Physical duress slows the passage of time

With Mr. Stuart still away because of the Haganah conference in Florida, Monday’s combat fitness was run by Greg and Matt, two young dudes who seem to never pass up the chance to do pushups and pull-ups. I don’t know what Greg’s story is, but I know Matt is training to become a Special Forces operator and no physical challenge seems to be too much for him. After workouts that leave me battered and drained and sitting in a chair for a few minutes in order to collect my strength for the walk home, Matt is already out the door for a run. When I realized they were in charge for the night I thought, this is bad. But of course I meant bad in a good way like, “Holy crap, they’re going to destroy us.”

They didn’t disappoint. Instead of our typical 30 seconds work, 30 seconds rest, we did 60 seconds work, 30 seconds rest and went through each exercise twice with a special group exercises in between the two laps of the circuit and at the end of the second lap.

I can tell you that doing pull-ups for a minute sucks. Not that I can do pull-ups for the entire minute, but doing as many as I can and then hanging on to the bar for dear life is no fun. It’s this type of exercise where I have to play mind games with myself in order to endure the full minute. Physical duress alters the passage of time. It slows it to a crawl, sometimes it even stops completely. The only thing I could do to not let my feet touch the ground was to imagine that I was hanging from a 1,000-foot ledge and to let go of the bar meant certain death. I died my first time on the pull-up bar; the second time  around made it. 

The group exercises we did after the first lap consisted of two minutes of abdominal destruction with no rest: flutter kicks, V splits, leg raises, and toe-touch crunches. The group exercise at the end of the second lap was pushups. These were done ladder-down style. Do 10, then 9, then 8 …

It was a great class, once it was over. Having guys 18 years younger than me instructing was a definite challenge.