F3 Knoxville

Author: Lillydipper

Bees, tics, snakes and varmints.

THE SCENE: Cloudy, temp in 70’s.
F3 WELCOME & DISCLAIMER
WARM-O-RAMA:
20 Side-straddle hops, 10 Burpees, 10 Rockettes, 10 Cherry Pickers, Little of This and Little of That, 10 Michael Phelps
THA-THANG:

Mosey to Trail by Northernmost Parking Lot that leads to road by northern gate.  We will do 14’s to the road where we will bear crawl one light then run four lights all the way to the roadway.

Mosey to bottom of Mt. Everest.  20 Hello Dollies.  20 Carolina Dry Docks.  Next, run up Mt. Everest .  Stop at roadway below Admin Bldg.

Mosey to Boulder Pile.  Pick up appropriate boulder.  We will do the following exercises:

  • 25 Curls
  • 25 Overhead Presses
  • 25 Rows

Next, put down boulders and run to top of space needle and back to boulder pile.  Repeat the exercises with boulders.  Then put boulders back in pile.

Mosey to stop sign at southeast corner of Admin Bldg.  20 American Hammers

Mosey to outdoor pavilion close to outdoor chapel.  We will break into three groups with one group running to island at nearby parking lot, second group doing decline merkins off of chairs or benches and third man doing jump squats at other end of chapel.  Groups then switch exercises so that all three groups will do all three exercises.  Rinse and repeat.

Mosey north on roadway to parking lot west of roadway where new restrooms are located.  Go to southern end of parking lot.  We will do suicides by running to first cone and back, second cone and back, etc until all five cones have been reached.  Each time back do 10 Big Boy Sit-ups and 20 Baby Crunches.  Rinse and repeat.

Mosey to AO.

MARY:
20 Box Cutters.  Planks with lifts of each arm, each leg, and then arm and leg at same time, both sides.  ATM’s.
COUNT-OFF & NAME-O-RAMA
Fifteen men with one FNG, Chris Sisk, whom we named “Robin.”
CIRCLE OF TRUST/BOM:
This world involves suffering and death.  We tend to want to ignore death, keep it at a distance.  Yet, one certainty in life is that we will die.  Another certainty is that we will suffer.  I need to do a better job at looking this suffering and death in the face.  Because when I do so, I go beyond the rigamarole of my daily existence.  It forces me to consider what I am about. . . what this world is about . . what the Creator is about.  It makes me look not just at the finite but the infinite.  And in my smallness, in my short time here in the face of eternity, it leads me to face God.

It is good to know that Jesus suffered to.  He did not run away from suffering or try to gloss over it.  He went to those who were suffering.  He didn’t give them some kind of sugar coated message about how everything was going to be happy and terrific for them.  What he did show them was the means to go beyond our worldly existence – he showed them that life, the truth, the Word as John writes in the bible, is so much more than what we generally think it is.  And, Jesus, God, showed us that he understands suffering.  He understands because he suffered too.  He was poor, shunned, mocked, beaten, torn apart, nailed to a cross.  But he rose again, showing us that we are more than death, we can conquer it, through Him we hold the key to victory.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:
3rd F on Saturday, August 11.

Steambath

THE SCENE: Hot and steamy, temp in mid-nineties.
F3 WELCOME & DISCLAIMER
WARM-O-RAMA:
20 Side-straddle hops, 10 Burpees, 20 Prayer Pulses (four count), 8 Twisties (four count), 10 Windmills
THA-THANG:

Mosey to road in front of Admin Bldg.  There will be cones placed on both sides of the road.  Go to each cone and do the exercises listed.

  • Cone 1:  20 Hello Dollies (four count).  Lunge to Cone 2.
  • Cone 2:  20 Bicycle Kicks (four count).  Run to Cone 3.
  • Cone 3:  Bernie Sanders up right sidewalk to Flag Pole.  Run back on other sidewalk.  Run to Cone 4.
  • Cone 4:  20 Dive Bombers.  Hop to Cone 5 which will be across the street and a number of yards to the north.
  • Cone 5:  40 Baby Crunches.  Run to Cone 6.
  • Cone 6:  Run down stairs and up stairs three times, staying to right side.  Run to Cone 7.
  • Cone 7:  20 American Hammers.  Bear Crawl to Cone 8.
  • Cone 8:  20 Squats.  Rinse and Repeat back at Cone 1

Mosey to Playground.  Elevens with Bench Hops and Decline Merkins.

