Author: Montross (Page 2 of 20)

From the moment I left the house, it was evident the air was like lukewarm soup this morning and breathing may be the hardest exercise we do this morning! Rather than bringing the speaker and playing songs all morning, I brought a few inspiring quotes about leadership that I hope we can all apply to our lives. I won’t list them all hear, but some of the main takeaways are 1) make a decision to try 2) don’t ‘over-lead’ 3) do the right thing and 4) fear is normal.

Warmup: Side Straddle Hops, Gravel Pickers, and a few yoga poses to give an stragglers time to arrive. Time to get to it.

Mosey to the flagpole by the park entrance, pause for side straddle hops as we give the six time to catchup. Oompa graciously led us in the pledge, then we take a quick hop, skip, and a jump over to the parking lot for Dirty 11s with Mike Tysons and Big Boys. 1 burpee each time you cross the mid-way point. Some may called these Dirty Merkins, but there is no audio proof to back up such claims. As far as I’m concerned, my Q game was still on point!

We mosey back the old animal control building to grab blocks for some arm work. 3 sets of 20 Merkins and 20 Bent Over Rows. Thanks to the Pax who counted reps for us. Well, everyone except Gearwrench because Gearwrench did his 20 in-cadence. I think he’s trying to be more like Sister Act every day!

Now, we mosey toward the amphitheater with a quick stop by the splash pad. There was a guy out there working so I figured it would be a waste if I didn’t at least ask if he could turn it on for us. No dice so we stick to the plan. We start some core work as the six rolls in. We do 10 lbcs IC followed by 10 superman-ironmans, repeat for a 2nd set. After a Nelson Mandella quote, there was some confusion about what the Mandella Effect is. Thanks to Bedpan who cleared it up for us with a fantastic Smurf analogy.

On the wall for 10 Australian Mountain Climbers IC, then down for 5 Peter Parker Merkins IC. Repeat for 3 sets, then we grab another set of LBCS and superman-ironmans.

Finally, a leg work to finish this out. 3 sets each of:
10 jump lunges
10 quick jump squats

I had to cut this portion short due to time so we mosey back to the starting point and we grab a few final LBCs and Flutter Kicks before calling TIME!

Prayer Requests: Brillo, Sarlacc’s M, Sgt Pork Chop, Norwood, Huck, Turtleman, Mayor, Hacksaw, lots of PAX with injuries. YHC took us out in prayer.

The air was thick and I was worn out as we wrapped up! Thanks for giving me the opportunity to lead and for coming out this morning. Despite the suffering, there was some good conversation out there this monring!

Though I have posted in the afternoons more often than not on Tuesdays and Thursdays over the past few months, Folsom is where I first drank the F3 Kool-Aid and I still consider it my F3 home, so to speak. As I drove by the gazebo, I saw an ol’ Pole Cat making his way across the street. Fortunately he kept his funk to himself but I got to thinking back to the time at Folsom years ago when I had the Q and we were running on the path behind the small pond. A small skunk stopped us dead in our tracks and I yelled out “Retreat! Retreat!”. We may never see a group of men run so fast again! PRs were set! Back to today, I made it to the circle with about 30 seconds to spare (had no idea I was cutting it that close). There was a great crowd out this morning. Get those legs good and loose fellas!

We warmed up with 25 Side Straddle Hops IC, 10 Gravel Pickers IC, and short mosey to the tennis court.

Next up – grab the fence for some leg swings. 10 swings each leg in front of the leg your standing on, then 10 swings each leg behind your standing leg, then 10 each leg front to back. Then, we assume the plank position for some more stretching and some movement between high and low plank.

Everyone on the line, each movement goes across 4 tennis courts to the 2nd light pole.
– High Knees 2x, recovery walk back to start
– Butt Kickers 2x, recovery walk back to start
– Hesitation Skips 2x, recovery walk back to start
– Karaokee down and back 2x (by request from Kapowski – good call!)
– Basketball Slide down and back 2x
– Lunge Walk 1x, recovery walk back to start

We shorten the course slightly to 3 tennis courts now – about 40 yards.
– Half speed sprint, roll into full speed 2x, recovery walk back to start
– Sprint 2x recovery walk back to start
– Sprint down, sprint half-way back (I think we did that 1x)

This workout was intended to truly sprint and give it all you have. You get a moment to catch your breath during the recovery walk. I saw a lot of hustle out there! Quick Recovery and circle up for some additional leg work.
– 10 Jump Lunges x3
– 10 Jump Squats x3 (short squats and jump/land on the balls of your feet)
– 5 Tuck Jumps X 3 (originally I called 10 but changed to 5 to encourage quick ‘back to back’ like Ponyboy was doing)
– 5 – 5 count SSH Tuck Jumps (use quick feet)
– 5 – single leg bounces each leg 3x
– 5 – 5 count Single Leg Tuck Jumps 3x

