With the vegan diet in full swing for six months now, something occurred to me. It doesn’t make since to be eating a perfect diet (according to my understanding of food) if I’m not physically active.

In fact - if I’m going to be physically active, I should be doing the best exercise, right?

And so the Tynan research machine’s gears started turning. Soon I realized that there was really only one option that fit into my idea of how to do things.

Crossfit.

Crossfit is used by housewives, old ladies, teenagers… and oh yeah - the Navy Seals, UFC fighters, and the dudes who acted in the movie, 300. Why? Because it is THE way to get your body into optimal condition.

Most workouts specialize. Weight lifters are focusing on strength. Martial artists focus on agility. Runners focus on endurance. That isn’t to say that a runner won’t build agility or that a martial artist won’t gain strength - it’s just that those areas lag behind the focus.

Crossfit, on the other hand, focuses on everything. Their list of focuses are : cardio-respiratory endurance, stamina, strength, flexibility, power, speed, coordination, accuracy, agility and balance.

The stated goal of Crossfit is to get you 90% trained for ANY discipline. That means that once you’ve acheived some level of competence with the program, you’re ready to do distance running, boxing, or ballet (side note: I’m starting ballet classes next week to get awesome posture. And to look reallly gay.)

What about gaining size? From what I’ve read traditional weightlifting is more effective ONLY if you’re doing steroids. However, if you’re not doing steroids, Crossfit results in bigger gains.

I started out Crossfit almost a month ago at around 128lb. When I started crossfit I began to eat a lot more (all vegan and mostly macrobiotic and organic). I now weigh about 139-142, depending on when during the day I weigh myself. That’s about a 12lb gain in a month. Not too shabby.

I’ve previously done some intense weight and machine training as well as distance running. I even had a personal trainer for a while. Crossfit definitely yielded much better results than either.

So what IS a Crossfit workout anyway?

They focus on large compound movements, rather than isolation. An example is a snatch where you squat down and pick a kettle bell from the ground, straighten your legs and punch up into the air with it.

These exercises work out several muscles at once, including supporting muscles that often get overlooked in a workout. We do a lot of bodyweight exercises like pullups, pushups, crunches, squats, lunges, burpees, etc. Most days we have to run at least 1200m.

The workout is usually only 30 minutes long, but is VERY intense. I usually feel like I’m going to throw up / have a heart attack / pass out. The particular class I take also has a 15 minute warmup (yoga or agility stuff usually) and a 15 minute cooldown (stretching and yoga).

The “Workout Of the Day” is different every day and available for free at Crossfit.com. This is critically important. My previous workouts got extremel boring. I’d typically do the same thing every monday, the same thing every wednesday, etc. With Crossfit I never know what to expect, which keeps things interesting.

My personal results as well as the results of my friends has been very encouraging. I’ve gained a very noticeable amount of weight and muscle. I can lift marginally more weight thatn before, but my cardio endurance is MUCH better. The first day I had to quit after 15 minutes. Now I can push through the whole 30 minutes every day.

My friends have all noticed more muscle and less fat. As a benchmark, all four friends who are doing it with me are signing up for another 3 months.

You can do it on your own if you have the right equipment, but I would HIGHLY recommend taking a group class with some friends (or alone, if you can’t convince anyone). The motivation of seeing a 60 year old woman push more iron than I can is priceless. Form is very important in exercises, and with compound movements that Crossfit favors it helps to have someone to make sure you’re doing it right.

Again - I can’t really recommend Crossfit highly enough. I think that THE way to have the highest level of fitness is to eat vegan and do crossfit.

Bonjour.

As you may have read in the past, Doug and I host Karaoke every Wednesday at Firehouse Lounge in Austin, TX. We now also host it at Shakespeare’s on Tuesdays. Tazeroke, which started as a one time event, has now become a weekly event. Yep, we electrocute people every week with an 800k volt stun baton. Somehow no one has shut us down yet.

Anyway.

After Karaoke we always go to Magnolia Cafe. We’ve made friends with everyone who works there, but particularly two waitresses, Cindi and Kara. Since they’re our friends, we want them to come sing Karaoke with us. But… obviously… they work on our karaoke nights.

The solution? Bring karaoke to them.

Cindi brought a little karaoke machine from home. We burnt a CD with some of our favorite songs and headed to Magnolia after Karaoke.

The restaurant was pretty full. It was the typical after bar crowd, plus a few police officers. I wasn’t sure how much they’d like the karaoke. We set up the machine and began our first song - Shake That by Nate Dogg and Eminem. Todd provides a soulful Nate Dogg rendition and I rap Eminem’s lyrics.

I can’t sing, so I always do rap. Plus I don’t like much of that non rap stuff.

