Tag: Martha’s House (Page 15 of 21)

I’m calling it the, Brick No Hit Back.  Remember the classic 80’s action thriller starring Jean-Claude Van Damme as the incomparable Frank Dux, who fights for his pride, legacy, and charming big-haired lady friend, in an international no holds barred martial arts tournament? Good, were on the same page. So, the part where Frank hit’s the top of a stack of 4 bricks and only the bottom one explodes…….and Chong Li, the Asian Hercules slowly nods his head in approval (or so we thought) then says,  BRICK NO HIT BACK!!!!!!!!  This is the equivalent workout to that scene.

Warm up:
20 – Side Straddle Hops
20 – Squats
10 – Don Quixote
10 – LBCs
10 – Merkins

The Thang
To the Sweating Lot: (Grab the bricks, GRAB THE BRICKS)
Pair Up:
4 Corners (light poles}
1 Pax Runs,WITH THE BRICKS, while the other crushes the exercise. Cumulative numbers.
100 – Merkins
150 – Squat Press – squat with shoulder press holding bricks
200 – Flutter Kicks

Floyd Mayweather – Plank Punch, front, side back – switch arms and repeat (holding the brick)

2nd ROUND
4 Corners (light poles}
1 Pax Runs,WITH THE BRICKS, while the other crushes the exercise. Cumulative numbers.
40 – Burpies w/ Brick
100 – Lunges
150 – LBCs

11:  Merkin – run – Russian Twist

7 PAX plus YHC gathered in the gloom at Martha’s House for Stroganoff’s 20th Anniversary beatdown.  To the surprise of the PAX, someone has actually stayed with me for 20 years….I know.  With this fact in mind, there would be a very distinct “20” theme to the workout.

No FNG’s today so the disclaimer was brief before the warm up began In Cadence:

20 – Side Straddle Hops

20 – Freddy Mercury’s

20 – Imperial Walkers

20 – LBC’s

Pledge of Allegiance before the mosey to the far end of Martha’s House parking lot for a session of The Stroganoff 20.  This is the 20th Anniversary take on Eleven’s:

The Thang

On one side of the parking lot we would do 20 Merkins, then sprint/run to the other side for 20 LBC’s/Flutter Kicks.  This would continue and alternate as we counted down the Merkins after each set (20, 18, 16, 14, 12, 10…..) until after 10 we single counted down to the last set of one.  On the opposite side, we alternated each set of 20 between LBC’s and Flutter Kicks.  This led to the following totals included in the Stroganoff 20:

135 Merkins – 160 LBC’s – 140 Flutter Kicks – 15 sprints across parking lot

After 20 years of marital bliss and those reps/runs, YHC was sucking wind.  After the first few sets, the lack of much mumble chatter made me think I had stepped in it too deep. (Sounded good in my head before hand)

The PAX then moseyed to the center pavilion at the baseball/softball fields for what I called some Dora 20 step down.  We partnered up for some step work that went like this:

Partner 1 exercised while Partner 2 sprinted/ran down one of the ‘spokes’ between the baseball fields to the parking lot and back.  They then switched positions for some cumulative reps as follows:

200 Flutter Kicks

150 Squats

100 Merkins

We had enough time to mosey to the closest picnic shelter for some In Cadence work as follows:

20 Dips

20 Prayer Squats

20 Dips

(Again, sounded good in my head)

The final mosey back to the Snoball’s parking lot (might have been slower going back than when we headed out earlier)

One last exercise led by Bandit for 20 reps of Dying Cockroaches (I know…can’t believe Bandit chose that exercise)

We had a few announcements about Dredd/OBT’s speaking engagement tomorrow at The Gastonia Rotary Club; upcoming leadership meeting Sunday night at the GSM Services office at 407 E. Long Ave. at 7:00 pm followed by our first true 3rd F event bible study led by Monk at 8:00 pm.

