Mark, buddy... you're still implying that CF (or the like) is only anaerobic and I don't believe that's the case.
Actually, me neither! I understand what you're saying, I'm just trying to put it in context of the research I've come across. The thing is chances are the researchers idea of anaerobic workouts is just something like traditional weight lifting without the metcon component that is in CF, and aerobic is stuff that does not tax the system as much as CF, I probably even read that and as I said part of it for me is the subjective experience of having done the intense workouts and just being too tired, and the bodys resources are mostly used for recovery. So I guess technically it may not be true in terms of the CF system especially since it is scalable and adaptable, but I'm saying in practice that tends to be the case because of the emphasis on intensity.
Also it could very well be that if you give a little bit more time for recovery there will be gaps where you feel well enough to do mental work, and in the long run the conditioning may very well be better or faster than if you only did light aerobic exercises, but we're probably not going to see people do that kind of experiment. Also you figure if during the training period you would not be up for mental work then the overall volume of mental activity would be limited toward the end of the recovery period, so it starts to look like there's an inverse relationship between the intensity and the amount of time and energy you have for mental activity. So hey, if there's the opportunity to focus on training for a while without having to be concerned on how it impacts other demands, great - but practically speaking it tends to be an issue.
And again intensity isn't everything, it would be very interesting to explore the constantly varied part in terms of the specific movement, rather than the variation in intensity with the intervals. It seems like that's what they tend to do with traditional martial arts training, which makes sense because the focus is on skill rather than conditioning, so the intensity or capacity is built up over time rather than a constant push, since people are less likely to be able to control the body that precisely while maintaining that level of intensity. Even Roger admitted that in practice the gymnastics tends to be neglected, and my thought is if anything then it would be good to have a form of gymnastics that is more easily scaled then the traditional olympic sport, because a lot of that just does not seem to be very scalable considering how out of shape the general population is these days, which I imagine is one reason why there needs to be a good deal of work with weights because body weight exercises may be too much.