Mosey to Pavilion.  90 seconds of picnic table pull-ups, as many as can in that amount of time.

Mosey to shade of large evergreen tree by stop sign on northeast corner of admin bldg.  20 Boxcutters

Mosey back to AO

COUNT-OFF & NAME-O-RAMA
13 men.  Two Flying EH’s became our FNG’s.  They are now members:  Joey Miller or “Rebound” and Matthew Harshey or “Duckers”.
CIRCLE OF TRUST/BOM:
One of my favorite spiritual books is a daily bible verse devotion book created by Tim Branch her in Knoxville.  It is simply called “The Blue Book” because it has a blue cover.  There is a topic devoted to each week of the year and a daily reading from the bible for each week.  There are also excerpts from various writers about the topic if the week.  Last week in my reading the topic was “time.”  I was struck by an excerpt from John Ortberg’s book The Life You’ve Always Wanted.  He talked about his own discussion with a mentor at a very busy time in his life when he was a young man.  He asked this mentor what he needed to do to be spiritually healthy.  The mentor, sensing where John Ortberg was spiritually, replied after a long pause:  “You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.”  Ortberg jotted this down, in a hurry and wanting to cram as many pearls of wisdom into his notebook as he could in his limited amount of time.  He said, “OK, that is good one.  Now what else is there?”  The mentor replied, after a long pause, “There is nothing else.”

I feel that Americans need to hear this today.  We are such a fast paced moving society, rushing off to work each morning, fighting traffic to arrive on time, getting as much as we can done at the office, driving through “rush hour” traffic back home, throwing our dinners in the microwave, getting the kids to bed, finding a quick tv show to look at right before bed . . . we miss something.  I am guilty of this.  Often times, when at a store, if stopped by some old acquaintance to talk, I find myself thinking “Man, I gotta find a way to end this conversation so I can get on home.”

If we are truly to live a spiritual life, we must do battle with hurry.  If we do not, we miss out on so much.  We fail to truly enjoy what God has given us.  We fail to take time to listen to Him and miss out on the most important thing in our lives.  I need to listen to those same words that John Ortberg was given by such a wise sage:  “You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.”

Pickett’s Charge

THE SCENE:  Sunny and beautiful although humid.  Temps in 70’s.
F3 WELCOME & DISCLAIMER
WARM-O-RAMA:
20 Side-straddle-hops, 5 Burpees, 8 Windmills, 4 Burpees, 8 Cherry Pickers, 3 Burpees, Plank Lifts, 2 Burpees, 10 Little Baby to Big Baby Arm Circles, Forwards and Backwards, 1 Burpee
THA-THANG:
Mosey to beginning of Dragon Tail.  We will do Route 66 up Dragon Tail starting with one and ending with 11 of the following exercises at each light:

  • Jump Squats
  • Big Boys
  • John Travolta (four count or once with each hand)

Pickets Charge to Road to Admin Bldg.  20 Merkins and 40 Baby Crunches at top of steps.

Mosey to Roadway.

Rest and gander at the beautiful view of the river below.

Mosey to the alley way that goes to the northeast corner of the Admin Bldg.  Go to the pile of bricks that is by a big tree.  Each man pairs up with a partner to do Doras.  While one partner is running to the end of the alley, doing ten decline merkins at curb, and running back, the other partner is working on the exercises.  The exercises are done with a pair of bricks.  Each set of partners will do 100 of each exercise.  The following are the exercises:

  • Overhead presses
  • Curls
  • Behind the neck lifts.
  • 100 Rows with brick in each hand and hand at side
  • 100 Squats with bricks above head
  • 100 Wings Forward
  • 100 Wings Up
  • 100 Wings Down

Mosey to road in front of Admin Bldg.  There will be cones placed on both sides of the road.  Go to each cone and do the exercises listed.

  • Cone 1:  20 Hello Dollies (four count).  Lunge to Cone 2.
  • Cone 2:  20 Bicycle Kicks (four count).  Run to Cone 3.
  • Cone 3:  Bernie Sanders up right sidewalk to Flag Pole.  Run back on other sidewalk.  Run to Cone 4.
  • Cone 4:  20 Dive Bombers.  Hop to Cone 5 which will be across the street and a number of yards to the north.
  • Cone 5:  40 Baby Crunches.  Run to Cone 6.
  • Cone 6:  Run down stairs and up stairs three times, staying to right side.  Run to Cone 7.
  • Cone 7:  20 American Hammers.  Bear Crawl to Cone 8.
  • Cone 8:  20 Squats.