Prayers still up for Outhouse’s Mom; coworker of Jk2 who lost a parent; Dolph’s Father as he recovers from surgery.

Thanks to Monk for the focus this month on Gratitude.  I have to send some gratitude to all of you for allowing me to lead another workout.  This one had special meaning for me personally due to occurring on my 20th Anniversary.  Dolph mentioned he is looking forward to the 30th Anniversary workout.  I would love to lead that one in 10 years (Respect).  Also, much gratitude to my M for allowing me to live a life unexpected for the past 20 years.

Thanks to F3 Gastonia for having such a positive impact on myself and my family over the past year.  Honored to lead you guys this morning.  Until the next one.  AYE!

Weather report called for rain.  So pulling from one of Whoopee’s recent backblasts, YHC attempted to orchestrate a semi-dry WO by keeping the PAX mostly under cover.  Turns out, the deluge held off so we didn’t really need the cover so much.  Regardless… we pushed on as planned (well, mostly).

Warm Up

• Side Straddle Hop x30 IC
• Mountain Climbers x20 IC
• Moroccan Night Clubs x40 IC
• Peter Parkers x20 IC
• Toy Soldiers x20 IC

Mosey to the flag for the Pledge of Allegiance

The Thang

• Mosey to and 4x around Park Sterling Bank lot to cover…LBC x30, x20, x10
• Mosey to and 4x around Bank of America lot… Peter Parkers x20, x15, x10
• Mosey to and 4x around Fidelity Bank lot…Plank-O-Rama
• Mosey to the parking lot formerly known as Harris Teeter under cover… Russia Twists x20, x15, x10
• Mosey to cover…Dying Cockroach (What do you call Omaha when know one knows you Omaha’d?)

Baby Dora 1-2-3… 50 ‘Mericans, 100 LBC, 150 Squats (Another one of those silent Omaha’s)

Mosey back to Park sterling Bank and around lot to cover.

People’s Choice (as best I can recall)

• Bandit – Dying Cockroach x15 IC
• Monk – “ugh… you’ll need to come back to me”
• Stroganoff – Flutter Kicks x1,000,000 IC or something like that (was probably 40)
• Monk – YHC has no clue what we did here. But it didn’t suck as much as the Flutter Kicks.
• Whoopee – Gorilla Humpers x20 IC
• JK2 – Merkins x15 IC
• Spiderman – 10 Burpees OYO (although Whoopee challenge’s this – might have been JK2)
• Squeeker – Imperial Walkers x20 IC

COT, BOM & NamoramaOnTheRun

Announcements & Prayer Requests

• Word of the week is “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.” Matthew 5:7.  In other words… if someone is struggling, carry their cross for them.  Reach out and help someone in need.
• Keep Outhouse’s mom and their family in our prayers.  Also one of Monk’s students that had to leave school.
• Sorry if I left anything out.

Bandit

After YHC nearly missed the workout due to alarm clock malfunction (helps if you turn it on) and lots of mumble about too cold to be out here 7 #HIM posted on the ice at Martha’s House for a nice cold beatdown. But wait whats this – another pax jogs in from the cold – Stroganoff was here early and got in 3 miles of extra credit (Tclaps).

The warmup

20 SSH

20Squats

20 LBC

10 Merkins

The Thang:

Disclaimer reiterated and workout explained – we would modify to murph this morning.  Typical Murph is 1 mile run 100 Pullups, 200 Merkins and 300 squats followed by 1 mile run all down with a 20 lb weight vest.  Although it was tempting to grab Outhouse’s sandbags (NOT) this would be done without added weight. The workout would be divided  into 10 pain stations separated by approximately 1/4 mile mosey in between.  Exercises at each station were 10 burpees (OYO) 20 Merkins (IC) and 30 squats (IC).  Thus the pax covered nearly two miles.  Although the thermometer read 21 at the start no one was cold!  As always it was a pleasure to lead this fine group of men.

