Author: BackBlasts

10 Side Straddle Hops

10 rockettes

10 baby arm circles each way + overhead claps

10 cherry pickers

THE THANG:

Mosey to traffic circle – 20 flutter kicks together

Mosey to new parking lot by new baseball fields

Aluminum PAX modified workout

Set Tabata timer for 1 minute, rotating

When 1 minute timer sounds every time do 5 burpees. Then start in on the rotation of exercises.

100 squats

100 LBCs

100 SSHs

When you complete 100 of your exercise run loop mapped out around full outside of parking lot.

If you get through all 3, rinse and repeat.

Mosey to small turf baseball field and lineup up at home plate.

“Diamond of Fire”

1 man goes around bases forward. When he hits 1st base the next man goes. Everyone else does merkins until their turn comes.

After home lineup on other side as you come in and start doing box cutters until last man comes in then do the same thing going backwards (3rd, 2nd 1st, home).

Mosey back to flag, via Pickett’s Charge

MARY:

Ended with some stretching at the flag

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

COT:

Loneliness Epidemic article

Between 1990 and 2024, the percentage of college graduates who reported having zero close friends rose to 10 percent from 2 percent, which is upsetting enough. Among high school graduates, the percentage rose to a heartbreaking 24 percent from 3 percent.

For context about 55% in America are college graduates, so that leaves 45% who have a high school diploma or less.

In 1990, an impressive 49 percent of high school graduates reported having at least six close friends. By 2024, that percentage had been cut by more than half — to 17 percent. The percentage of college graduates with that many friends declined also, but only to 33 percent from 45 percent.

Causes? You may think politics, but I would say that may be more a symptom than a cause. Surely COVID and everything being online and the ease it is to isolate yourself, surely cannot help. We as a collective group need to worry less about the cause…

Article in NYT is quoted:

What is the most important single thing that you can do to heal our national divides and to improve the social and economic mobility of your struggling neighbors?

I’d submit that it’s not voting for the right candidate (though you should certainly do that), nor is it engaging in activism to raise visibility for a worthy cause (though I endorse that as well). Instead, it’s something that is at once much simpler but also much more difficult.

Make a new friend.

Maybe you could even make a new friend outdoors, away from your phone, spending zero dollars, while getting some exercise and hanging out with other guys where politics, education and economic levels are not a factor? If only such a thing existed, wow what a cool thing that could be. I reiterate Crash Dummies challenge from Tuesday. In the next month try and convince a FNG to come out, you may be helping them more than you realize.