F3 Knoxville

Tag: Mathlete

Rewards

THE SCENE: Crisp, cool, clear and crunchy. Mid twenties freezing the last week of rain. Satellites orbit overhead.
F3 WELCOME & DISCLAIMER
WARM-O-RAMA:

  • Side Straddle Hops (concentration to 25!)
  • LBACs (Out and Above)
  • Pretzels
  • Tempo Squats (get deep)
  • Fence Steppers OYO
  • Tempo Merkins (10)
  • Newton’s Cradle
  • 10 second plank

THA-THANG:

  • Mosey to the Bell
    • 3 sets of 20 dips and 20 big boys
  • Mosey to parallel bars
    • 3 sets of 20 Inverse Rows and 20 flutter kicks
  • Mosey to pool wall
    • 3 sets of 5 wall ups and 5 pull ups
  • Mosey to behind the amphitheater for Mucho Mucho!
    • 20 squats, 20 merkins
    • 20 wide squats, 20 wide merkins
    • 20 bobby hurleys, 20 diamond merkins
    • 20 split squats, 20 stagger squats (both sides)
  • Short form Tree biscuit
    • Run to a tree, do a burpee. See how many we can get in the remaining time.

MARY:
Dealer’s choice, got a full circuit. LBCs, Heels to Heaven, Side crunches both sides, flutter kicks, American Hammers, and Hello Dollys.
COUNT-OFF & NAME-O-RAMA
CIRCLE OF TRUST/BOM:
Sitting in church on Sunday, my eldest daughter gets up and goes to the bathroom. On the way back, she passes a basket in the narthex that has peppermints and takes one. When she gets back to her seat and sits beside me, this is all good. I see no problem with picking up a peppermint on the way back. Until, that is, she decides that the next thing to do is to draw her older brother’s attention to it. To flaunt her prize. This results in a prompt confiscation.

It is right for good action to carry a reward. In this case, getting up to using the bathroom in an appropriate time brings with it an opportunity for a piece of candy. This isn’t so different from the way our own bodies are arranged. Eating is necessary, and so carries with it pleasure. The same is true of sleep. Sex functions similarly in a marriage. These rewards, when maintained in their proper position and alignment with their associated good, are also good. They were, in fact, purposed as a good.

In taking from the tree, Adam and Eve first participated in a troubling alternative to this purposed good. When we see the possibility that we can game the system, that the reward is available for the taking, when the reward becomes the purpose, good fragments. Obviously, my daughter’s physical need to go to the bathroom is more limited than her potential to obtain reward. This can express as deception, only to go get a candy and return without any actual visit to the bathroom. My son, with a newfound desire for candy, might decide that he needs to go to the bathroom even though he doesn’t, only to obtain a reward. Certainly, the risk is that both of my children become fixated on the candy, and thus ignore the reason we are even there at all, to worship the Creator God who brought forth into this world both the candy and our capability to enjoy it. To me, this serves as a microcosm example of my own struggles with physical desire.

I eat beyond physical need, now enduring physical consequences while slowly deadening my own enjoyment. So I seek to fragment the system, using deceptive chemicals to experience the pleasure (I’m looking at you Coke Zero) while avoiding the consequences, or at least the consequences I am paying attention to. This is a positive feedback loop, with my desire ever growing, demanding greater and greater sacrifices to sate my appetite. Soon, the only purpose of eating is pleasure. The real good, my physical nourishment, isn’t even playing second fiddle.

As we leave behind us a time of feasting and turn back to the routines that define us, I think it merits our attention to look at the places where we are gaming the system for pleasure. How do we return to balance? How do we restore an appetite to its proper position and alignment? It often includes dealing with some consequences we have been storing up. But that blister can be drained and healed. It doesn’t last forever.

MOLESKIN:
Great to be back at The Project! Pretzels were courtesy of Wilderness Road in Kingsport. Snaggletooth got distracted thinking about consequences when he should have been concentrating on counting, but then there weren’t any…
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
We gotta pick a date for our next family Q.

The Beginning of the End

THE SCENE:  25 and calm.  Perfect!
F3 WELCOME & DISCLAIMER:  Sorta kinda
WARM-O-RAMA:

  • Grady corns
  • LIH / RFTS
  • Temp squats
  • Mountain climbers

At the fountain;

  • Dips
  • Derkins
  • Step-ups

THA THANG: 

Mosey to the Recruiting Center

10 stations set out – each has an exercise.

Tabata – 22 seconds on, 8 seconds rest.  3 tabatas per round, then switch stations. 

