Mad Science & Crossfit

So, I've discovered that my particular metabolism requires an unusually large amount of physical activity to achieve a considerable level of focus in my life. This focus, in turn, enables me to actually utilize the intelligence that my parents and teachers have always told me I'd possessed. Since I can no longer maintain daily extended periods of intense exercise, am I now supposed to simply sit back and embrace a return to life as I knew it? I used to worry about my career and the monetary/lifestyle changes that would occur if I were to halt my exercise routine. I am now beginning to worry about returning to a life of fog. One of my long time favorite animated features that played on television every year was entitled "The Point". It was a story about non conformity and the virtues of finding the assets to our own uniqueness. There's a line in that movie that perfectly reflects what life with ADD is like: "He who points in all directions, points nowhere at all". This week, for various reasons, I'd probably done less intense cardio than I've done in years. I don't like how I feel.

This whole process for me has never been anything more than a continual guessing game that either produced results or didn't. If I felt good, I'd simply try and look at my fitness and diet details and try and repeat it. This is how I'd determined that a diet of 40% carbs., 30% protein and 30% fat was optimal for me. Like so many significant discoveries in life, I'd stumbled upon this by compete accident and I'd refined it through trial and error.

This is however where "The Calorie Lab" becomes relevant. I need to experiment, report results and hopefully learn a few things about how my diet and exercise routines affect my mental acuity. I may determine that there are other ways of achieving focus, I may find that there's no way but through long bouts of intense cardio. What ever I determine though, I have no doubt that I'll become fitter and healthier in the experimental process!

Here's the plan:
Since I can't maintain the long, intense and daily levels of cardio anymore, I need to try something else. Perhaps what I see in the Crossfit methodology is a possible answer to my predicament. Is what's happening with me a simple matter of pushing calories to increase the blood flow to my brain or a way to satisfy a metabolism that needs intense and prolonged activity to achieve balance? I'm thinking it could be a level of "fitness", if you will, that automatically balances my body and regulates it in such a way that will naturally enable me to focus and return to a high level of functionality. I need to test my body in a methodical manner. I know, for example, that if I were to return to a 2-hr. a day regimen of intense cardio (from how I feel right now), I'd be back to a high functioning state in about a four to six weeks.

I intend to attempt to utilize Crossfit as a means of increasing my level of all around fitness to see if I can achieve a similar effect as I'd achieved with the long cardio emphasis. Since I'll be actually changing my body composition, a minimum period for the test would have to be 90 days. For the past month or so, I've been avoiding my Crossfit as I've had some major life decisions to make and I needed to be sharp. One thing I've learned over the past year is that long intense cardio and Crossfit do not mix well. After some of the more intense workouts such as "fran" ( 21,15,9 reps of Thrusters &  pull ups) I'd be intensely sore for 3, 4 or even 5 days afterwards and a simple easy swim would be extremely painful. I'd have to stop the long cardio sessions and when I was able to do so, I'd hesitate to return to Crossfit. A good example is from last Saturday when I did the "Murph" workout ( 1 mile run, 100 Pull Ups, 200 Push Ups, 300 Squats, 1 mile run). I only made it through half of the workout as prescribed before I had to scale it down (After 50 pull ups, 100 push ups and 150 squats I gave in to assisted pull ups) and I ultimately only finished 3/4 of it with 1/4 scaled. All the way through Wednesday I was still so sore, I couldn't do a single pull up. Getting off the couch was a major challenge! Pushups weren't much better and I forced myself to do pushups even though my arms and chest hurt like hell!  Bottom line is that I'm going to have to work through a couple of weeks of severe "Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness" (DOMS) with little intense cardio on the side. Hopefully my body will become accustomed to the breaking down and recovering of muscle. It'll be interesting (and disconcerting I'm sure) to see where my ADD will go in the process.

My blog will therefore appear scant in regards to the amount of activity I'm doing. I intend to attack the Crossfit with a 2 days on, 2 days rest approach until I feel I can go 3 days on 2 days rest and finally move on to the prescribed Crossfit standard of 3 days on, 1 day rest. This is not set in stone. If I have an easy week or my body is handling the workouts well, I could, theoretically do a 3 on 1 off next week... I'll ultimately be listening to my body. I'll continue to track my diet and workouts on the Livestrong website and I'll be adding to the daily "How do you feel?" portion of the food diary. ( I'm thinking of grading scale determined by the number of times I lose my keys on any one particular day! ;-)  )

I am again going to skip my weekly summary of activity except my Crossfit involvement.

Diet and other fitness details can be perused at: http://www.livestrong.com/thedailyplate/diary/who/Stairclimber_D/

Crossfit Workout #1
Wed. Still VERY sore from Sat. "Murph"
4 rounds of "Cindy" (5 Pull Ups (machine assisted), 10 Push ups, 15 Squats) & 120 flights of stairs with 100 Pushups ( 10 every 10 flights for the first 100 flights)
Sat. "Lumberjack 20"
20 Deadlifts (275lbs) - I did 175lbs
Run 400m
20 KB swings (2pood) -  I did 1pood (I think)
Run 400m
20 Overhead Squats (115lbs) - I did 35lbs ( I think)
Run 400m
20 Burpees
Run 400m
20 Pullups (Chest to Bar) - I did chin to bar
Run 400m
20 Box jumps (24")
Run 400m
20 DB Squat Cleans (45lbs each) I did 15# each.
Run 400m
32 minutes ( I think)
Sunday
4 rounds of 400m run.
10 Deadlift (125lb)
15 Wall ball (20lb)
19:30