Despite reasonably offensive lyrics, people seem to enjoy the karaoke. Even one of the police officers was bobbing his head a bit. They applaud when we finish.

Then DJ Doug kills it with Folsom Prison Blues by Johnny Cash. He has a bunch of good songs he sings, but that’s one of his best ones.

Todd does This DJ by Warren G. I provide a little backup, but I don’t know the lyrics very well.

Finally my solo performance. I sing Hypnotize by Notorious B.I.G. with Kara and DJ Doug singing the chorus with me. One table in the back gets really into it and sings along from their table.

As people left they thanked us for singing Karaoke. Never underestimate the enjoyment people get from having something different happen to them.

Here’s a video of me singing Hypnotize. We didn’t video the rest, unfortunately.

I haven’t been super motivated to write here for the past two weeks. I started two posts, got sick of them, and now they’re sitting as drafts. One’s about having even less stuff and the other is about radical honesty. Maybe I’ll finish soon.

Instead I’ll just write about what’s on my mind, because otherwise who knows when I’ll post next.

First the main reason I haven’t been excited about posting - I’m making a new product. Not a pickup product, though.

Key to having any good web site (that you’re trying to make money from) is testing. You test different headlines, offers, prices, colors, fonts, graphics, etc. You’d be shocked how much of a difference these things make.

The problem is that there’s no really good testing software out there. Actually there is (SiteSpect, Offermatica, Optimost), but they’re super expensive. There’s one called KaizenTrack that I bought, but it’s terrible.

Frustrated, I decided to write my own rudimentary one. A couple weeks later and I have an alpha version that’s actually running tests. Not only that, but it’s BETTER than the other ones. I used SiteSpect extensively while at Smiley and despite costing $7000 PER MONTH, mine is BETTER. It’s easier to use, easier to set up, and has/will have much better reporting on the results.

It’s so good that I’m going to sell it. I came up with a really clever way to do some of the hard parts. I still have a lot of rough edges to smooth out and a lot of features to add, but when I’m done (within a month), it will be THE BEST multivariate testing platform and will be WAY cheaper than the big ones.

Exciting!

If any of you have thought about learning how to do web programming, you should really give it a shot. It is WAY easier than you expect. I’ve only programmed this stuff once a few months ago when I was making a quiz site (never finished it). With less than 100 hours of programming under my belt, I’m proficient with PHP, Ajax, DOM, cookies, MYSQL, mod rewrite, and a bunch of other stuff. I’m not an expert by ANY means, but I have enough knowledge that I can built pretty efficient programs. Go find some tutorials on PHP/Mysql and try it.

I helped my parents move today. Holy god do they have too much stuff. I cringed with every box I loaded. In just over a year I’ve been involved in 3 moves. What a disaster. I hate moving. I am so anti stuff now. It actually FEELS BETTER to have less stuff. It’s like a huge burden is lifted. Although I’ve really been enjoying driving it, I can’t wait to get rid of my car next.

I’ve started doing Crossfit. It’s the workout program that a lot of Olympians, UFC fighters, and martial artists do. It’s what they used to get people in the movie 300 trained. I’ve only done two classes so far, but they are INTENSE. I have never pushed myself so far and hard. During the first class I was doing pushups until I was blacking out. I first heard about it from a skinny geeky guy named David Braun. I didn’t really look into it because he was skinny. Now he’s probably all muscled up and I missed out.

Sometimes I write people’s full names in blog entires just in case they google themselves. I always like reading blog posts where people have linked to me and it’s sort of the same thing.

Anyway, if you want to do the Best Workout Plan In The Land, go to www.crossfit.com. Read all about it there because I’m too tired to write all the details. It’s great.

The forums here have been going really well. There’s enough posts that you can check many times a day and there’s always new stuff to read. The people posting are all really cool. No one argues or talks like a typical internet forum retard.

I think Ron Paul actually has a shot at winning. He won the FOX NEWS DEBATE! If there was any debate I would have bet he’d lose, it’s that.

Not to mention our government keeps screwing up WORSE and WORSE. I really believe that the US is not going to be “the place to be” for much longer. I can’t WAIT to get out of here. If Ron Paul wins, I think we’ve got a great shot at being an awesome place to live again.

I normally hate politics but I love Ron Paul. He’s not perfect, but he’s great.

Last, I’m really sorry I don’t post more. I know it’s not a huge deal or anything but lots of you check back frequently to see if I’ve updated and I know it’s disappointing when I don’t. Right now I’m working REALLY hard because I want to have a lot of passive income by the time I leave. I’ve made some huge personal breakthroughs with productivity which I will share soon.

I think I have the question of “How to I STOP procrastinating and DO what I KNOW I’m capable of?” answered. At least for me, and hopefully for some of you. That post coming soon…