Prayer requests Whoopie test results, Outhouse’s moms

11 of F3 Gastonia’s finest gathered in the parking lot of the future site of Pelican’s Snoballs (gotta love Italian Ice) for a tag team beat-down from Godfather and JK2, who was leading his Virgin Q. While it may have been his first time, JK2 seemed to be at ease when leading this morning. The forecasts promised rain, but the PAX received a reprieve by the time the work out began. Unfortunately, the rain would not hold out for long as everyone was drenched by the end.

The beatdown started with JK2 and proceeded as follows…

Pledge of Allegiance

Warm-Up (IC)

• Side-Straddle Hop x25
• Carolina Dry Dock x30
• Moroccan Night Club x25
• Don Quixote x15
• Imperial Walker x15

Mosey from the Parking Lot down the side walk and to the end of the other Parking Lot

Partner up for Dora 1-2-3

• 100 Merkins
• 200 Squats
• 300 Flutter Kicks
• P1 runs down the side-walk to a flag pole and back while P2 completes exercises on aggregate.

Switch to Godfather aka El Padrino:

Eleven’s – One side of the parking lot is Merkins and the other side is Squats.

Journey Back to the Lot

• Mosey to Light Pole 1
• Zombie Walk to Light Pole 2
• Mosey to Light Pole 3
• Backwards Zombie Walk to Light Pole 4
• Mosey to Light Pole 5
• Bounding to Light Pole 6
• Mosey to Light Pole 7 (street-level)

Partner-Up. P1 Bear Crawls as far as he can while P2 Lunges beside him. Switch as needed.

Back at the Start:

• Ring-of-Fire/Wave of Merkins (5…4…3…2…1)

Finally, there was just enough time for… 5 Burpees OYO

Announcements

• Continue to use the 2F survey (see Twitter) to express your ideas for Second F activities.
• Training for the Yeti continues.
• Shirts for the Backyard Brawl continue to be pre-sold on the website until February 10.

Moleskin: 

#MarthasHouse, regrettably, has become a work out that I’ve grown to avoid due to the more mobile nature of the Q’s who typically lead there. Although we didn’t move nearly as much as I’m sure has been done in the past, it felt good to be back at this AO.

T-Claps are in order to JK2 for stepping up and leading this morning. I happily extend an invitation to any of the PAX who haven’t Q’d yet to join me any time I’m listed to lead a work out.

A Note on the Title of this BB: “The Rains of MarthasHouse” is a nod to an episode of Game of Thrones called “The Rains of Castemere”; however, the Rains in the GoT episode were actually a family, not the salty wet stuff that makes our clothes heavy. Another fun fact: “The Rains of Castemere” was the episode with the Red Wedding if anyone’s ever heard of that.

I’m having a crisis of identity at the moment, and I wanted to extend some gratitude to you gentlemen for supporting me as I transition from Godfather to El Padrino.

JB aka Godfather aka El Padrino

10 Pax showed up for a much warmer gloom than last week. With the rain about to stop we said the Pledge and off we went.

Mosey to the park to far end of the parking lot

Circle up for a quick warm up

SSH x 20 IC

Moroccan Night Club x20 IC

Imperial Walker x @0 IC

Round 1 Short Mosey to shelter and grab a bench

Derkins x10IC

Dips x15 IC

Step up each Leg X20

Mosey to wall Donkey Kicks X15 IC

Round 2

Derkins X 15 IC

Dips X 20 IC

Step up each leg X30

Donkey Kicks X20 IC

Mosey down path and over to driest part of walking trail to the Pain Triangle

Bear Crawl up hill

Lunge Walk to Left

High Knees Back

Flutter Kicks IC till PAX is finished

Rinse and repeat Merkins till PAX is Finished

Mosey Back To Shelter to finish round 3
Derkins X 20

Dips X30

Step up X30 each Leg

Donkey Kicks x 20 or 30 can’t recall  IC

Mosey up through park to baseball field and partner up.

