F3 Knoxville

Tag: MD Hammer

Superficial Cracks

THE SCENE: Partly cloudy, low 60s, beautiful, but breezy as heck!!
F3 WELCOME & DISCLAIMER Check
WARM-O-RAMA:

-SSH x 20 (4-ct, IC)

– 10 Cherry Pickers (4-ct), in cadence, maintain position…

– Hamstring stretches, sky reaches

– 20 Grady Corns (4-ct), in cadence

– Little of this and that

– Tempo Squats, 4-ct, IC

THA-THANG:
MOSEY to Amphitheater.

  • JINXY’S FOUR AND A QUARTER. Start at bottom of hill, run to top of slope and do 25 reps of an exercise, return to starting position.  R&R 4 times, totaling 100 of the exercise.
    • Round 1: Carolina Dry Docks
    • Round 2: Lunges (single count)
    • Round 3: Imperial Walkers (single count)

MOSEY to FIELD Below Colosseum.

RECTANGLE of DEATH!!

Blue cones on Corners, Orange Cones on sides (one side has blue cone in middle).  Sheets will tell you what to do and how to get to next Blue Cone.  Rinse and Repeat.  First one done yell RECOVER.

Corner 1: Do 20 Iron Mikes (10 each leg). Suicide using orange cones to next blue cone.

Corner 2: Do 20 Plank Jacks, Bear Crawl to next Blue Cone

Corner 3: Do 20 Big Boy Situps, Bernie to Blue Cone ½ way down.

½ Way Cone: Do 10 Burpees, Bernie to next Blue cone

Corner 4: 20 Dive Bombers , EL CAPITAN to next Blue Cone

RINSE AND REPEAT (didn’t quite get 2x around)

Mosey to Area 51. Check for cars with undressed people inside.

Totem Pole.  Start at 10, do all the exercises, then run to CONE, do 10 SSH, and return. Then start at 9, etc.  Only got about 1/2 way done with this.

  • 10 Burpees
  • 9 Mountain Climbers (4-ct)
  • 8 Diamond Merkins
  • 7 Box Cutters
  • 6 American Hammers (4-ct)
  • 5 Imperial Squat Walkers (4-ct)
  • 4 Hand Release Merkins
  • 3 Bobby Hurleys
  • 2 Squats
  • 1 Star Gazers (10 seconds).  Rabbits R&R

RUN UP HILL.  WATCH FOR BEES. Mosey to AO

MARY:
Steam led the PAX in some ab work while the QIC picked up the Six.
COUNT-OFF & NAME-O-RAMA
13 strong.
CIRCLE OF TRUST/BOM:

I hope you all read Judge Judy’s newsletter that came out this week.  Its title was Cracks in the Foundation, and alluded to some situations both in F3 and outside of it that have resulted in fractures within groups and between individuals.  We recently experienced a little bit of that here, at our very own AO.  So for my Word, I just wanted to reiterate what I feel is F3’s absolutely greatest attribute: it’s ability to inspire us all to be better men through SHARING.  Sharing of the Suck from the workout, Sharing in the responsibilities of being Q, etc., and Sharing of life experiences in the Circle that others may learn from or be inspired by.

We often use the term “Lock Shields” in F3.  Think about that for a second.  What does that look like, literally?  I have this image from Lord of the Rings of a bunch of warriors facing a common enemy, and each one of them standing shoulder to shoulder with their shields up.  If it was just one dude, he’d get surrounded, overwhelmed.  But it’s a bunch of bad hombres that are aligned in a common purpose, that being to protect each other and protect what’s behind them by being an integral part of that wall.  If there’s a crack, if there’s a gap in the wall, then everyone is in deep doo doo.  So we have our differences.  We have our differences in Faith, Politics, what kind of workouts we want to do out here, and maybe even differences in how we think F3 should operate.  That’s fine!  If everyone agreed on everything, life would be boring.  And probably those guys in the days of the Roman Empire standing next to each other didn’t see eye to eye during the course of their daily lives.  But the 45 minutes we have out here are not for solving all our differences about those things.  It’s about working hard physically, improving ourselves, supporting our brothers, and being inspired to bring positivity, leadership, and GOODNESS, dagnappit, outside of the Circle.  When we’re out here, we lay our differences aside.  When we’re out here, I’m continually trying to figure out ways to better serve you so that you can serve others.  And I hope that’s all of our mindsets.  But whatever cracks in our foundation we have are superficial, and can be overcome with Grace and empathy and understanding.  And Boys, from the bottom of my heart, it’s an honor and a privilege to come out here and lock shields with each and every one of you.
MOLESKIN:
Prayers for Steam and his fiancee and their venture down a new path, prayers of thanks that Lillydipper’s daughter got a job that she really wanted, prayers for Pusher and his family as his daughter deals with heartbreak.
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Escape from Haw Ridge coming up!

