Staring down 40

I had let myself totally go between the age of 34 to 38 years old. During that period of time I maybe worked out about 1-2 times a month, and then just totally fell out of the habit of working out at all. There was a period of about 6 months when I did not work out once that coincided with me being away from my wife and kids for 4 months for work. During which time I was on per diem through work and generally ate steak and potatoes 4-5 days a week and drank about 4-6 beers a night 7 days a week. All while working 7 days a week, 12 hours a day. Good times. By the time I got back home I was up to about a 280 lb body weight. I stayed at that weight for about a year. Then, about 2-3 months before my 38 birthday, I decided that I needed to drastically change my life if I was not going to live to see 50.

Started working out again, but I was no longer young and nimble enough to work with the heavy weights I did when I was in my 20s and get the same training effect. Also, just plain too out of shape. I started doing simple circuit training workouts and then stumbled upon CrossFit. Between the dieting and CrossFit, I went down from 280 lbs. - 235 (at 6'2") from January 2008 to July 2008. I have stayed between 235 - 240 lbs. ever since.

I absolutely love CrossFit, after the first 1-2 workouts (which absolutely and totally destroyed me) I was pretty much hooked. When I ran a 5k and finished it without dying about 4 months after starting, without every having run more than 400-800 meters in a round of a WOD, I was sold for life (I hate running, getting better at long distance running without long distance training is practically like stealing).

I have been mainly following the mainsite (Crossfit.com) until recently. I have not gone up in strength much, although met-cons times have improved, for a long time (9 months?) and decided to switch things up a bit. I decided to deviate from the mainsite programming. The first place I looked to for programming was OPT/Calgary CrossFit. I figured if OPT and so many of his athletes from Calgary Crossfit can achieve such amazing results at the CrossFit Games, OPT must have some really high speed programing going on. I found his blog and loved the look of the WODs. Some of the workouts are incredibly challenging and I will have to scale them where needed to get the right training effect (my opinion), so I may have to be careful to do that as I follow along.

I still think the mainsite CrossFit is awesome and definitely will go back there from time to time. I think the more variable .com WODs still have much value and for most are perfectly fine. At this time, I just feel that I might benefit from more of a focus on strength and power work in the WODs in order to keep moving forward.

Following OPT's blog(http://www.optimumperformancetraining.blogspot.com) a few days behind. Just easier to allow for planning out when and how to complete WODs.