Partner 1 runs in and around while partner 2 does Burpees till Total of 40 is reached

Mosey back to start for a quick round of wall march, air press, and merkins IC to finish up

COT

Sunday Regional planning meeting 6:30 site TBD, but Bandit will update through email.

Yeti

Backyard Brawl Shirt Order

Prayers

Anthrax

Outhouse Mom

As always a great way to start the day. Over slept yesterday and its just not the same with out starting your day with out F3!

Outhouse

It was a moderately cold morning, but 7 of us fought off the fartsack to take a quick tour of the banks (and Walgreen???) for some mileage and ATMs.

WU: 10 reps IC of the following: SSH, Squat, Flutter (X 20), Sully Merkins (thanks for the suggestion from my M, however will likely never do this again-watch Monster’s Inc, Godfather-you can borrow my kids’ DVD if you don’t know what this is), Don Quixote, Gorilla Humpers, SDD

Pledge

Lot of running from home base with ATM’s at 4 banks plus a Walgreen’s (thanks JK2 for the good eyes spotting the ATM at the drug store), as well as some donkey kicks at (where else????) the BB&T. This was all in the first probably quarter mile explaining my rep reduction from 15/10 down to 5 with a quick Oklahoma. We hit a credit union a little while later and did a few SSH to get the blood back into my fingers. We then settled in for a nice run lasting the majority of the time then closed out the run with more ATMs at BOA.

We finished back at base with a few minutes of Mary with everyone getting a shot at leading, ending with some frozen cockroach (thanks Monk??).

I enjoyed the focus on running this am which was a change of direction for me, instead of the bootcamp type of stuff. Think we need a regular mainly-running workout here in GasHouse-maybe something we can talk about over the next few weeks-lot of options. Would enjoy the slow steady pace with some time to get to know the pax a little better. I enjoy the beat-downs as much as everyone, however getting some occasional mileage would be a nice change of pace-THINK ABOUT IT…… Not sure the extra credit is a long term solution for me-I need my beauty rest.

Thanks for the opportunity to avoid another fartsack and sorry this is late. Had some guy from Homeland Security stop by the house wondering why I was seen on 7 different ATM cameras yesterday…..

Whoopee

As the Q arrives, Defib and Outhouse are just finishing up their EC 4 mile run. Studs! As others arrive, 12 in total, there was some discussion that 34 degrees was feeling a bit balmy with the deep freeze experienced at our weekday AO’s recently. Thanks to Outhouse for keeping time this morning (really need to find that watch again). Ok… time to start.

Warmup this morning consisted of…

SSH IC x20
Toy Soldier IC x20
Don Quioxte IC x20
Merkins IC x10
LBC IC x20

Pledge

Mosey to baseball pavillion at Martha Rivers. Inspired by(certainly not modelled after) the Murph, the plan today was to complete 100, 200 and 300 reps of some excercises (Merkins, LBCs and Squats in this case) in 10 sets with some short sprints in between. We could definately tell that the mercury was rising as evidenced by the pile of dirty laundry accumulating in the center of the COP. Glad we got that under control quickly… was getting worried.

We completed…

Merkins IC x10
LBC IC x 20
Squats IC x 30
Sprint, Run, Mosey, or Crawl down sidewalk and back
Rinse & Repeat x5

This took quite a while longer than expected, and at the current rate did not seem like we would finish the full 10 sets promised. To be fair, since we did all exercises with a 4-count cadence, ends up we reached the same goal (in spite of YHC chronic counting issues).  At the gleeful satisfaction of the pax, YHC calls “Oklahoma”. Only to disappoint the pax with a bear crawl around the pavillion. Not sure about anyone else, but at this point, my legs were spent from the squats. All looks good on paper, does’t it?