Control the Controllables

THE SCENE: The fakest fake gloom possible
F3 WELCOME & DISCLAIMER DONE
WARM-O-RAMA:
32 SSH to celebrate the Vols win, cherry pickers, this and that, rockettes, and stretch to get ready to run.
THA-THANG:

  • BB with crouching tiger merkins and inchworm-merkin-squat
  • BB with Apollo Onos and American Hammers / V-sit OH claps
  • Bear Crawl fun!
  • BB with Criss-Cross Squats and Lunges
  • BB with Butterfly Big Boys and Sprints
  • BB up with some Burpee action

COUNT-OFF & NAME-O-RAMA
A dozen HIMs getting better
CIRCLE OF TRUST/BOM:
Things at work have gotten chippy.  My office works with 100+ units and we’re always the end of the line, so when others upstream don’t do their part, it’s our problem to fix.  When other’s don’t pull their weight, we have to make up the slack.  With that, resentment can build and things that shouldn’t be said get said.  It’s helpful to remember the wisdom to “control the controllables”.  Attitude.  Action.  Effort.  I can choose to let things upset me, or choose to keep a positive outlook.  I can choose to participate in the negativity, or choose more positive actions.  I can choose to lower my quality of work, or I can choose to perform at my highest level.

You can’t control much of anything that goes on around you.  But, you can control your Attitude, Action, and Effort.

Life is an Adventure

THE SCENE: Perfect.  Low 60s and plenty o’ sun!
F3 WELCOME & DISCLAIMER

Check
WARM-O-RAMA:

– 20 SSH (4ct, IC)

– 20 Moroccan Nightclubs (4 ct, IC)

– 10 Windmills (4 ct, IC)

– 10 Tempo squats

– 10 Grady Corns (4 ct, IC)

-Leg Stretches

THA-THANG:
We repeated some of the exercise stations from CSAUP so that the guys who missed could experience it a bit, and to recreate the nightmare for those that did attend. 🙂

MOSEY to Area 51

PRISON YARD (AREA 51)

OBJECTIVE: Your adventures have gotten off to an inauspicious beginning.  You have been charged with a crime! You must serve your punishment by doing hard labor.

  • Do 10 PRISONER GET UPS in the parking lot

 

  • BEAR CRAWL to Wall of building, do 10 PRISONER CELL MERKIN BURPEES (PCMBs).

 

  • EL CAPITAN back to parking lot. RINSE AND REPEAT.

 

MOSEY to Gravel Parking Lot

ENDURANCE TRAINING

OBJECTIVE: After that short little mosey, I can hear you panting like a She-Dragon in Labor! You are already out of breath, and you call yourself a HIM?? To achieve ultimate HIM-dom, you must train to IMPROVE YOUR ENDURANCE!

Do a SEABISCUIT! Run one lap around the parking lot (staying outside of the cones) and then do:

  • 10 Merkins
  • 20 Big Boy Situps
  • 30 Squats

Run TWO laps, Repeat the exercises

Run THREE laps, Repeat the exercises

Mosey to AO, stopping twice to do some American Hammers and LBCs.

PRINCESS’S TOWER (SPACE NEEDLE)

OBJECTIVE: You must rescue the princess trapped in the Tower, but first you must slay the dragon that guards her!

