 to solve the issue high over the Mojave Desert in Southern California. They chose Chuck Yeager as its pilot, and had the aircraft designed with a special emphasis on aerodynamics. They learned that as the aircraft approached the speed of sound, shock waves were creating an aerodynamic shadow around the rear of the plane, leading to a loss of control. So they adapted.
The horizontal tail controls were changed, allowing Yeager to control aircraft’s ability to pitch up and down. The night he broke the sound barrier, Yeager had his own wall to encounter. He had broke two ribs when he was thrown from the back of his horse the night before. When he climbed into the X-1, he was in too much pain to secure the latch of the canopy. If he disclosed his injury, he wouldn’t be allowed to fly. So he adapted. He had a friend pass him a shortened section of broomstick, which Yeager used to keep the canopy shut. He then blasted through the wall of sound into history.
The “wall” never seems to be far from the surface. It hangs over us, almost looming, ready to pounce at the most inconvenient time.
At Crossfit, I know that almost every time I attempt a WOD, I will be encountering the “wall”. We all do. And it’s not so much when we encounter this barrier that is important. It’s how we react. It’s how we adapt.
And that’s what Crossfit has taught me the most. It’s why I’ll bend down to grab that bar and keep on going despite my discomfort. More important than the time, the technique, or anything else, I know I can push through the “wall” and finish. Crossfit forces each one of us to face our weaknesses, accept them, and defeat them. I can adapt. And the people crowded around yelling at me know that too. It’s something that I can take and apply to all those other situations in life. That’s why I like Crossfit the most.
Oh yeah, it’s also inspired me to write my first little essay since I graduated from university and college.