11 pax posted for my VQ and co Q Montross

warm up

10 ssh in cadence 

10 hillbillies in cadence 

10 monkey humpers 

Pledge

The thang from YHC

Modified Dora (partner up) bear crawl to the first light post both directions, run in between 

50 of your choice either burpees or flying squirrels 

100 squats 

200 raise the roofs

this was a Q fail for me as after the first set of bear crawls I was winded (had to modify to just 1 court of crawls each direction)

Montross part

Route 66 with blocks…… oh wait…. sparky was a no show and he was supposed to bring the blocks.

Omaha: Route 66 Lunge walk with Mike Tyson’s

after this we did a mini tour of the amphitheater and the grass by the shelters

YHC called 3 exercises at the amphitheater

On your 6. 

Flutters 10 in cadence (I miscalled these swimmers, Montross set me straight)

Recover

10 ssh in cadence 

10 toy soldiers in cadence 

to the grass where Montross called 3 exercises

LBC

Rosalita’s

Big Boys

back to the ampitheater YHC called 3 more exercises

ssh 10 in cadence

monkey humpers 10 in cadence

and I can’t remember the last one (to many parties back in the day).

Last trip to the grass

I believe Montross just rinsed and repeated

every time we moved to a different area Montross called some plank exercises while waiting on the six (guess who that was…… me)

after 2 sets at each shelter it was time to go back to the courts for a short round of Mary.

Back to the parking lot for COT.

prayer request: Roadie and family, our youth, Stogie’s Family

announcements: Ragnar trail run (y’all to somebody from the Rock Hill region if interested)

special shout out to Pac-Man for driving nearly an hour to support YHC in my VQ

Also you guys have helped me probably more than you realize.  Happy to lead you guys and hopefully helped you all get a little better.

Iron sharpens Iron proverbs 27:17

So with the race in Belmont and Speed For Need yHC stepped up to hold the fort down at The Yank again this morning. And as it turned out we did have some new players that we felt needed an intro to the new toy at The Yank which is of course the the Half Pipe, aka the Horrible Half Pipe. As we gathered on the pad for some warm ups it was easily going to be the hottest workout of the year to date. Went like this:

COP on the pad:

Train burpees X 5

SSH X 20

IW X 20

Copper head squats X 20

Peter Parker X 20

2 minutes of right had right leg and left hand left leg strectches

merkins X 20

mosey on up to the field of dreams for some .555 caliber shots as follows:

5X each

Squats,

Merkins

Big boy situps

Burpees

Plank Jacks

After each round, run to the other end of the field and repeat.

5 rounds total

Mosey up to the Corner of Knowledge:

10X each:

Mike Tysons (on the steps)

Step ups (10 each leg)

Dirkins

Line up for burpee broad jumps to the middle path.

frog hops from the road to the steps.

Lunge walk down to the end.

Burpees 5X

Inclined merkins  10X

LBCs X 20

Karoke back to the COK,

Mosey down to the wall for some wall torture as follows:

People’s Chair

Air presses X 20

Air punches X 20

Balls to the Wall, all pax stays in the position while one sprints to the middle of the drive and lays down 5 HR Merkins. Do this down the line.

Mosey over to Heart break Hill for – Half Pipe time at The Yank!

Top pf HBH – 5 plank jacks

Pad – 5 Mountain climbers each leg

Top of stairs: 5 butt to the street mountain climbers.

Repeat 3 times, which was plenty in this heat and point in the workout.

Mosey back to the Field. You KNOW what’s next!

Bear Crawl Slalom! Everybody got three times through. This is not because we want to or even YHC wants to. This is about one thing – Grit! Which takes you a long, long, way in life. Everybody got three rounds. Note: We were in the shade. Not a bad thing.

End of the slalom, a little recovery:

SSH X 10

Squats X 20.

Back to the start:

Run @ 1/3, drop and 2 HR merkins, 2/3, drop and 4 HR merkins, all the way, drop and 6 HR merkins

Down to the fountain for pax led Mary to end.