With 15 minutes to go, we mosey back to Brewsters for about 9 minutes of Mary with some portions brought to you directly from the pax. It went something like this…

LBC
WWII Sit Ups
Dying Cockroach
Freddie Mercuries
Flutter Kicks
Homer & Marge
Mountain Climbers
Heels to the Heavens

At 6:15 we wrap up with announcements (see email blast for details), Name-o-rama (including induction ceremony for Drone) and BOM.

As always, appreciate everyone I get to do this with. One year ago, would have never considered that I would be leading a bunch of fit guys in workouts before the sun comes up. Keep pushing the rock!

Aye!

– Bandit

It was clearly the coldest post for me on record, however we still had a very good showing, including 3 who showed for some extra credit at 5am to get a little running in before the workout (OutHouse, Defib, Whoopee-thanks for the push OutHouse). I learned a few things this morning: 24 degrees is too cold for shorts, SSH is best thing for pre-frost bite fingers (more is better, 40 reps is adequate), and I don’t like Wells Fargo ATMs.

WU: 10-15 reps IC of the following: SSH, CDD, Flutter, Squat, Merkin, Imperial Walker, Freddy Mercury (this was a true WU for me full of boredom after the first few exercises but I felt were necessary given the low temps).

Pledge

The Thang:

Mosey carrying the medicine ball to dilapidated Lowe’s parking lot, partner up (not necessary but gave us something to do until all pax arrived). Split into 2 lines and 1 pax from each line did relay with medicine ball around parking lot in different directions but crossing in middle on other side of lot to hand off medicine ball then continue around back to start. While partners were doing this running thing, the remaining pax stayed at the start and did rounds of AMRAP of the following exercises: SSH, CDD, Flutter, Squat, Merkin, Imperial Walker, and Freddy Mercury. After the pax returned to start, the next in line repeated the relay/run with ball until all had gone twice (I think) while remaining pax moved on to the next exercise. This really makes sense in my head but sounds very confusing on paper.

Next exercise consisted of Donkey Kicks (also known as BB&T’s) and Dips. We started in front of store and did 30 seconds of BB&Ts then moseyed to end of building and did 30 seconds of dips. I think we did 2 sets of this, but just for the record let’s call it 5 sets of each.

I was getting bored with this I think because of the lack of mumble chatter. Was not sure if it was the workout or the cold weather….my vote is the weather since I had snot-icycles at this point.

We moved on down my Weinke and did a quick audible. My plan was to mosey to the local Bank of Bank (not really that far) but during the mosey we came upon a Wells Fargo ATM which served my purposes just fine. In front of the ATM we did ATMs (A=15 sets of alternating shoulder taps in 4 counts, T=tempo merkins:1-3 down then up on 4, M=regular fast single count merkins). We moseyed around the entire parking lot for total of 2 sets of ATMs (only comment was from OutHouse-“insufficient funds” which almost made me laugh a snotcylce out) then went back to the original starting point in front of the store and did some zombie lunge walk. At this point my fingers were numb and my legs really felt funny so I pulled an Oklahoma and did a bunch of SSH-this quickly returned blood to my fingers which made me want to keep doing them (sorry Linus, my fingers needed that). We did some more lunges then moseyed back to start for a few minutes of Mary plus a frozen cockroach. I succeeded in avoiding the escalating burpee/lap run on my Weinke so I was relieved to be finished.

The cold weather really takes some of the fun out of this for me, however if I did not have the pax to work out with, I would clearly be at home in my fartsack. Instead, I had a half hour of running before the workout with a couple great guys, learned something about cold fingers and SSHs, and got a chance to talk about F3 with Defib and some non-F3 people on the way to a lunch meeting after finding the medicine ball in my back seat. Thanks for showing up and posting.

We ended with announcements: Q school Jan 16 with some community service after for those able to stick around, Yeti in Feb, Congrats to Boss Hogg on the grandchild and a few others I cannot remember.

Great seeing everyone this am. If you need me, I’ll be at Dick’s getting some long, cold-weather running pants, earmuffs, mittens, a scarf, goggles, and a pair of yak-lined running shoes.

Whoopee