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'American Ninja Warrior' Sandy Zimmerman says Covid-19 isolation taught her how to 'still stay connected'

'We would constantly test before we could even fly out, test again when we got there, and test every like two or three days,' she recalled

Sandy Zimmerman is easily one of the best ninja warriors out there. In 'American Ninja Warrior' Season 11, she made history as the first mother to run up the warped wall and hit the buzzer. She returned to Season 12 with equal vigor and qualified for the semis. But it wasn't a walk in the park. Even though Sandy placed outside the leaderboard, she was able to proceed to the next round because after each qualifier three women would go on to the semis.

In an interview with MEA WorldWide (MEAWW), Sandy elaborated on how staying isolated and getting tested frequently impacted her time on the show. "We would constantly test before we could even fly out, test again when we got there, and test every like two or three days," she described and pointed out that staying away from people and limited interaction tends to mess with one's head.

"And so luckily I think there's still a lot of ways that we can still connect and whether that's through conversations on the phone or text messages or social media, just finding ways to stay connected to people in the strange time and going into this I think that was huge for us like how can we still stay connected even though we can't physically be around other people and that was a lifeline for us and just reaching out then, I thought okay let's get out of our own head," she said.

But there were upsides to the situation as well, Sandy said. She added that it gave everyone enough and more time to reflect upon themselves. Technology eats up into our daily space and it's easy to stay plugged into phones all of our waking hours. But the isolation during Covid-19 helped her to choose a quiet corner and collect her thoughts. 

Sandy concluded her interview by sharing a few thoughts about how her journey on the show has made her grateful for a lot of things in life and how this realization came from her finding herself some downtime. Catch all the new episodes of 'American Ninja Warrior' Season 12 every Monday on NBC.