Pledge

NMM:

Great, great , group to be with today. Pleasure to lead. We worked into it and went hard, harder, hardest. And nobody folded. Not even close. Bad ass bunch!

don’t know if any of you caught it but I stream the USNA graduation ceremony every year which is the Friday of Memorial Day weekend and I had a buddy (F3 Checkpoint, metro) Whose son Shep graduated with honors from the academy yesterday. Pat Shanahan, the acting Sec. of Defense gave one of the most inspiring speeches I have ever heard. He talked about how failure makes you better because you learn to feel the pain, lose the fear of failure and then get better. And about the thing that really matter – grit! Somebody made a comment during last week’s Bear Crawl why YHC always puts this at the end. The answer is it is the most productive place for it to be. It is the place where it builds the most grit physically, mentally, and spiritually. And if we do that we are getting better. If not, we’re just going through the motions. And acceleration is not about going through the motions. It’s about putting it out there and being the man in the Arena.

It’s out there to be done men! And we are the guys to do it.

Pretty good affable ass kickin’? I thought so! We all got better.

Tesla Out.

BTW, we renamed Durst to Milburn because he found a $20 bill, No claimant so we made the motion that he keep it. Those guys in Raleigh that named him did not meet our standards. Only his third post. Looking or more from you brother!

I’ve been slack lately. I can’t seem to find the motivation to accelerate my first F for unknown reasons. Excuses are leaping into my arms and light enough to carry, weighing heavier on my conscious than challenging my soccer arms to lift. Listening to 43 feet podcast and CSPAN’s roundtable call/podcast, I’m hearing the challenge and hear what I need to do. Mind over matter – it sounds simple but a tough hill to climb. I posted Tuesday and Wednesday this week which was a start. Unfortunately my M tore her hip flexor (big ouch on that one) so that frees me from some of those excuses I mentioned. I’d never been to Bulldog, so I had the pleasure of partaking from Voodoo’s Q. The next morning I hit Snoballs expecting Dirty Bird’s VQ but he had a conflict so Gastone stepped in and wore my ass out, actually my arms and shoulders: 11’s with pull-ups and burpees – which has to be the ultimate suck of all sucks. My arms, shoulders, core, and back felt that abuse for two days. Work took away my planned Thursday night run and old fashion exhaustion procrastinated any Friday activity. Fortunately, I had the Q at the GasHouse this morning. Time to clock in as our current Weasel Shaker likes to say:

The circle had a few new faces with Smog visiting from Hilton Head and OReilly having been EH’ed by Bono to come over the border. We learned OReilly is really a local product from Hunter Huss High School that moved to Lake Wylie – hopefully we’ll see more of him. The other cast of characters (13 in all) looked semi-ready so I started off with a different warm-up; no cadence, 30 seconds of each:

• Seal Jacks
• Imperial Walkers
• Butt Kicks
• High Knees
• Squat with alternate toe touch
• Reverse Lunge
• Spider Step Merkin
• T-Merkins

I promptly began the first exercise by calling a cadence – immediate Q fail. The timed sets were intended for mumble chatter, which seemed relegated to neighbor conversation. Oh well, dare to be different. Then it was off to our respective workouts. Huck had 7 followers and 6 brave souls followed me out of the parking lot, turning right on Garrison and moseying a short distance to the Garrison Professional Park complex on the left. To my knowledge that location has never been used for an F3 workout – time to pop that cherry. I picked it for the severe left to right or east to west slope. I circled the first building backing to Stroganoff’s childhood home to my coupons dropped prior: blocks and sandbags.

Thang:

Grab a coupon of choice and perform the following:

• Swings x 25
• Push Press x 25
• Burpee claps x 12
• Run a lap around both buildings; plank for the six

It only took one set for the group to question the Q’s Weinke, so the mission was quickly accomplished. We did the set two more times for added pleasure. The burpee clap is a bit different than the “standard burpee.” Go all the way flat to the ground and then clap overhead, then push your body upright and jump, clapping again overhead. Sounds simple until you realize your entire body is static and you must push it off the ground. After the first set, I asked OReilly for a 10 count to which he inquired “is that an Apache 10 count?” Now knowing Apache’s reputation, I figured a 10 count was effectively the same as his famous “pow, pow, pow.” But we learned it really is 10-15 seconds for the PAX to share something to get to know each other better. Good idea, lets employ that now. I mentioned in the beginning OReilly and Smog were visitors but both shared a similar story having been overweight and lacking motivation. Having F3 in their lives was motivation to where they lost significant weight and now pushing their First F to clip off goals they never anticipated. What a powerful organization we’re all lucky to have where we can show up early on a Saturday morning and join unknown brothers under the same mission to push ourselves. On to set #2:

• Big Boy Sit Ups x 20
• American Hammers x 20 (count both sides – I was feeling sentimental)
• 5 Hill sprints
• Squat Jumps x 15

I had two others on the Weinke that I Omhahed, fearing time would run out. We missed Push Press x 15 and Moving Merkins x 12. Next time. But we did this set twice. The hill was sharp enough to keep the heart rate up. The grand finale was partner, boo-yah, hand-slap merkins. We began with 10 and descended to zero, circling the two buildings out front and meeting in the middle. That was a crusher at the end. We arrived back with 5 minutes to spare for some Mary (flutter, freddie mercury, then Huck’s 100 cadence LBCs, and Rudolph’s plank, plyo merkins).

