23 degrees and summer practice

This week I heard the song We Will Rock you and it reminded me of high school football and those summer practices that brought me so much pain and pleasure. This song provided the necessary push for me to get my weinke together before this morning. Summer football practice was a great time for me. At least in my mind, I was a pretty big deal at my high school when it came to football. Just don’t ask my M-she was not there and my memory is a whole lot better than the actual truth so if you ask me sometime, I won’t confuse you with the facts. F3 has been the closest thing to summer football practice for me since high school. For the first few months of F3 it is how I explained what F3 was for me when talking about F3 at work. Most of my co-workers would just nod and smile then change the subject. Clearly there is something wrong with them….Here is what we did:

WU: 10 IC SSH, Squats, LBCs, Mountain Climbers, Flutter Kicks, Merkins, (I think) 10 Burpees OYO

Mosey to flag for Pledge

The Thang:

Mosey to steps near football field and partner up while I explained the overall plan, something to resemble football. Started off with ab work (engage the core early). Partner 1 did called exercise while Partner 2 ran up steps in high knee fashion then came down and swapped with P1. The exercises were Flutter Kicks X 2 rounds each, Dying Cockroaches X 2 rounds each, then Hip Slappers X 3 rounds each. If you do enough hip slappers it DOES engage the core, contrary to someone’s mumble chatter. Before moving on to the next part I read an email blast about Inspiration from the Eagle’s Nest-this is something a few of us get from Stroganoff that is usually short and motivational and I thought this was particularly appropriate since we all felt inspired to get out of the fartsack knowing it would be 21 degrees outside, KUDO’s to our FNG to brave the cold.

Next we moseyed to the field for some grass drills (NO, NOT GRASS PICKERS. THOSE ARE NOT EXERCISES) followed by a 120 yard spring (back of goal line to other back of goal line). I claimed it was a 100 yard sprint but it became a sort of mosey and Roscoe pulled out the measuring tape and told me it was really 120 yards. I think somewhere along here clothes started flying off of Madoff and Oompa Loompa. That running 100 yards thing is a lot harder than I remember. Most of us took a turn at calling the grass drills and Short Sale gave us a little extra punishment with some delay before getting back up. He called it something like a plyometric pushup-I thought that was something I tried to get off my girlfriend in high school??). We were not even half way thru at this point but I was pretty spent. We counted off to catch our breath then moved on to O and D.

The offensive work involved 2 QBs and 2 receivers-throw the ball and if caught we moved the line down the field. If ball is dropped, 5 burpees for each ball that hits the ground. I’ll keep it short-we did a lot of burpees, it was ugly, and we had to turn around at the 50 yard line.

The defensive work was next. We started at the back of the goal line, bear crawled about 20 yards, sprinted another 20 yards, then backwards ran the rest of the field. There was some mumble about this being a restricted type of running in GasHouse but I ignored it and we moved on. Anthrax was not present and I kept Roscoe in my sites the whole time. No pax were dogpiled during this exercise. We did this a couple times then lunged instead of bear crawled a time or 2.

Next, we moved back to the steps and did a few more rounds of partner work with flutter kicks, dying cockroaches, and hip slappers. We had about 15 minutes so I offered 2 undisclosed options to the FNG and he quickly chose option B which was a moderate mosey across to the church for a wall of plank while each pax in turn carried the football up the steps and back to next pax. Option A would have involved a bunch of burpees and partner work so I will have to save that for another time. We lunged from the steps to the road then moseyed back to start for some Mary. The pax were slow to move to the 2nd round so I Oklahoma’d in some burpees for fun. A few minutes later the bells of freedom rang and we called it.

As promised, I offered 10 burpees for our single FNG-I was relieved there were not more. Roscoe was my wildcard and could have shown with anywhere from 1 to 10 FNGs this morning. The cold weather was a blessing. Thanks Stroganoff for sharing the Burpees.

We made our announcements, named our FNG-Keith “Stone Cold” Trietley, one of Charlotte’s finest who was injured while serving and protecting almost 6 years ago. The guy has been through more physical trauma during an 8 month period of recovery than any one person deserves. Great day to be out there with some great guys. We finished with a quick COT then met up with Bandit at Coffeerama after he finished at the Fighting Yank.

(after) Christmas Party will be Saturday, January 7 at my house-put it on the calendar and bring your M but leave kids at home. Put it on the calendar.

Whoopee