EXERCISES:

  • Do a WELSH DRAGON*

SAVE the Princess! RUN to top of tower (Space Needle), do 20 SQUATS at each turn of the stairs. Touch the picture of the princess and return to bottom.

MARY:
No time for good ol’ Mary.
COUNT-OFF & NAME-O-RAMA
13 plus two dogs plus one 2.0, plus one ex Nan’taan
CIRCLE OF TRUST/BOM:

Life is not a problem to be solved, but an adventure to be lived!

  • John Eldredge, Wild at Heart.

When I was young I read every Choose Your Own Adventure book I could get my hands on.  For a kid who had a very active imagination, but was also constrained by little things like school, chores, going to Grandma’s house every Sunday, “rules”, avoiding getting beat up by a big brother, and on and on…. I usually didn’t get to live out those wild dreams that were always in my head.  And being a scrawny little runt who was always the smallest kid in class and in our neighborhood gang, I was far from looking the part of the noble hero or the brave adventurer.  The books were a wonderful diversion.  You could pretend you were a swashbuckling pirate on the high seas, an astronaut on a far-away planet, a wizard infiltrating the castle of frost giants, or a treasure hunter looking for a lost artifact in a distant land. And the books made you feel like you had a little bit of control, but in the end, you usually died anyway. Kind of like what happened in CSAUP. 😉  But then as you grow up, you gradually start to lose a bit of that magic.  Life gets in the way.  Bills, jobs, responsibilities.  Like little Jackie Paper, painted wings and giants rings make way for other toys.  And one day it happens… and you stop frolicking with a magic dragon in a land called Honnalee.

But every once in awhile, it’s great to revisit those places of imagination and dreams.  And that’s why I loved helping to create the CSAUP story line.  Yeah, I got to torture all of you guys who participated… but it was fun to bring just a little bit of magic and adventure to a morning that was completely stupid and utterly pointless.  I hope you all enjoyed it too.  And if you missed it… Take a visit back to Honnalee.  pick up one of your old Choose Your Own Adventure books and go through it again.  But every time you slay the dragon of save the princess, or find the treasure… you owe me 20 burpees!

MOLESKIN:

Prayers for Ukraine, CRISPR’s work environment, Pusher’s daughter’s band trip to Florida

ANNOUNCEMENTS:
None

Drum Major 51

THE SCENE: A beautiful sunny evening at about 70 degrees.
F3 WELCOME & DISCLAIMER
WARM-O-RAMA:

51 single count side straddle hops

10 windmills

5 merkins/1 burpee

10 baby arm circles each way

Little of this and that

10 rockettes

5 big boys/1 burpee

THA-THANG:

Mosey to hill by wall just up mini-cardiac

5/1’s

5 box jumps/step ups up top

1 big boy at bottom

Until get to 1 at top and 5 at bottom

 

Mosey to rock pile along path on park’s east side

15 curls

15 overhead press

21 rows

(2nd 51)

15 triceps

15 front lifts

21 squats

 

(rinse and repeat everything)

 

Mosey to the Bermuda Triangle

Battle buddy up

1 buddy runs to hill and back while other stays and knocks out

51 squats

51 imperial walkers

51 merkins

51 LBCs

 

Mosey to base of Everest

15 flutter kicks

5 burpees/1 big boys

5 burpees/1 merkin

Then released everyone to run the summit of Everest and then all the way to the AO. Have to do 51 hand release merkins split up as each sees fit by the time or at the AO meetup.

MARY:
15 box cutters and some post workout stretches to finish us off
COUNT-OFF & NAME-O-RAMA
Use the TAGS on right-side to record PAX (BE SURE TO INCLUDE YOURSELF) in attendance. Be sure to select the AO in CATEGORY above TAGS and then delete these notes!
CIRCLE OF TRUST/BOM:
Discussed how leadership involves letting go and trusting those you lead to be be good leaders, people and citizens in your absence. I then read the following quotes on the subject:

No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit for doing it. —Andrew Carnegie

A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves. —Lao Tzu

The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it. —Theodore Roosevelt

A good leader is a person who takes a little more than his share of the blame and a little less than his share of the credit. —John Maxwell

MOLESKIN:
Insert any personal comments, notes, devotion content, etc.
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Insert information about upcoming events, 2nd or 3rd F opportunities, and any other announcements.

