Crosffit and Cardio

Yesterday a reader Ryan, posted a comment about sticking to a single plan for 30 days to see if it really works, and that I was making a false connection between Crossfit and my lack of weight loss because other factors were in flux during the same time period namely parts of my diet.

 I want to make it clear that first I am a believer in the Crossfit methodology, and can physically feel the gains I’ve had in muscular strength and power.  Having said that I think the level of intensity involved with Crossfit workouts is one that requires more frequent rest, and bit of autoregulation.  The benefit to the methodology is highly predicated with the quality of the work output.  If I’m only putting in 80% of my ability at Crossfit whether it is through a slower pace, or lighter weight I’m not truly getting the full benefits of the systems that they teach. 

There is a place where I can incorporate active recovery with my Crossfit work, that active recovery being steady state cardio, and stretching.

Further I have yet to see a case of anyone who has solely used Crossfit to lose more than 100 lbs, I have seen hundreds of people who have lost 20-40 lbs, or even maintained the same body weight yet completely transformed their body composition.  All impressive feats, but in the game of weight loss like the game of life scale, and scope mean everything. 

I’ve been trying to put this feeling to words, that losing the amount of weight I have lost and still need to lose is almost like trying to pull an over encumbered cart through the desert over sand dunes, short quick sprints to pull the cart just aren’t going to get the job done. 

As my personal game plan and methods evolve I realize a combination of the two worlds of Crossfit and steady state cardio are what’s needed for me to lose weight.  Perhaps there are other Crossfit gyms which prefer longer Metcon workouts are more of what’s needed, but something inside of me tells me there is a need to keep the body moving for prolonged periods of time to lose large masses of body fat.

In many of my previous posts I have written that proper nutrition is the main component of weight loss, and that workouts help accelerate the weight loss and improve overall fitness.  I still believe this statement to be true.  In trying to keep losing weight at a rapid pace I am trying to find the most effective and efficient way to drop pounds on the scale.  In that range from 250 lbs to 200 lbs I think I can take it slower, but today being a XXL I’m not happy about it, and need to keep pushing. 

There is a place of balance between weight training and steady state cardio, as much as I hate it, I think I need to incorporate it back into my workouts even if it’s on a cyclical basis.

08/29/2011 Daily Recap

Getting back to work—not the work that helps pays the bills but the work of molding my fat ass into something rock solid.  I’ve passed out the last two nights on the couch after eating Indian food.  Indian Food isn’t quite the same without large heaping spoonfuls of jasmine rice.  It’s a bit of a kill joy.

Curry is still good, so I tried eating some last night with steamed broccoli instead of rice, and it’s good but not the same.  Oh how I would use a plastic spoon to peel back your eyebrows right now, only if it meant a spoonful of rice.  That white flaky, sticky, sometimes al dente pods of joy, I might trade some rice for a bit of Naan, or other baked good.  Be careful skinny people this fight guy might hurt you for some refined carbs. 

I think if I bought a pizza today I might try and have sex with it before I ate it. 

…So back to the recap…

Started the morning off with a session of Crossfit, the classes today were surprisingly smaller than most Mondays; perhaps people are getting back into a fall groove, or have taken this last partial week of August to go out of town. 

The lifting portion of today’s workout involved back squats, an easy five sets of 1 at roughly 90% of one’s single rep maximum.   I ended up working with two other guys in a bit of a squatting three some.  We warmed up doing 5 reps with just the bar, then another 5 with 95 lbs, then 3 reps at 135 lbs, and 3 reps at 225 lbs. 

My work sets broke down as follows:

• 235 lbs  x 1 rep
• 245 lbs x 1 rep
• 245 lbs x 1 rep
• 255 lbs x 1 rep
• 255 lbs x 1 rep

The video is of my final set.

After the back squats the Metcon appeared to be an innocuous two exercise workout broken into 3 sets.  The two exercises involved push-ups, and dumbbell ground to overheads.  The ground to overheads simply is a motion where you take the dumbbells from the ground and get them over your head.  In getting the dumbbell overhead you are trying to do it by any means necessary, you can clean it, curl it, fry it, marinade it, whatever it takes to go from touching the ground to a fully locked out position above your head.

The two exercises broke down into three sets the first one doing 30 reps, the second doing 20 reps, and 10 reps in the final set.  Each set included both exercises, so the first set was 30 dumbbell ground to overheads, and 30 push-ups.

I used 30 lbs dumbbells, and it took my 7:32.  After a couple of push-ups, I found myself on my knees to finish the push-ups, every time I would try and do normal push-ups, my body would revolt.  I wish I would have worked harder to get more regular push-ups instead of the ones from my knees. 

When it was all said and done, I felt it was a good way to start a Monday.  I thought about doing cardio today, but decided I would stick to my workout schedule of three straight cardio days, a decent start to a week after four days of rest.