  • CMU Curls
  • CMU Split Squat
  • Ball Slams
  • Heavy lunges
  • Battle rope Alternating waves
  • Stack squat
  • Jump rope
  • Tire hit
  • Pull-ups  

Circle o’ Mary

Now…repeat it all again!  This time, exercises are;

  • CMU Triceps
  • CMU Swing
  • Throw from chest
  • Goblet squat
  • Battle Rope slams
  • Good mornings
  • Jump rope
  • Tire flip
  • Chin-ups

MARY:

Play the song “Turn it Up” by Oh the Larceny.  Each time they say “Turn it Up” – do a burpee.  Otherwise, do SSH in tempo with the song.  

COUNT-OFF & NAME-O-RAMA

Me and 5 of the best men I know

CIRCLE OF TRUST/BOM:

I riffed on Bobbitt’s Word from Tuesday – he talked about the wonder of Christmas.  The wonder of the virgin birth and the miracle of God come down.  He encouraged us to live this season in wonder. 

We talked about Christmas as celebrating the beginning of the end…  We zoomed out from the nativity and a little baby in a manger, and started the Christmas story 2,000 years before Jesus was born…

An ancient man named Abraham made a covenant with his God, Jehovah.  Abraham’s God told him, “I will bless you, I will expand your family, I will offer you protection.  You and your descendants must do right by me”.   Later Moses described rightness-by-God in detail – 613 commandments to be kept to the letter.  And if you can’t do all of these things right – and you CAN’T… then the cost of your failure is BLOOD.  It should be YOUR blood, but you can ritually kill an animal in your place as a substitute.  That was the system – the Abrahamic covenant and the Mosiac Law.  Try your hardest to do all of these things – when you fail, sacrifice animals and hope that God is appeased by their blood instead of yours.  That’s the relationship that man had with God for 2,000 years. 

…and into that system, a baby was born.  A few people knew that this was the prophesized messiah – but I doubt that anyone truly comprehended the plan that had been set in motion with that baby’s birth.  The day that Jesus was born, a countdown began – and from that moment on, the old covenant and law was on borrowed time.  Christmas celebrates the beginning of the end of the Mosaic law, with its impossible set of rules and requirement for atonement blood – all of that was superseded.  

The sleeping baby in a manager will grow up to live a perfect life, and ~33 years later would offer Himself as the ultimate sacrifice – FOREVER fulfilling that blood atonement requirement of the Mosaic law – and ushering in a new deal with Jehovah – a new covenant.  Here are the terms of the new covenant… 1) Jesus did the hard work, and 2) you just need to believe and accept His gift.  

But wait – there’s more!  None of the men in the BOM – nor most of the men in F3 – were privy to Abraham’s blessing of the old covenant.  With few exceptions, that deal was for Abraham’s descendants only – and that does not include most of us Gentiles.  The new covenant not only does away with the impossible crushing burden of the law, but it also opens the blessing to ALL people, including you and me.  How’s that for a good trade?!?! 

One wonder of Christmas is that it was the beginning of the end of the old impossible law.  We celebrate the birth of a baby who would later offer a new and wonderful way to live right by Jehovah – by faith alone.  

Here’s a Christmas verse for you;

Titus 2:11-12, “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all people.”

 

MOLESKIN:

Prayers for the family and widow of Coates

Prayers to lead well through a difficult situation at the office

Prayers for our boys who are traveling over the holidays

Romans 8:2-4, “For the law of the life-giving Spirit in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death. 3 For God achieved what the law could not do because it was weakened through the flesh. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and concerning sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 so that the righteous requirement of the law may be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”

Romans 7:6, “But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.”

Galatians 3:24, “So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith.”

Hebrews 8:7, “For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second.”

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Family Workout tomorrow at 10:00am.  Start at our normal shovel flag location.  Be there!

The 12 CMU Pains of Christmas

THE SCENE: 51 with a cool breeze
F3 WELCOME & DISCLAIMER
WARM-O-RAMA: (Led by Snaggletooth)

  1. Lap around Parking Lot
  2. 7 Projectivator
  3. 5 Burpees
  4. 10 LBAC/Overhead Clap
  5. 10 Tempo Merks
  6. 10 Mountain Climbers
  7. 5 Cherry Pickers/Stretch OYO
  8. Mosey to Recruiting Center – grab 1 CMU/PAX

THA-THANG:
Led by Snaggletooth: The 12 CMU Pains of Christmas (STAIRS AFTER EACH EXERCISE, 1-6 WITH CMU, 7-12 WITHOUT CMU unless you want to, Mathlete & Borg)
1. Blo-o-o-o-o-ckee
2. CMU Imperial Squawkers
3. Thrusters w/jump!
4. CMU Merkins
5. CMU Big Boys
6. CMU Lunges
7. CMU Tricep Extensions
8. CMU Curls
9. CMU Calf Raises
10. Heavy Heels to heaven
11. CMU Good Mornings
12. Blockees