Why do we fall?

THE SCENE: Cloudy and damp, but not too bad, around 60 degrees.
F3 WELCOME & DISCLAIMER  Check
WARM-O-RAMA:

-20 Side Straddle Hops (4-ct), in cadence

– 10 Cherry Pickers (4-ct), in cadence

– 10 El Capitan Lunges, jog to end of parking lot, same thing back.

– 5 PCMBs (Prisoner Cell Merkin Burpees)

  • LBACs forward, backward

THA-THANG:

MOSEY to Pavillion:

  • AIKEN LEGS! 20 Squats, 20 Box Jumps, 20 Lunges (10 each leg), 20 Split Jacks (10 each leg forward)

 

MOSEY to Caribbean:

  • Catch Me If You Can!
    • Partner #1 Bernie Sanders, Partner #2 does 5 of the exercise then sprints to catch Partner #1. When he does, they reverse rolls.  4 loops. Exercises:
  1. 5 American Hammers (2-ct)
  2. 3 Burpees
  3. 5 Carolina Dry Docks
  4. 5 Bobby Hurleys

MOSEY to Cardiac:

  • Cardiac 25’s:
    • Run to first turn and back. At bottom and turn do 5/20, 10/15, 15/10, 20/5 of:
      • Mountain climber (2-ct)/Merkins
    • Run up the rest of the hill and finish with 30 Mountain Climbers and Merkins.

MOSEY to parking lot across from AO

  • BUCK 25’s!
    • Karaoke to left cone. 10 Pickle Pounders/10 Pickle Pointers
    • Run back to center cone, Karaoke to right cone. 10 Pickle Pounders/10 Pickle Pointers
    • Run back to center cone, Bernie Sanders backwards to the cone. 5 Pickle Pounders/5 Pickle Pointers
    • Sprint forward 100 Side Straddle Hops (single count)
    • Run back to center cone.

 

MARY:
Not this time.
COUNT-OFF & NAME-O-RAMA
Seven strong
CIRCLE OF TRUST/BOM:

Quote from the movie BATMAN…

Alfred: “Why do we fall, sir?  So that we can learn to pick ourselves up.”

Just replace one letter in that quote, and you get FAIL, not FALL.

Something I’m very poor at is dealing with failure.  I want to get it right the first time, and then every time after that. That’s one of the reasons I’m not a great handyman… I get so frustrated if I can’t figure something out immediately, that I just give up, rather than trying it one way, failing, trying it another way, and on and on until I get it right.

I’m very admiring of those who aren’t afraid to fail, who go for something, and if they succeed, great, but if they don’t… they pick themselves up again.  Mikaela Shiffrin, the American skier, was a great example of this in the Olympics.  She is one of the top skiers who ever lived, but she skied out of her first 2 or 3 events, and she didn’t earn a single medal in any of them.  But instead if quitting, she kept going out there.  She picked herself up, and continued.  And to me, she’s much more deserving of being a role model than a skater who has failed a drug test but won gold.

And so often, failure is a key component of success.  If you live in fear of failure, like I sometimes do, you miss out on a lot of opportunities.  It’s kind of like riding a roller coaster.  You put off doing it.  You’re petrified to do it.  Maybe sometimes you NEVER do it.  But then you finally get on the dang thing, and afterwards say, “Hey, that wasn’t so bad”.  And you’re not afraid of it as much the next time, and the next.  Similarly, the more times you fail, and the more times you pick yourself up… the less scary it becomes.

As the greatest basketball player of all time, Michael Jordan said, “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

MOLESKIN:

ANNOUNCEMENTS:
CSAUP this Saturday, be there by 6:15 am to check in