F3 Knoxville

Square Dancin’ In The Gloom

THE SCENE: Chilly, gloomy, ominous, lol
F3 WELCOME & DISCLAIMER

Welcome to F3: Fitness – Fellowship – Faith

– My name is Steam & I’ll be your Q this morning

– I am not a professional and you are here on your own volition – which means I don’t know any injuries you may or may not have

– So if you need to modify any of the exercises we do this morning – feel free to do so

– That being said – you’re not here on accident this morning. Neither are they. Let’s rock.


WARM-O-RAMA:

    1. SSH: 15×4
    2. Imperial Walker: 15×4
    3. Squat-Bender: 15×4
    4. Merkin: 15×4
    5. SSH: 15×4

THA-THANG:

Mosey to Market Square

– Warm-Up with the Market Square Dance (3 Evolutions Total)

  • Start at C1 (bottom R)

    • Sprint to C2 (Top R)

    •  Fireman carry to C3 (Top L)

    • Sprint to C4 (Bottom L)

    • Fireman carry to C1

    • Modify = lunges

  • [ 15×4 SSHs ]

  • Start at C1

    • Sprint to C2

    • Bear crawl to C3

    • Sprint to C4

    • Bear crawl to C1

  • [ 15×4 SSHs ]

  • Start at C1

    • Sprint to C2

    • Long-jump to C3

    • Sprint to C4

    • Long-jump to C1

  • [ 15×4 SSHs ]

– Converge @ the bell

  • Stayin Alive with 75
    • Bell —> sprint to stage
    • There are 5 steps
    • 15-4 count incline merkins on each step – one evolution at a time
    • Do this 5x
    • We will do the merkins in unison and in cadence

[ Mosey back to AO ]

    • Each stop sign/stoplight = 15 merkins

COUNT-OFF & NAME-O-RAMA
Count-Off = 8

Name-O-Rama: G-6, Jenner, Careless, The Voice, Old Spice, Bessie, Swanson, Steam (Q)
CIRCLE OF TRUST/BOM:

  • Did a Lord of the Rings trilogy this weekend and as you can guess, it was awesome. Huge LOTR fan. I love the Christian symbolism that is portrayed in the trilogy, as well as the 9 or so hours of action and overall story. One of my favorite moments comes from the character of Samwise Gamgee, the main character’s reliable companion:
  • Frodo :
    • I can’t do this, Sam.
  • Sam :
    • I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy. How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad happened. But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t. Because they were holding on to something.
  • Frodo :
    • What are we holding on to, Sam?
  • Sam :
    • That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for.

[ This week, a war is being waged against you, against me, against our country and her leaders, against our world. Sometimes this is more tangible than others. ]

  • Consider Ephesians 6:10-20 our epic pre-battle speech as we ride out to the enemy and meet him head on this week.

“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints, and also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak.”

Ephesians 6:10-20

MOLESKIN:
Prayer request from G-6 for Cooper Dewalt – severely damaged his fingers in an accident this weekend

Leg day at the ball

THE SCENE: 73 or so (I think) and not too muggy
F3 WELCOME & DISCLAIMER
WARM-O-RAMA:

Tempo squat x10 IC
Tempo merkin x10 IC
Michael Phelps
SSH x21 IC
THA-THANG:
Take a hot lap around the WFP infield.  Upon getting back to the fountains, line up along the edge of the sidewalk.  Lt. Dan (4 lunges, 2 squats) to the cones about halfway across the infield.  Hold Al Gore waiting for everyone else to make it to the cones.  Then all PAX Devin Hester to the far side of the infield and then jail break all the way across.  Recover and 10 count.

Mosey out of the fountains and toward the lots where we park, across the railroad tracks, and to Preacher’s parking lot (at The International).  Five cones set up, routine is the reverse suicide ladder.  PAX line up across the parking lot, run to the furthest cone and perform exercise at the cone.  Run back to the start line.  Run to the furthest cone, again performing exercise and pick up the exercise at the next cone, then return to the starting line.  PAX continue routine, picking up one more exercise set each iteration until they’ve done all five exercises on the way back.  Exercises as follows:

  • Hand release merkins x10
  • Jump squats x10
  • Burpees x10
  • Air squats x20
  • SSH x30

Jack rabbits perform Mary and then instructed to start the regular suicide ladder (going to first cone, perform exercise, run back.  Then pick up an exercise each time going a cone further, but performing half the number of reps at each cone).  Once the six has completed the routine, recover and 10 count.

Mosey back to the fountains and find a bench.

  • Left leg step ups x15
  • Right leg step ups x15
  • Calf raises x15 (on the ground)

Rinse and repeat through again.

