Use it or you WILL lose it
Last Tuesday I had a late physio appointment so I called into the gym to get changed and roll around on the floor with a ball to kill some time.
The crossfit kids class was just starting so while I was lying on the ground making ugly faces I watched the class to see what kind of things Miss 5 would be doing next year when she starts the after school sessions.
I watched a boy who stood at the base of one of the ropes. I’m not entirely sure how old he was because I only know what 4 and 5 year olds look like because I have one of each, but at a guess he would have been between 8 and 10 years of age.
The boy grabbed the rope and climbed up and down legless (with ease), not just once but a few times before a couple of other boys came to join him, one of those boys was in a cast. The boy in the cast climbed the rope with a foot bite then decided (as boys do) to try climbing the rope legless with one arm. He failed but that didn’t stop the other boys from giving it a crack too.
As I watched them I thought to myself;
At what age do you forget how to climb a rope?
You see legless rope climbs were included in Saturday’s competition class at HPU and there were only a few of us who could do them and yet here are these boys making it look easy.
Sure kids are lighter than an adult so they are pulling up less weight, but they’re also not as strong, it’s all relative right?
Is it because as we age we realize that the higher we climb the greater the risk and the more it’s going to hurt if we fall?
I mean I’m pretty sure I only know 2 people who would attempt to climb a rope with only 1 arm (and I’m actually quite sure they would accomplish it) but most of us “normal folk” wouldn’t even try – right?
As we age, have we replaced the fear of “the monster under the bed” with a fear in our own capabilities?
Who knows ..
I do however know there are things I could do as a kid that I can’t now, some of that has to do with the “use it or lose it” principle, I can’t do the splits now because my body is not as limber as it was when I did the splits (and other gymnastics movements) often.
But mostly it’s because I’m a big chicken who doesn’t want to fall from a great height while trying to do one arm rope climbs 😉
Till next time
