A Special Kind of Crazy

Your heart is racing at 200 beats per minute, pounding in your ears. You're struggling so hard to get enough oxygen into your bloodstream that your eyes open extremely wide as though you can absorb just a little more air through them. The palms of your hands begin to tear and bleed, making it difficult to grip anything. Your shoulders are getting battered and bruised from the constant pounding, and the impact eventually wears away the top layer of skin. But you don't feel any of this, thanks to the adrenaline pumping through your veins. When it's all finally over, however, your knees will buckle from the effort of standing, and you will lie on the ground for minutes, rolling from side to side, hoping that the pain will go away soon. And the only coherent thought that you can form is, “Why the hell did I just do that?!” Yet you know that when the next day rolls around, you will do it again.

This is Crossfit. It is not for everyone.

Crossfit is a high intensity combination of fast, functional weight lifting, body-weight strength training, and sprinting. It's specialization is not specializing. Athletes who train with Crossfit are able to apply their fitness in the widest spectrum of modalities, from varsity and collegiate sports to urban combat in one hundred and twenty degree weather. In the words of Robert Heinlein, “A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

What turns most people away from Crossfit is the insane level of effort that is put into every single workout. I have been an athlete my entire life, going from 8 years of competitive swimming to 4 years of martial arts. My first Crossfit workout was the most painful and physically challenging experience of my athletic career. And the second one was even harder. But enough talk. The following videos will show what I mean when I say that it takes a special kind of crazy.

The first is of Josh Bridges getting a world record on one of the most notorious Crossfit workouts: Fran. One will notice with some research that many of the workouts have girls names. Like hurricanes.



This next video was taken at the second annual Crossfit Games in Aromas, California. In it, Kallista Pappas (initially in the background) is finishing thirty repetitions of the 100 lb clean and jerk olympic lift after dropping the bar on her knees. Oh, did I mention that Kallista is 14 years old?



Now imagine going into every workout, five days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, with the level of intensity shown by these athletes. It is what we do. If you have never seen a Crossfit workout in person before, I encourage you to find a local Crossfit gym and take a look. And even if you don't think that you are capable of it, you just might find that somewhere deep inside you, you have that special kind of crazy necessary to participate.

I Think, Therefore I Am Correct

"Never say 'I' in an essay. Ever."
-Guy Everyman, Ubiquitous English Teacher

In this modern day and age, a high school student who has never been told some variation of that rule is one in a million. And yet, today's discussion in my English class about the appropriate and effective use of the first person--namely the phrase "I think"--got me thinking about the nature of arguments, and people's unwillingness to acknowledge the validity of those that contradict their own.
The most widely preached model for a thesis is the one that boldly makes a declaration, leaving no doubt in the reader's mind about the confidence of the author, and no room for compromise. And yet the spoken argument that is most likely to leave listeners who have a contradictory opinion stubbornly clinging to their own ideal out of spite for the speaker's arrogance does exactly the same. I personally pride myself on my ability to interact with others, and I have always found that the first step to bringing someone around to my way of thinking is convincing them that their thoughts are valid and insightful, if not downright correct. And because the typical highschooler's essay follows the format of presenting an argument and supporting it, it is no less crucial to acknowledge the reader's right to disagree with the declarations; and there are few better ways to do this than simply inserting the phrase "I think" as a preface. Once the reader is satisfied that the author's opinion could potentially be naive, false, and in every way inferior to his own, his ego is satisfied and will sit the rest of the argument out, allowing his rational side to interpret the information objectively.