Mosey to AO

MARY:
Stretching exercises.
COUNT-OFF & NAME-O-RAMA
16 men with one FNG.  He is Nathan Chesney whom we dubbed “Swimmies.”
CIRCLE OF TRUST/BOM:
We need to look at time differently when we think of God.

The Greek word “chronos” means time in a quantitative or chronological sense.  Thus, we are speaking of time in the chronos sense when we ask “What time is it?” or say “I don’t have much time left to finish this project.”  The Greek word “kairos” means time in the qualitative sense.  It is not time that can be measured but time that is identified but what happens in it.  We speak of “kairos” time when we say “the time is ripe” or ask “Did you have a good time?”  Jesus spoke in kairos time when he said, in John 2:4 “My hour has not yet come.”  As Frederick Buechner points out, it is in kairos time when the book of Deuteronomy says “there is a time weep and a time to laugh” or says “there is a time to reap and a time to sow.”  (these words were paraphrased in the famous song “Turn Turn Turn” by the Byrds).

When we are caught up (and often miserable) in the pace of the demands of our world (we have phrases for this such as “living by the clock”) we often are not truly enjoying God.  We can feel squeezed by time.  As Henri Nouwen says, time becomes a means to an end rather than moments in which to consider and enjoy God.  In chronos time we can end up believing that the real thing is always yet to come.

Chronos time is important.  We certainly must meet demands and consider the amount of time in which to complete projects.  But we must not forget kairos time.  Thomas Merton said “the Bible is concerned with time’s fullness” the time when the texture and richness of what we are involved in come to be felt and seen.  Time becomes more than what we have to get done.  Time is the experience of all of what life has to give us.

We must work at seeing time in the sense of kairos, not just chronos.  As Henri Nouwen puts it, time from the kairos standpoint “has to do with opportunity, with moments that seem ripe for their intended purpose.”  Nouwen goes on to explain that if we can consider God’s purpose in our experience of time, we can then say, even in difficult episodes, that “something good is happening amid all this.”

So in your days to come, ask yourself “what is God intending for me at this time?”  Whether your experience of a moment is good or bad, ask, “How might God be speaking to me at this moment.  What does God want me to get from this?  What is God wanting to teach me?  Could God be working to help me grow from this difficult experience?  Is God wanting me to share this moment with someone, to learn from another who may have experienced something similar?  Is God wanting me to slow down, to communicate with Him, to pray to Him, to trust Him more, to depend on Him.  Is God wanting to let me know that I am His and that I will be ok?

So, as you move forward, consider time in the sense of the kairos.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:
The eight workout challenge created by Abscess.

Give us shade, please!

THE SCENE:Hot and humid, temp above 90.
F3 WELCOME & DISCLAIMER
WARM-O-RAMA:
20 Side-Straddle Hops, 15 Mountain Climbers, 8 Twisties, 10 Windmills, 10 Rockettes
THA-THANG:
Mosey to top of Roadshow Run.  20 Star Jumps at top, 20 Big Boys at bottom of stairs, 10 Burpees at beginning of Summit, 20 Merkins in Shade at top of summit.

Mosey to shaded area by stop sign at northeastern side of Admin Bldg.  20 Hello Dollies, 20 American Hammers

Mosey to first cone on roadway that is below Admin Bldg.  Run to each cone and do the listed exercise.  Rinse and repeat two more times.

  • First cone:  40 baby crunches
  • Second cone:  20 Smurf jacks
  • Third cone:  20 Squats
  • Fourth cone:  Up and down stairs east of street (twice)
  • Fifth cone:  20 Diamond Merkins
  • Sixth cone:  20 Imperial Walkers (four count)

Mosey to Admin Bldg Front porch.  Go up steps doing five calve raises on each step.  Do 20 Flutter kicks at top.  Go down steps with five calve raises on each step.

Mosey to Boulder Pile.  Take boulder to shade.  20 Overheads, 20 Curls, 20 Squats, 20 Rows.  Repeat.  Throw boulders back on pile.

Mosey to AO. 

MARY:

Planks.  20 baby arm raises hands up, 20 baby arm raises hands down.

COUNT-OFF & NAME-O-RAMA
Ten men, no FNG’s.
CIRCLE OF TRUST/BOM:
Exodus 20:  8-10:  Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.  Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.  One it you shall not do any work. . .