My legs were about toast and it looked like most others were in the same boat. On your 6 for some Iron Cross stretches and 2 sets of 10 Penguins in cadence. We had time for a little more cardio upper body work. 5 burpees, 10 Merkins, 15 LBCs. Recover. 4 burpees, 8 Merkins, 12 LBCs. Omaha. I have about 2 minutes left and quickly walked through some Mobility stuff Wojo had us try at Midoriyama last week. A lot of that stuff is mental but we seem to forget it as we get older. A few guys gave it a shot and I encourage all of you to work on some of those type of movements at home, whether it’s with the kids or the wife, or just on your own. I’m not a doctor, but I am a firm believer that flexibility and mobility can help prevent injury. My last piece of “wisdom” for the guys is that it is a really good idea to get out and run tomorrow morning to keep soreness down after a workout like this. If you don’t run tomorrow, Thursday will be rough!

COT – Prayers for Ball Joint’s aunt, Brillo and Schattner’s 2.0 as they go off to boot camp, my mom, Huck, Hacksaw, Norwood, and Turtleman. 2nd F lunch is at Pita Wheel in Dallas tomorrow!

Slaw had a long conversation with an officer from the Sherriff’s Dept this morning. Not sure what it was all about, but he missed half of the COT. Fortunately, Slaw was released into our custody and all is well.

As for the workout, guys ran and a few rucked. I see Ball Joint is now logging miles with Gold Digger and Westside made an appearance after a few weeks on the injured list. Broke says he ran at a 9 minute pace.

Ozark knocked it out of the park with the Q today! Runners ran, ruckers rucked, fartsackers fartsacked!

Wirenut reached out looking for someone to Q and keep an eye on Old School while he was at the beach. I gladly obliged for my first Q at Old School in a while. I missed leg work earlier this week so I figured what better way to kick off July than with some sprinting, plyometrics, and other “Wojo stuff”. Great crowd this morning, let’s get started!

Warmup: SSH, Don Qs, hip rotation stretches, and some runner stretching to get the hammies loose. We quickly moved over to the shelter to do some leg swings and finish loosening up the hips.

Slaw was nice enough to bring some cones for me to layout some markers. The soccer field was pretty wet so we used the upper parking lot instead. I laid the cones at our starting line as well as around 25 and 50 yards out.

High Knees to the last cone, then Butt Kickers all the way back x3
High Knee Skips to the last cone, walk back (x2)
Exaggerated stride to the last cone, walk back (x2)
Exaggerated stride to the first cone, roll into a sprint (x2)
Full Sprint to the last cone (x3)
Full Sprint to the last cone and half-way back (x2)
Lunge walk to the first cone (x2)

Time to circle up for some plyo-work:
10 Jump Lunges (x3)
10 quick jumps (with a partial squat) (x3)
10 Tuck Jumps (x3)
10 – Quick SSHs without the arms (x3)
5 – SSH Tuck Jumps (without the arms) (x3)
5 – each leg – one leg quick jumps (x3)
5 – 4 quick jumps and 1 one leg tuck jump each leg (x3)

The legs seemed sufficiently destroyed at this point so we moved back into some stretching to loosen things up.

Now for classic bootcamp work to finish the workout.

Escalating 4 Corners – the exercises were chosen by the PAX. 10 Burpees, 20 Merkins, 30 LBCs, 40 SSH (well, I think that’s what we called)

Circle up for 2-3 minutes of Mary and Time was called!

Thanks for the opportunity to lead you all this morning.

Prayers: Norwood, Huck, Ratchet’s family, Hacksaw, Travelers, Brillo, Sarlacc

It seemed like a few may have taken in a bit too much Freedom yesterday because the crowd at Prison Break was definitely on the light side this morning. Those that were there hammered on. As Wichita said, the 4th is great but the real work started on the 5th!

Prayers- Norwood, Ratchet family, Huck, Haze, Hacksaw, those traveling. 2nd F lunch at Pita Wheel Dallas 6/19 and double post at Midoriyama this month to try to take Slaw’s belt@

The summer challenges have been floating around for a little over a week now. Several AOs have hosted Thunder, but not quite as many have hosted Lightning. Lightning is designed to focus on speed and includes a lot of running. That being the case and considering we have a nice track just down the street, I figured it made a lot of sense to run the challenge during Prison Break. I did a little prep to mark the course before the workout and everyone met up at Ingles at 5:30. Rabbit Ears and EZ Rider took off on a solo-moseys and the rest of us warmed up, and moseyed over to the site of Old School.