Led by Three-Peat: 5 More Pains (because you’re on the Naughty list)
1. 25 Single-arm rows (each arm)
2. 50 Curl and Press
3. 25 Thrusters
4. 50 Squats
5. 50 Heavy Freddy (no time)

MARY:
Pax Choice

COUNT-OFF & NAME-O-RAMA
8STRONG

CIRCLE OF TRUST/BOM:
Led by Three-Peat – He shared about peace during the holidays, especially with family gathered together. Sometimes family gatherings bring  out the worst in us: impatience, irritation, anger, rush, expectations, buy-ness. It’s important to remember what is truly important: peace, faith, family.

The scriptures are full of promises and  teachings about God’s peace. Notably Philippians 4:6-7 – “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” You want peace? Trust God by turning to Him, turning away from your sin and self-centered life, and asking Jesus to be your Lord and Savior. 

MOLESKIN: This was a successful co-Q with Three-Peat – the man is ready for his VQ! COMING SOON TO THE PROJECT!

ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Christmas Eve Family Q at The Project, 10AM on 12/24 – ALL 2.0s welcome!

And Cheatsheet is completing his 1 MILLION MERKINS on Wed Dec 29 at Shamrock! Some of us can carpool to that.

True Happiness

THE SCENE: nice and cold and thankfully clear.
F3 WELCOME & DISCLAIMER
WARM-O-RAMA:
15 SSH, 15 Imperial walkers, 10 tempo merkins, 15 Moroccan night club, 15 harry Rockettes
THA-THANG:
Mosey to the recruitment center. 20 of each of the following exercises with a CMU. Carry across the parking lot with the block after each.

  • Merkins, squats, heavy flutter kicks
  • OH presses, lunges, heavy LBCs
  • Curls, Tricep extensions, burpee block jump overs
  • Bent over rows, Thrusters, blockees

Bonus rounds with curls, single arm rows, merkins, and OH presses.

MARY:
PAX choice around the circle.
COUNT-OFF & NAME-O-RAMA
8 worked hard and got all the “fun” exercises in too.
CIRCLE OF TRUST/BOM:
“Who is there to harm you if you prove zealous for what is good? But even if you should suffer for the sake of righteousness, you are blessed. And do not fear their intimidation, and do not be troubled, but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence;” –1 Peter 3:13‭-‬15 NASB1995

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” – Matthew 6:19‭-‬21 NASB1995

These two passages give us perspective on where our focus needs to be for us to have true happiness. We can only have temporary happiness if we rely on the pleasures of this world. Let’s do our best to keep our focus on the true joy we can have in eternity.

MOLESKIN:
It was great to be back with the PAX at the Project!
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Oak Ridge Christmas parade Saturday

The 12 Pains of Christmas

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THE SCENE: 28F –  Cold and clear
F3 WELCOME & DISCLAIMER
WARM-O-RAMA:

  1. Projectivator
  2. Overhead clap
  3. Cherry picker
  4. Windmill
  5. Seal Squats

THA-THANG:
Reindeer death march (indian run w/ burpee) to a hill in the parking lot of ORAU campus.

12 Pains of Christmas:  Just like the song, starting at 1, do the number of exercises and all previous exercises, then run up the hill to touch the “North Pole” (light pole).

  1. Burpee
  2. Imperial Squalkers
  3. Basilisks
  4. Merkins
  5. Big Boys
  6. Lunges
  7. Side straddle hops
  8. Prone rows
  9. Diamond merkins
  10. Heels to heaven
  11. Squats
  12. Burpees

Mosey to the Friendship Bell and perform 30 dips.  Kickflip said he loves dips, so we mosey’ed to the dip bars for 10 more dips and 20 inverse rows.

MARY:
Dealer’s choice: Bobbit – LBCs, Borg – Freddy Mercury

CIRCLE OF TRUST/BOM:

Don’t make Christmas a pain.  Remember why we celebrate it.

Genealogy of Jesus (Matthew 1 and Luke 3)

Differences:

  1. Audience (Jews – Matthew vs. Gentiles – Luke)
  2. Matthew starts at Abraham and goes forward
  3. Luke goes backward to Adam
  4. David’s son:  Solomon vs. Nathan
    1. Matthew is Joseph’s lineage
    2. Luke is Mary’s lineage
      1. The text says “Joseph, the son of Heli”
      2. Heli was Mary’s father and adopted Joseph for inheritance since he had no sons of his own.
    3. Other explanations

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

  • Oak Ridge Christmas Parade this Saturday
  • Emerald Youth Christmas Store