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Sunday Musings 7/3/11: A Crossfit Crossroads

Sunday musings…

1) Boomerang. An implement which when thrown returns to the thrower.

2) Boomerang. Hails from Australia. Wondering if Lil’bingo is planning on returning from his visit.

3) Boomerang. Nickname for children who return to the home of their parents after leaving for college (or life). Mrs. bingo and I spent the collective childhood years of the bingo progeny steeling ourselves for the inevitability of their permanent emigration away from Cleveland. All we hear is that Cleveland cannot retain its young, after all. “The Heir” left for college in Denver, and “Lil’bingo” left to explore Crossfit as a career with a first step in So Cal. Cleveland…SoCal…Cleveland…Denver…

A funny thing happened along the way to the empty nest, though: everyone wants to return to Cleveland! Go figure. “The Heir” seeks a job, looking only in Greater Cleveland, while he contemplates grad school. Lil’bingo talks only of his return home as he contemplates a CF career. Even “Lovely Daughter” has extended her acceptable landing zone only as far afield as Pittsburgh.

Go figure.

4.) Crossfit Crossroads. I’m stuck. Stuck on a plateau. Feels like some 3 months or so now. Does this happen to you at all? It feels like a Crossfit plateau, but it might in fact be a much broader one. I’m not sure.

Outcomes, the right side of the ‘black box’, are pretty stale at he moment. No PR’s. Actually, if I look closely, my WOD results on repeats is ~10% worse. Hmmm…why is that? Diet? Not much changed there in any real way. Same foods in the same volume; same alcohol intake, + or -. Pretty much Main Page WOD’s done on the same days and with the same volume.

Psychological? Attitude? I’ve noted a bit more difficulty making myself go to that ‘dark place’ where Crossfit intensity is found, for sure, but nothing has changed in my workout environment (workout alone in globo-gym 2 miles from house and office). Stress? The grind of my day job? Perhaps. Changing my venue, going to an Affiliate gym might be the solution.

Am I sick? Do I have some sort of quiet, real illness that I am presently unaware of? You know, the Crossfit definition of health is “Health = Fitness; Fitness = Health.” Is my gym performance a proxy for my health? Coach would look here; maybe not first, but he would certainly say to look.

Or is it simply that I am now 51 years old, and that I have run the course of what I can expect in terms of continual fitness improvements through everything that is Crossfit. Coach has opined in the past that one can expect 10 years of improved fitness no matter when you start Crossfit, but I think he also said this was conjecture, and he said it some years ago. The curve must eventually flatten under the weight of age. Is this just a particularly long plateau, or is this the last flat spot before the slopes are no longer ascending?

I’ve always found the plateaus more confusing than either the ascents or the descents. You?

I’ll see you next week…

Posted by bingo at July 3, 2011 8:06 AM

 

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