Some background.
Victor Assaf started CrossFit at twenty-years-old when his brother finally convinced him to give it a go. He loved it, particularly the weightlifting component. He got really strong, really fast. He caught the competition bug immediately, making his sole purpose to qualify for the CrossFit Games.
An accident changes everything.
Driving home from a Strongman competition in which he had just podiumed, Victor lost control of his motorcycle on a bridge. His body slammed into a light pole, making impact at his right shoulder. The crash damaged three cervical vertebrae and put him in a coma.
After 10 hours of surgery, Victor emerged alive but permanently affected; He had lost motor function and sensation in his right arm. The surgeon told him to forget about CrossFit. “I started crying. I collapsed inside,” he said.
Just seven months later, Victor decide he wouldn’t heed the doctor’s advice any longer and he returned to CrossFit. “I had to invent my own way of doing CrossFit so I wouldn’t get injured doing everything with one arm,” he said. But Victor figured it out, getting back into the swing of things and rekindling the fuel to compete too.
Competing again.
Victor just competed at Wodapalooza last weekend, placing sixth in the RX Men Adaptive Standing division. “I don’t consider the accident a bad thing…What happened that day made me see things more clearly and with a different perspective…with one arm I can reach a lot more people than I did with two.”
By Jessica Danger from Morning Chalk Up