Mark 2:27:  And he (Jesus) said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.

God commands us to keep the Sabbath, yet Jesus says that Sabbath was made for man.  God created us.  He knows us and loves us.  In knowing us and loving us, he knows that we need rest.  As men who strive to succeed; who desire to do what is right for our families; who live in a world where we often find ourselves comparing ourselves to others; who are inundated with commercials, speeches, and words from books, magazines, the internet, and other forms of media about living the good life, achieving our dreams; as men who were taught by our coaches and own fathers to give it our all, to put in more than 100% . . . we often work so hard that we wear ourselves thin, wear ourselves out.  When we do this, we can become subject to burnout . . . suddenly work is just that . . . work.  It doesn’t bring us joy, it is just something we have to do to get through the day.  When we get burned out we can become stifled, fatigued, and depressed.

I am guilty of not taking sabbath, of not taking rest.  My wife often comes to my aid by reminding me of the old southern saying, “You gotta sharpen the saw.”  She means that if we don’t take the time to “sharpen the saw”, to relax and rest in order to revive ourselves, we then become dull.  Like the saw that is never sharpened, we do not do our work effectively and efficiently.  We must learn to rest, to take Sabbath, in order to replenish our hearts, our minds, our very souls.

So obey God’s command to keep the Sabbath.  He made Sabbath for you.
MOLESKIN:

ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Abscess announced that some of us will be going to Chattanooga this Saturday morning to help the F3 brotherhood that is there.  They launched some time ago but have been struggling to increase membership.  Abscess will Q the workout which will begin at 7 am.  We will meet in the area for coffeteria afterwards.

Sizzlin

THE SCENE: Sunny and warm with high in upper 80’s.
F3 WELCOME & DISCLAIMER
WARM-O-RAMA:
20 Side-Straddle hops, 10 Burpees, 10 Plank reaches (to count of four), 10 Windmills, 10 Baby to Wide Arm Circles Forward and 10 Backward.

THA-THANG:

Mosey to stop sign on northeast side of Admin Bldg.  20 American Hammers, 20 Hello Dollies.

Mosey to alley way that dead ends at north of Admin Bldg.  Stop where bricks are lined up near shade tree.  We will do Dora’s with partner running to dead end, doing 10 decline merkins there, and running back.  Meanwhile other partner is doing exercises with bricks.  Partners switch off when running partner gets back.  These are the exercises:

100 Overhead Presses, 100 Curls, 100 Rows with bricks on each side, 100 Neck Drops, 100 Squats with bricks over head, 100 Wings forward, 100 Wing drops, 100 Wing raises.

Mosey to Trail that begins by Northern Parking Lot.  We will lunge to first light, run next four, etc. until we reach road that leads out northern gate of park.

Mosey on perimeter trail until we are at bottom of Mt. Everest.  20 Box Cutters.   Then run to top of Mt. Everest.

Mosey to AO.

MARY:

Hello Dollies.

COUNT-OFF AND NAME-O-RAMA:

Nine men.  No FNG’s.

CIRCLE OF TRUST/BOM:
The song “No Hard Feelings” by the Avett Brothers is one that we can learn from as humans who are prone to have anger toward those who have hurt us or jealousy toward those who one up us.  In the song, the authors talk about how holding on to the anger and jealousy doesn’t lead to good for anyone – rather the feelings distance us from those we have the opportunity to get to know and love.  They lead to fear and destruction.

There is a beauty and poignancy to the song as the narrator looks toward death:  “When my body won’t hold me anymore and it finally lets me free – will I be ready?”  He looks toward a time of possibility in that death, a time “when the jealousy fades away and it’s ash and dust for cash and lust – and it’s just halleluhah”  He wonders whether he “will join with the ocean blue or run into the savior true – and shake hands laughing.  And walk through the night, straight to the light, holding the love I’ve known in my life – and no hard feelings.”

The narrator glimpses at death from the standpoint of one who has cast judgement and bitterness aside:

“under the curving sky, I’m finally learning why it matters to me and you.  To say it and mean it too.  For life and its loveliness and all of its ugliness.  Good as its been to me, I have no enemies . . . I have no enemies . . . I have no enemies.”

How incredible it could be if we could really say that.  What release and joy it would bring us.  To say, when our “body’s won’t hold us anymore” that “I have no enemies.

So, to be true HIM’s, we need to get rid of our “Hard Feelings.”