Page 31 - Demo

www.MOSTmag.com || FITNESS MAG A ZINE || 31MFM: Every athlete who is a CrossFit competitor has a %u201cmoment of realization%u201d story about when they decided that CrossFit was something for them. What were you doing during your moment, and what made you realize that CrossFit was for you?SH: CrossFit training is about functional fitness, and I have been training this %u201cold school%u201d way, albeit not at this intensity, when I lived in New York for almost 35 years. So my %u201caha%u201d moment with CrossFit happened after I moved to LA, the first time I walked into Paradiso%u2019s Gym, my first exposure to CrossFit and still, my local gym: a big open space to move around in, with pull-up bars, barbells and weights on the perimeter and some ropes and rings hanging from the ceiling. MFM: You started training at Paradiso%u2019s Gym to keep yourself fit for future mountain climbing expeditions. With mountain climbing being one of the most dangerous athletic activities on the planet, requiring superior strength and endurance levels, what about CrossFit made you see qualifying at CrossFit Games as your next %u201cEverest%u201d?SH: I don%u2019t think of mountain climbing as especially dangerous. It is likely that driving a car or drinking sugary drinks are greater threats to life than climbing. You just read more about climbing deaths because they are dramatic. But qualifying for the CrossFit Games is, to me, like aspiring to climb Everest because both are lofty ambitious huge goals, and achieving them requires many months of planning, occasional setbacks which take some problem solving to work around, immense physical effort, and personal discipline. MFM: You have worked with several trainers to help you prepare just before the CrossFit Games. When you first started, and later, which areas of training gave you the most challenges, and which areas did you surprise yourself?SH: While I have always trained for strength and endurance (which served me well for climbing mountains, riding rodeo and distance kayaking and SUP), I didn%u2019t possess any particular physical skills at all before I decided to try and qualify for the Crossfit Games: for example, I couldn%u2019t do a pullup and I had never tried Olympic Weightlifting. I sought out professional help to learn these skills, because I DID have the sense to realize that improvement was not just a matter of getting stronger. There was considerable skill involved. So, at first, gymnastics and weighlifting were my least favorite things to train, because they were my weaknesses. The biggest surprise came when my feelings shifted, and now gymnastics and Olympic Lifting are my favorite activities. It is no coincidence that I have become much more skilled in both disciplines%u2026MFM: Some of the summits where you%u2019ve climbed, have an on-site grave yard for climbers who%u2019ve perished and get buried there due to the difficulty of getting them off the summit and back home. Did you ever have any close call moments which made you think that you might not make it home?SH: I came close to dying on Everest in 1996, at 26,000 feet, after becoming stranded without food, water or supplemental oxygen on descent in a blinding and fierce snowstorm which prevented me and other members of my team from getting back to our tents and supplies. Many people who were members of other summit teams perished that night, but all of the group I was with survived and without injury. I have always attributed our survival to the strength of the individuals I climbed with, and the fact that we, unlike the others on the mountain that night, stuck together and continued to function as a team, even when the conditions became dire. To this day, I remain deeply respectful and grateful to all of my teammates on that expedition. >>>