MARY:
Flutter kicks x25 IC
Hello Dolly x25 IC
Pickle pounders x20 IC
Boat/canoe and variations (flutter canoes, OH clap canoes) until PAX hates me
COUNT-OFF & NAME-O-RAMA
18 STRONG: Red Writer, G6, Amazon, Passport, Filter, The Voice, Frank, Duggar (Lexington Duggar), Half Caff, Swanson, Wilson, Steam, Petey, Sneaky Pete, Quarantine, Singlet, Purple Rain (FNG), Abort
CIRCLE OF TRUST/BOM:
If you believe in Santa Clause for 8 years of your life, you can believe in yourself for 45 minutes.  Or longer.  We’ve all been new guys and we’ve all had to grind through things we didn’t think we could.  Believe in yourselves and see what you can accomplish.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:
AO challenge workout of the month is the HR merkin.  F3 anniversary party and F3 Olympics will be November 3-4.  Big Ball needs Q’s to sign up for next week, encourage all to sign up and ask for Co-Q if they haven’t led before.

We all worship

THE SCENE: Beautiful morning

F3 WELCOME & DISCLAIMER
WARM-O-RAMA:

  • 20 SSH IC
  • 12 Tempo Squats IC
  • 10 Merkins IC
  • 10 Cherry Pickers IC
  • 12 Baby Arm Circles (Forward & Reverse) IC

THA-THANG:

Escalator style workout: Each light pole has an exercise with an assigned number of reps. Go to Light Pole 1, complete the exercise, and run back to the start line. Run back to Light Pole 1, do the exercise, run to Light Pole 2, do the exercise, and run back to the start line. Light Pole 1, then 2, then 3, and back to the start line. Rinse and repeat until you make it to the last light pole (total of 8 light poles). The exercises/reps were as follows:

  • Light Pole 1 = 5 Hand-release Merkins
  • Light Pole 2 = 10 Jump Squats
  • Light Pole 3 = 15 Carolina Dry Docks
  • Light Pole 4 = 20 Lungs (10 each leg)
  • Light Pole 5 = 25 LBC’s
  • Light Pole 6 = 30 Iron Mikes (15 each leg)
  • Light Pole 7 = 35 Hello Dollies (single count)
  • Light Pole 8 = 40 SSH (single count)

Followed that with a little Indian run action – traditional and then with lunges and then with bear crawls. Mosey over to the cloud for the following:

  • 10 Burpee Box Jumps
  • 10 Tricep Dips IC
  • 10 Derkins
  • 10 Tricep Dips IC

MARY:

  • 20 Flutter Kicks IC
  • Plank hold into Mountain Climbers
  • 20 American Hammers IC

COUNT-OFF & NAME-O-RAMA

24 HIM’s got better today. Sharky & Potter came out as well (no tag)

CIRCLE OF TRUST/BOM:

One of our pastors shared the following quote with us a couple Sundays back. The message is that we all worship something. If we’re not finding our identity in Christ, then we’re finding it somewhere else. Because of sin, we are all broken cisterns. If we find our worth in money, power, the approval of others, fame, glory, etc., we will never have enough. Those worldly idols were never meant to fill the void in our hearts caused by sin – no matter how much we have, we will always want more because our souls will never be satisfied with worldly possessions. A relationship, through faith, with our Father is the only sustainable source of life.

While David Foster Wallace (the man who coined this quote) wasn’t a Christian, his message regarding worldly idols is relevant to our daily struggles.

“In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for choosing some sort of god or spiritual being to worship – be it Jesus Christ or Allah, Yahweh or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or some inviolable set of ethical principles – is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness. Worship power – you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need even more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart – you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on.”

Big Ball Takes on the Murph – Y(mca) the Heck Not

THE SCENE: 0530: Wet/Rainy
F3 WELCOME & DISCLAIMER

    • Welcome to F3: Fitness – Fellowship – Faith
    • My name is Steam & I’ll be your Q this morning
    • A couple things before we begin
    • (1) I am not a professional
    • (2) You are here on your own volition
      • you made a choice to be here – so did the man on your left and right
      • don’t take that lightly – you’re here for them, because without you, they probably wouldn’t be here
    • (3) You know your body better than anyone – meaning I don’t know any injuries you may or may not have
      • if you need to modify any of the exercises we do this morning – do it. But don’t use that as a cop out.
      • see that guy on your left and right? He came here to work so don’t half ass it for him or you this morning.
      • We will be doing a modified version of the Murph this morning – it’s not just a beatdown – it’s a workout honoring Lt. Michael Murphy – who sacrificed his life in the Hindu-Kush mountains of Afghanistan for the rest of his SEAL team and country. When we’re all gonna be hurting at some point this morning, we all will I promise, think of that.
      • Lock in and Dig Deep – we’re gonna do this together.
    • That being said – it’s an honor to be here this morning with you men – I couldn’t think of a better way to kick off Thursday morning than with y’all.


