How Learning to Juggle Saved Me From 100 Burpees

As I mentioned described in excruciating detail in yesterday's post, on Sunday I need to do some post-testing for the CrossFit challenge.  In addition to the three different workouts that we have to perform, we each set our own individual goals that we'll be tested on.  My personal Challenge Goal, two consecutive double unders, had seemed achievable when I set it--but by last night, despite lots of practice every time I went to CrossFit for the past 6 weeks, things were looking grim.  The 100-Burpee penalty that would be assessed for failure to achieve one's Challenge Goal was looming.

So last night (actually, while I was lying awake at 3 am) I did some serious thinking.  By now I had realized that just continuing to do what I had been doing was not going to be successful. I had gotten some great advice from several of the SISU coaches, but I still was not able to get past one dub.  I had progressed from "feet completely stop moving after executing one dub" to "feet keep moving, but in single jumps"--and there it stopped.  It was just too hard, after landing from the first jump, to coordinate the slow, high jump with the quickly-spinning hands.  So I decided I needed to replicate my experience from learning to juggle as a 12-year-old.

My dad was a woodworker who sold his wares at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival every year, and thus my sister and I spent a lot of our childhoods watching jugglers and other performers.  At 12, I decided that I must learn to juggle.  So I bought the (very well-titled) book "Juggling for the Complete Klutz," which came with three little bean bag cubes to practice with, and I got going.

I achieved the first step, throwing two blocks from hand to hand in an "X," relatively quickly. And then, as with the dubs, things ground to a halt.  Try as I might I could not get the third block properly into orbit.  As soon as I tried to throw it I started freaking out about catching the other blocks, and instead of a nice "one, two, three" throwing count, my attempts always went something like "one, two, AAAAGGGH!"

I thought about it, and realized that I needed to separate the throwing pattern from the catching attempts, and get my hands used to the throwing pattern first.  In retrospect, I'm extremely proud of my 12-year-old self for figuring this out (and in retrospect I also see the seeds of what attracted me to special education, where I've spent the last 29 years of my employed life--I love figuring out how to teach something so someone can learn it).  So anyway, for days I just threw the blocks, one, two, three--and made no attempt to catch them.  Once the motor pattern of throwing was completely ingrained, I began attempting to catch--and it worked.  I could juggle!

So I brought this knowledge to bear on the dub situation.  I realized that I needed to separate the motor pattern from the actual act of jumping rope--and the only way to do this was to lose the rope.  I also realized that I needed to be able to see myself--my kinesthetic and proprioceptive senses do a poor job of telling my brain what my body is doing, so I needed to employ vision.  Thus, I would make my ropeless attempts in front of a mirror.  And with the plan firmly in place, I finally got back to sleep.

The next morning I got in front of the mirror, sans rope, and began jumping.  Two "phantom" singles, then a dub, then I watched myself in the mirror and told myself when to jump again--and it worked! I was able to jump slowly, in synch with my quickly spinning hands.  Well, at least, it worked without the rope.  So then I went out to the garage and tried it with the rope--and on my first attempt I did three consecutive dubs. Sweet! (As another benefit of the SISU challenge, I had to stop after three dubs because my pants--which had been too small for me to fit into when the challenge began six weeks ago--were falling down.)

Of course, it wouldn't be official if a coach didn't see me, so I was glad I was going to CrossFit later in the day so I could attempt my dubs in front of a witness.  And despite my fear that I might "choke" and regress to "single, dub, single, single, dub," I managed to do five in a row in front of not one, but two coaches.  Multiple times.  So as of today, I have achieved my Challenge Goal.

And that's how learning to juggle saved me from 100 Burpees.