The Lightning challenge was a burner. It took most of us 21-30 minutes to finish. Ball Joint finished first with a 21:10, edging out the People’s Champ SLAW at 21:41. GearWrench finished 3rd at 23:18. Here’s the link to workout: Summer Challenge – Lightning

Nice work by all. We made it back just in the nick of time.

Prayer requests: Wirenut’s mom, Steve Alexander, 2.0s going to BootCamp, Huck, Ratchet’s family, Haze’s foot. YHC took us out in prayer.

After a few rainy days, we got a mostly clear morning for some mosey. Nice to see Rabbit Ears back out this morning and putting in some miles. Who knows, maybe he’ll encourage his ol’ uncle Wichita to come back out! Ya hate to see it!

Prayer Requests: Ratchet and family, Lanier family, Huck, Haze’s foot and his 2.0 traveling, Norwood

I was fortunate enough go get an opportunity to lead a workout with the men of Midoriyama on a beautiful Thursday in late-May. I arrived early to scope out the park and make some final preparations. It was nice to have plenty of time to stretch and catch up with the fellas for a few minutes. Though it isn’t yet July, it is definitely a warm day. I recycled a weinke I used at Folsom a few weeks back to see how it stacks up in the afternoon vs the morning.

No new guys today, but we do have a Kotter! Good to see Gomer on this fine afternoon. Also, Freight has returned from a frisbee injury so our overall hair score went up. We warmup with SSH in-cadence, grass pickers (slowly and in-cadence to help stretch those calves and hammies), and 5 burpees. Let’s mosey.

I had planned to use the small soccer field for the first act, but some people had taken over for what looked to be soccer practice since my drive-by 20 minutes earlier. We were finally able to find space on the field in the back by the dog park. They put Baby in the corner today.

• Dirty 11s with Mike Tysons and Big Boy Sit-ups and one burpee each time you cross the middle of the field. As we finish up, the heat seems to be picking up a bit as we take a short mosey to the turd shack. Maybe it’s because we ran away from the shade?

• 3 sets of Australian Mountain Climbers (15 in-cadence) on the poop coop wall and Peter Parker Merkins (10 OYO). An unnamed PAX had to spend part of this time hovering over the trash can. Sounded like his lunch choice may be to blame, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say the ol’ Midoriyama heat may have also contributed. It was tough out there and I had to ask for a few 10 counts between sets.

We mosey back toward the starting point before taking a quick left and going to the backside of the baseball field (the same place where Haze called Murder Bunnies during the convergence).

• Jacobs Ladder. Run down the hill and back up. 1 burpee the first time, 2 the second, 3 the third…all the way to 7. I was whipped around 5 reps so, in the spirit of “don’t Q it if you can’t do it”, I called an Omaha. I think Slaw and maybe one other bat-flipper finished all 7 rounds. Most were thankful for the Omaha as we notice we have a PAX down. A quick check and he seemed ok, just exhausted. Shout out to those who stepped in to make sure he was ok to walk his way to the next station. I won’t lie, I was probably headed for the same fate if I hadn’t stopped!

We mosey to the area behind the horseshoe pits and grab a block.

• 3 sets back-to-back of 20 curls and 20 Bent Over Rows. Def commented “Are we about to lose the Q?” as I was wearing the struggle on my face. Not sure if it was because I asked Slaw to count the curls for us or if it was because I just looked like death. Possibly, it was a little of both. We squeezed the last reps in as the clock struck 6:15 and time was called.

Prayer Requests: Ratchet and family, Broke’s coworker, Westside’s friend, Huck, Haze’s foot, Norwood. YHC took us out in prayer

There is nothing like when the heat starts turning up at Midoriyama, especially for those like me who work indoors most of the time. It isn’t even ‘really’ hot yet but I can still tell a big difference in how much harder this workout was in the afternoon vs how it was 2 weeks earlier in the morning. I had an ‘oh crap’ moment as we were doing burpees where I thought I may not make it to the end. Fortunately, I recovered a bit as we moseyed to grab blocks and I was ok. That being said, I encourage you to get out to Midoriyama a few times this summer and experience it for yourself. Pick up a Q as well!

Lots of discussion about Defib’s beatdown yesterday afternoon at Midoriyamama. Someone also shared the story about someone who used to call Big Boys until the doctor told him it looked like and STD and his M spilled the beans. Show to know.

Come to Folsom Saturday for the worst-kept secret in F3 Gastonia.

Prayer Requests: Ratchet’s 2.0, Broke’s co-worker, Westside’s friend, Huck, Haze. YHC took us out in prayer.