August Flanagan

I just finished one of my favorite crossfit workouts about an hour ago, and my legs are in that wonderfully wobbly, jello-y phase right now. The workout (of which there are a few variations) is called 100, 200, 300.

The two most common variations of the workout involve: 100 pullups, 200 pushups, 300 squats OR 100 pushups, 200 situps, 300 squats.

Today I did the latter of the two (I still haven’t found a used pullup bar here in Vancouver). Partitioning the reps into series is allowed, but my preferred method is to go as quickly as I can, and only pause when I can’t hit the next repition. Then I’ll give myself about 15 seconds to recover and I’ll go again until I reach muscle failure. Repeat as necessary.

So why am I talking about my workouts? I’ve been realising for the past few months that my startup mentality has started spilling over into other parts of my life, and one of those parts is my exercise philosophy.

I’m a big fan of lean development, which has helped me bootstrap several small projects and launch them quickly.

Lean development works like this (I apologize to anyone I am about to offend with this oversimplification):

1. Decide what the minimum viable product is. What is the smallest amount of work you have to do to make something that people want?
2. Build as quickly as possible and put your product in front of customers.
3. Iterate quickly based on feedback from your customers. Repeat as necessary.

Three years ago I was a complete gym rat. I spent 2.5 hours a day, 4-5 days a week at the gym. I weighed 200 pounds and could benchpress 350. I also spent several hours a week planning and making meals since I was eating over 5,000 calories a day.

The results:
I dislocated my left shoulder 3 times in 3 months, I had constant pain in my elbows and wrists, and I wasted a lot of time trying to plan my days around the gym.

I didn’t really develop a lean approach to working out until I was living in Mexico. I started researching crossfit a bit and decided that I could come up with 3-4 solid workouts that would wipe me out, and that didn’t involve lifting heavy weights. (In fact, I don’t plan to ever lift anything more than 50 lbs ever again.)

Several of my workouts are straight crossfit workouts, but others are my own invention. Here’s how I go about building a new workout:

1. Try to answer these questions: What’s the minimum number of exercises I need to do to fatigue myself? How long do I think it will take? Do these exercises cover 3 or more major muscle groups? Do they conflict with any of my other workouts?
2. Do it.
3. Evaluate. Did the workout cover everything in step one? Was it less than 45 minutes (my criteria for having a fast workout)? Was any part of the workout an impediment to the next? Was anything too easy?
4. Iterate based on previous step.

Notice any similarities?

The results:
I’m weighing 170 lbs, and feel healthier than I ever did when I was a gym rat. I have no pain (except sore muscles). I’ve gone from spending 10 hours a week working out to a little over 3.5 which has given me lots of time to take Pasa on walks, read more, and start writing a blog again.