The Sign on the Wall

"The gym block is killing me." Roc stated this with heaviness.
"Aw, are you not able to keep up with the kids?" I teased him. Roc had always been sporadic with workouts, and now he had to run every single day in the Academy. Apparently, even though he thought I was a major pain in the A as his trainer, the instructors at the Academy were really pushing them, far worse than I had ever been. Plus he couldn't yell back at them.
"Seriously...I can't breathe." He made a hand gesture that signified that he was done.
"What do you mean?" This caught my attention.
"I feel like there's a one hundred pound weight on my chest. Every time I run, I end the run wheezing, sucking air like nothing you've ever seen." He shrugged, pulled a face, then continued. " I didn't think I was that out of shape. THEN there's the friggin' signs all over the wall...every day I walk in, I've got these signs, staring me down, reminding me the date of the JST."
The JST is the Jobs Standardized Test, and in this case it basically stood for passing the Obstacle Course, which included getting over the fence and wall.
The written tests were no big deal for Roc. He held a college degree, owned a successful business, and is considered incredibly smart in general. While all the other people in his Company were stressing about that, he hadn't given it a second thought. But the physical part was trying, and he was discouraged every time he thought about it, or in his case, every time he saw the sign on the wall.