Author: Whoopee (Page 21 of 25)

Rocky 3 and 4 were on earlier this week, and if those movies don’t get you in the mood to exercise, you might want to double check down below and make sure you’ve got a pair-just saying. Good movies, not for everyone, but I think they do the job when you need some motivation. I was able to get the weinke done quickly, but overextended myself and had to modify this morning. We still made it thru and got a sufficient beatdown, however I was reminded about the importance of daily merkins-I felt better a few months ago when we had the merkin monthly challenge so guess I need to get back to doing those on a daily basis-really makes a difference.

Here is what I remember:

WU: IC X 10-ish: SSH, Merkins, Squats then JUMP ROPE X 20-ish, mosey to the flag, pledge, Rocky Balboa’s on the curb X 20, 10 Burpees OYO, then mosey to the steps at FPC.

Quick Explanation of overall plan related to Rocky-20 Merkins at bottom of stairs, run up stairs with arms up in victory position like Rocky. 20 Hip Slappers at top then down the steps. Keep walking steps until 6 finished then rinse and repeat.

Things got a little hazy for me at that point. I reminded the Pax at the end of Rocky 3 that Rocky had to pay back a favor to Apollo Creed if he won the fight against Clubber Lang. Some of the pax thought the favor was something about a fight. I quickly corrected them and explained this “favor” was actually a burpee challenge and Rocky/Apollo had a burpee battle so we would do something like that. My original plan was 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 in 1 minute intervals, then back down. My burpee limit was reached by the time we hit 10 so it was cut short. My apologies today, but you can bet this will not happen again. We moseyed to the grassy field for the next exercise. We lined up on 1 end of the field, lunged across then moseyed back to start. We then sprinted across the field (remember the beach scene with Rocky and Apollo?) and moseyed back. Think we did this twice??

We then moseyed back to the stairs and this is where things really went dark for me. I know we did the merkins/hip slapper routine on the stairs again, various other exercises named by me but led by a few of the pax, but all I remember is some squats by DaVinci. Thankfully he stopped at 60. We cooled down with some high knees, butt kickers, karaoke through the parking lot, moseyed back to start with a little wall sit, then finished with dying Bandits, I mean cockroaches as the bells of freedom rang.

Somewhere along the way I tried to remind everyone of why we are out here by briefly talking about part of the book Freedom from Fear that we are discussing at the Tuesday, 6am Ao at Harris Teeter. We are out here to help each other-sure we want to get in better shape, but I promise you I can do that at a different time of day on my own, at least for a little while. I am out here for the guys sweating next to me, for the guys who were starting the marathon or half marathon this morning as the freedom bells were ringing, for the guy pedaling the bike with one pedal as he cheered on his brothers who were busting their butts to push themselves past the point of exhaustion. Life is tough-we all know that. Having someone to shield lock with makes it a lot more bearable and gives me something to look forward to each day, whether it is weekday or weekend. Later in the day I was at my 2.0’s church basketball game and at halftime they do a quick message-today was about what was important about getting out there and playing basketball. The most important thing is to love God and love each other. Be there for the person next to you and pick them up when they are down, but also love yourself and allow yourself to make mistakes without beating yourself up-great message for these 10 year old kids (and their parents). In a nutshell, he was talking about a version of the shield lock. We just take it to a different level with F3, in my opinion, because of the amount of time we spend with each other and the quantity of sweat we collectively spill each week in the gloom.

EVERY TIME I come out here I am reminded about the privilege it is to be out here with all of you. Sure, I feel the aftershocks later in the day when I am walking up the stairs or getting off the can, but that always puts a smile on my face. Also, I get a little extra special burst of joy when my wife looks at me and asks if I am going out to exercise in the rain. Life is never as long as we want it to be-make sure you find a way to spend your time wisely. My time with F3 has never been a disappointment. Thanks for reminding me of that every day.

Congrats to the Charleston Runners (and biker). I know I enjoyed the pictures and videos. That was a great accomplishment for all of you.

Whoopee

It was about 30 degrees out and the last day of the year-was not sure how many would post for this workout and thankfully the pax did not disappoint. I arrived to find a crowd already assembled including a few Kotters (welcome back Jobu, T Square, and Rudolph) and at least 1 who came early for EC (attaboy DaVinci). Despite my best attempts at taunting on Twitter, however, the Ghost Flag was not threatened and remains in GasHouse. Apparently the ShackyShackyBoomBoom and Homer mooning the camera were not enough.

After a brief disclaimer and explanation that I would be trying to briefly discuss part of the book Freedom From Fear, we started. This is the book we are starting this week at our Tuesday 6am 3rd F AO at the new Harris Teeter (newest GasHouse AO)-props to Stroganoff on introducing this book to us.

Here is what we did…
WU: 10 IC SSH, Squats, Merkins, LBCs then 10 Burpees OYO.
Mosey to the Flag for STANDING Pledge (again, up yours Kaepernick)

The THANG: theme: COUNTDOWN (new year’s eve is tonight for those of you living under a rock)
Long mosey to the church steps (chasing Gomer who I think had 5 minutes of sleep) for quick background of above book-basically main character was Sad Clown who met guy named Len who ultimately became his life coach. The plan was to provide Len-isms throughout the workout to think about-see below for the ones we were introduced to.
Partner up (not needed, Q fail) 25 Merkins at bottom, run up steps, 20 hip slappers, run down steps, 15 merkins then run up steps, 10 hip slappers then down steps, 5 merkins. Mumble chatter was starting up at this point.
Hop up all steps with feet together then mosey to school track for some Bojangles with blueberries. 10 burpees then run, walk, mosey, or crawl half a lap and do 9 burpees then run half a lap and do 8 burpees…down to 1 burpee (total of 55 burpees!!!!) This looked bad on paper and was worse in action. Originally we were going down 1 burpee per lap but thankfully I came to my senses.
Mosey to field at church with partner (still not needed, Q fail again) for hip slapper countdown but running out of time so Omaha’d to save time. Start on 1st base side with 10 hip slappers on fence, run across field to parking lot and back then 5 hip slappers then across field and back with plank in hip slapper position (nice work Gomer).
Mosey to church steps again with partner-NOW YOU NEED YOUR PARTNER-
Q had trouble with the exercises and keeping them straight-just a ploy to keep all of you focused, had it all together the whole time…..Partner 1 up and down steps for 1, 2, and 3 minutes while Partner 2 did called exercise (in alphabetical order!!!) for 1, 2, and 3 minutes. Exercises were Merkins (1 min), SSH (2 min), and Squats (3 min). Flapjack after each set of exercises to alternate btwn stairs and exercises. I got things fired up with some “Final Countdown” music. We hustled back to partners and did a quick Hodor partner carry up the stairs then quick moseyed back to start as the bells of freedom were ringing.

GREAT WORK BY ALL-lot of running today and lot of hip slappers/stairs. I’ll be sore tomorrow for sure.

Here are the Len-isms we talked about:
We become what we think about.
First we form habits, then they form us.
Good habits are hard to form and easy to live with. Bad habits are easy to form and hard to live with. If we don’t consciously form good habits, we will unconsciously form bad ones.
Challenges don’t make the man, they reveal him to himself.
Freedom from fear is more important than freedom from want.

COT, namorama (thanks Roscoe), and quick prayer.
Great seeing the new “old guys” out here today. Life gets busy and things get in the way, however, remember you need F3 as much as it needs you. You are no good to anyone in your family or at work if you aren’t healthy and able to take care of yourself. Hope to see all of you early and often in the gloom in 2017.

Whoopee

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