WARM-O-RAMA:

    • SSH: 11×4 (in cadence)
    • Cherry Picker: 11×4 (in cadence)
    • Rockette: 11×4 (in cadence)
    • Merkin: 11×4 (in cadence)
    • SSH: 11×4 (in cadence)

THA-THANG:
Big Ball AO –> Downtown YMCA (around 1 mile roundtrip)

  • Mosey with 20lb vest and 20lb ruck from AO –> past convention center –> into the Downtown YMCA on Clinch Ave.
  • PAX heads up to the YMCA’s Attic, aka badass crossfit style room up top
  • QIC explains the history of The Murph, background on Mike Muprhy
  • PAX executes a Modified Murph along with hype music over the Attic loudspeakers by the QIC
    • Pull-Ups: 50
    • Push-Ups: 150
    • Squats: 250
  • When PAX members are done –> execute flutter kicks on a 4 count (led by Swanson & Steam)
  • PAX takes super awesome GP in front of the Y logo #GP
  • PAX American-Indian moseys to field across from AO
  • QIC goes down the line and affirms each PAX member by a chest-clearing cadence grunt that each PAX member repeats
  • TAKE. IT.
  • All PAX take the field like it’s their last.

MARY:
Rain still coming down – all PAX are soaked but happy to be here

QIC checks in with each PAX member in the COT: How you feeling? Met with a response of affirmation of being here.
COUNT-OFF & NAME-O-RAMA

11 PAX including Q

No FNGs
CIRCLE OF TRUST/BOM:

  • I feel like God has been tapping on my shoulder pretty intentionally in ways that I can only explain as divine appointment.
  • When you feel that, when you are, uh, awakened to that tapping or divine call, will you take it?
  • I’ve wrestled with mine for a couple weeks because it regards my job and the list goes on and on.
  • With that I’ve isolated myself. We talk a lot in F3 about the isolated male.
  • When you feel that calling or divine appointment, bring others into the fold and share that with them.
  • I guarantee any one of us are more than willing to walk with you in that.

 

  • What I was vaguely referring to up above in my word is this: 2 weeks ago I met with the YMCA of East TN COO. She was asking how my new role with the Downtown YMCA was going, thanks to the Knoxville Fellows. I told her I was enjoying it, but there was not a lot of concrete structure – it was more a shadowing/figuring it out on your own. And with this new role at the Y, which seems pretty unclear at times, I feel like there are all these things that I want to do to benefit members and add more value to the Y than “just being a gym.” One thing that the Lord has put on my heart within the past month is the idea of going deeper at work than just surface-level membership questions and support. More specifically, leading a bible-study or small-group, or book-study. After all, this is the Young Men’s Christian Association, and I feel a charge to bring back some light that I feel we as an organization have lost (a little).
  • When my COO brought up the idea of bringing back a bible study, etc into the Downtown Y – i knew that’s what the Lord had put on my heart. I could clearly hear His voice through my COO.
  • Fast forward to the next Monday: my direct boss was away and I was in his office, 10 minutes into being clocked in, with my bible open, starting my day off thinking about what my COO said, and the idea of a bible study being brought back into the Y and honestly – feeling really insecure and negative and doubtful about it. The next thing I’m about to say can only be divine appointment: around the corner and into the office comes a man and the first words out of his mouth were “Hey man, do y’all do any bible studies here?”
  • My jaw literally dropped. To me, this was clearly the Lord putting this man in front of me as affirmation that his voice had been made clear. I got to talking to the man, and through our conversation it became more apparent this is something I feel called to do.
  • Later that week (Wednesday) I was walking home from work and saw the man outside after recently talking with a friend about the experience, and he asked again about the bible study. This was uncanny – it was Christ.
  • I’ve felt convicted about my doubts for this after clearly seeing the the call of God for this through this divine appointment – I knew what to do.
  • However, when I was feeling doubtful, I was isolating myself – what we talk about in F3 as the isolated male. My BOM today was about answering the taps on the shoulder from the Lord and inviting other men and HIM and people into the fold and grace of that – so you don’t isolate yourself.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:
G-6 has 2 job opportunities that can be longterm – for more info, see G-6

Oct. 6 = Abscess & Steam are co-leading a hike with the Downtown YMCA (See F3 Knoxville GroupMe events for more info) – DM Abscess or Steam for more info

Nov = Anniversary month! 3 Years! Keep your eyes peeled for more info on the shindig celebration that will ensue.

3rd F will likely be around the first couple weeks of December

45 Minutes by the Rock Pile

THE SCENE: Humid, Gloomy, Dark
F3 WELCOME & DISCLAIMER
WARM-O-RAMA:

Nordic Tracks, Side Straddle Hops

THA-THANG:
2 line mosey to the rock pile where we completed a Tabata style work out, 45 seconds of work, 15 seconds of rest. 4 rounds of each exercise

  • Plyo Wide Squats with a Rock
  • Mericans with a Frog
    • 3 rounds of 8 pulse squats, 4 regular squats, 2 jump squats
  • 4 lunges forward with the rock above the head, 4 reverse lunges with an overhead press
  • Plank alternating one leg pull in, crossover, extend out
    • 3 rounds of 8 pulse squats, 4 regular squats, 2 jump squats
  • Burpees
  • Dips
    • 3 rounds of 8 pulse squats, 4 regular squats, 2 jump squats

Indian Run back to the AO

MARY:
No time for mary

CIRCLE OF TRUST/BOM:
Growing in Christ and becoming a Man after God’s on heard begins in everyday small decisions of obedience and discipline.