Random Thoughts from a Restless Mind

Sunday musings…

1) Hooptie. A comically old and partially functional vehicle. Totally new word for me, much to the amusement of some of my co-workers.

Especially since this describes my daily driver to a ‘T’.

2) 0.31%. The percentage of Americans who do CrossFit. ~5%: the percentage of Americans who are regular gym goers. That’s an awful lot of Americans exercising and not doing CrossFit, let alone Americans not exercising at all. Seems like a target-rich environment, no? If we simply increase the percentage of gym goers to 10% that doubles the number of CrossFit gym members, and it’s still only 0.62%.

Tell me again why there is so much strum und drang about competition between local CrossFit Affiliates?

3) Tuba. “The tragedy of the unhappy tuba player.” –Ben Bergeron

We are blessed in the CrossFit community by the presence of many, many fine speakers. Indeed, every Flowmaster at CrossFit Level 1 trainer seminars is a polished speaker able to tell a tale while effectively transferring their message. It goes without saying that Coach and all of the original SME’s are somewhere way into the stratosphere of excellence.

Beth and I attended a seminar at CFNE yesterday where we spent the ay with Ben Bergeron. That, my friends, was some treat! It wasn’t enough just to point out the importance of moving from a macro to a micro view while leading a class. Not even enough to liken the views to watching a great marching band perform. Nope, the description and example was nearly poetic:

“From the stands you watch a band in full bloom, moving as one, the epitome of applied excellence. The macro view; your class from the front of the room. You want to reach out to congratulate the bandleader. Then you zoom in on individual players and you come across a disheveled tuba player who isn’t playing at all. Indeed, his mouth is not even connected to his instrument as he trudges along a quarter beat off, tears streaming down his face. The micro view as you walk among your athletes.”

No chance I’ll be forgetting macro/micro after that! Kudos and thanks to Ben for hosting us.

3) Belfry. The mind is a wild, mostly wonderful, occasionally wacky place. The more I learn about how our minds work, the connections, neuroplasticity and all, the more mysterious it becomes. Beth and I are visiting my Dad, two parts of a team filling in for my Mom, front row seats to watch a mind careen between what is and what is not. As frightening as it is to be a passenger on this journey it must be simply terrifying to be driving the bus.

The science I get. Bad plumbing results in insufficient O2, not enough fuel over a lifetime, and delicate circuitry is lost. Or sludge of some sort builds up in a critical part of the wiring. Insufficient flow becomes no flow, and thoughts become trapped, diverted, or even worse, stillborn. Juliane Moore may win an Oscar tonight portraying a woman so afflicted. I’ve not seen the movie and most likely won’t; it just cuts too close to the bone.

Tragically, some of this is unavoidable at this point in time. We know not why certain types of age-related diseases rob us of our memories, our faculties, and in time our very selves. Ms. Moore portrays a character who is ambushed this way. Others, like my Dad, suffer from a version that likely results in part from self-inflicted trauma of a sorts. Smoking. Diabetes resulting from nutrition and inactivity. Use or abuse of mind-altering substances, most commonly alcohol. The mind is a terrible thing to which you lay waste.

What is there to do? Well, for me, for Beth, for my siblings and for any of you who may find yourself in similar straits there is little left but to apply the lessons of kindness, understanding, and empathy I have shared here and elsewhere. That and to have handy a healthy supply of tissues, for there is no balm to sooth these wounds for us or for my Dad. For those of us who do CrossFit we have already been given a prescription in 100 concise and precise words that is so far the most likely preventative medicine known to mankind:

“Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar. Keep intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat.

Practice and train major lifts: Deadlift, clean, squat, presses, C&J, and snatch. Similarly, master the basics of gymnastics: pull-ups, dips, rope climb, push-ups, sit-ups, presses to handstand, pirouettes, flips, splits, and holds. Bike, run, swim, row, etc, hard and fast.

Five or six days per week mix these elements in as many combinations and patterns as creativity will allow. Routine is the enemy. Keep workouts short and intense.

Regularly learn and play new sports.”

I’ll see you next week…

Posted by bingo at February 22, 2015 8:28 AM