I forgot the pledge in the beginning, so covered that. Announcements were the Murph – 0700 at Snoballs/Martha Rivers on Memorial Day Monday – an GasHouse F3 tradition. Prayers for Watts Up’s daughter with some post partum from her pregnancy (baby is doing fine).

Moleskin:

I’ve had some creative inspirations for my Q’s but mostly I’m a hack, borrowing from you guys with a tweak here or there. Scouring the internet for bootcamp ideas. The inspiration for this beatdown was courtesy of Men’s Health. I added a bit to it and using the office park’s inclines aided the challenge. The creator claimed it would burn over 500 calories in an hour. That was just for the first two sets. I like the partner merkins, especially when we loop in opposite directions. In my excitement to begin the warm-up, I failed to start my watch, so I missed the first 7 minutes but even with that, I hit nearly 600 calories and 2.6 miles which is surprising considering the short distances we ran. All of our guys worked hard with Bono and OReilly leading the way. I don’t have a creative name for this one yet like the Wolfpack Grinder or the Forest Gump – but I’m saving this Weinke and hopefully can bring this opportunity to an AO near you. Happy Memorial Day.

Kudos to Def Leppard who allowed me to hijack his Q today – I was talking to him last week and complaining that I have not been very good at Qing Midoriyama lately so he graciously allowed me an opportunity to lead today

9 brave Pax posted in the heat and humidity this afternoon – Several pax were just coming off the Mt Mitchell hike and were excited to exercise away their soreness (!)

Warm-up

10 each:  SSH, Imperial Walkers, Don Q LBC and Merkins (with ascending Burpee count between each starting with 3)

Thang:

Mosey to parking area next to playground and line up for 11’s with Squats and Mountain Climbers, then quick round of Dora with 100 Merkins, 200 LBCs and 300 Squats.  Finished off with some Murph training. As many sets as possible of 10 pull-ups, 20 Merkins and 30 Squats then run in parking lot approximately 200 yards.  Finally moseyed back to start for “Cool Down” in which we repeated the warmup but did decreasing Burpees between sets starting with 7.  Oompa took us out with 22 for vets

Prayers:

Freights Grandmother, Def Leppard’s Aunt recently passed, Def Leppard’s son with Kidney stones, and Broke’s Daughter with GI problems.

Thought for the day – After giving yourselves 45mins to become better – take that strength and give it back

Philippians 2:3-4  Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.

Thanks to all who posted and allowed me to torture them in the heat today – It was my honor to serve

Until next time Defib – out!

Today marks the beginning of my reign at the Bulldog as site Q.  To be honest, when I first joined F3 I had no intentions of ever Qing, but now I am proud to be this involved.  It is actually a great honor.  I have met some great men during this journey and I am looking forward to growing the pax.  As for this beat down I wanted to add in a little cardio to the mix of slinging weight so here it went.

Pledge

Warmup:

SSH x 15 IC

Merkins x 10 IC

LBC x 10 IC

Poles:

Start at one end of the parking lot:

10 burpees mosey to light pole, 10 American hammers, mosey to barricade 20 kettle bell swings , mosey back to pole 10 crunchy frogs IC, mosey back barricade 20reverse grip curls, mosey back to pole 20 merkins, mosey back to beginning… We repeated this way mixing in various exercises.  More burpees, more Mary and more work with kettlebells .  We ended up going through these stations for approximately 6 rounds.  We left some sweat angels  on the ground and some wear and tear was done to our bodies.  It was an honor to lead  today, and even though I was slightly discombobulated I felt everyone got their money’s worth.  We even had a VIP first timer today as Short Sale joined us.  I ‘m not sure of it, but I think I even saw a drop of sweat roll off his forehead.  Thanks for coming out! 

Announcements:  Community 5K, collections for Pizzaman’s friend, and Monks party .

YHC took us out with a prayer.  Hope everyone has a great week.  Voodoo out