F3 Knoxville

Tag: Three-Peat

The Great Siege of 1565

THE SCENE: Cool and muggy
F3 WELCOME & DISCLAIMER
WARM-O-RAMA:

  1. Projectivator
  2. Tempo squats
  3. Tempo merkins
  4. Cherry pickers
  5. Run to the track
  6. Run 3/4 lap w/ high knees, butt kicks, and karaoke

THA-THANG:

Our theme is assaulting a fort.

  • 100m + 50 merkins to assault the front gate.
  • Mosey 100m
  • The frontal assault failed. 200m sprint to retreat and 50 big boys to reinvigorate your manhood.
  • Mosey 300m to find another assault position.
  • Sprint 300m to assault the wall again.  Circle back for the 6.
  • Ouch! We got shot in the leg.  50m lunges
  • Mosey 150m to the field hospital.
  • We got patched up, but now we have to carry a dispatch to an allied commander. Sprint 400m
  • We made it inside the fort now! Run up and down the steps of the grandstands.
  • Mosey back to the flag. Small detour to see the tennis courts and do some dips.

MARY:
Ocho: LBCs – Papa Lock: Grady Corns

CIRCLE OF TRUST/BOM:

The year is 1565 and the Ottoman Empire dominates the middle east, attacks ships in the Mediterranean, and makes slaves of their captives.  An ancient order of knights that dates back 500 years will break the back of this force of evil and save Europe from a Muslim invasion.

The Knights of the order of Saint John, also known as the Knights Hospitaller, were a group of Christian European knights who originally ran a hospital in Jerusalem. Their 2nd leader organized a militia and this began their military operations.  During the Crusades, they along with the Knights Templar (who you may have heard about from Nicholas Cage), became the 2 most formidable military orders in the Holy Land.

After the Muslims retook Jerusalem, the Knights Hospitaller took to island living.  Moving to Cyprus, Rhodes, and eventually Malta.  While on Malta, a small island in the Mediterranean west of Sicily, they launched naval raids on the Ottoman Empire and their vasal Barbary Pirates.

The Ottoman Empire decided the Knights Hospitaller needed to go to the hospital themselves and launched a huge siege on the Isle of Malta bringing 40,000 men.  This was one of the largest armies assembled since antiquity.  The Knights of the Order of Saint John had only 6,100 men to defend their home and the good people of Malta.

The Ottomans arrived on May 18, 1565 and took the interior of the island quickly.  There were three strategic forts on the east coast of the island that the Knights defended valiantly along with the capital city.  Despite many cannon bombardments from land and sea, and many assaults on the forts, the defenders held the island until September 7th – 4 months later when a relief force of 8,000 Spanish and Italian troops arrived.

These fresh troops made quick work of the demoralized Ottomans forcing them to retreat from the island by September 13th having lost between 25-35,000 men.  The Knights Hospitaller lost 2,000.

This example had a major impact, bringing together the kings of Europe in an alliance against the previously seemingly invincible Ottomans; the result was the vast union of forces against the Ottomans at the Battle of Lepanto six years later.  Who will you inspire with your bravery and resolve?

ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Hardship Hill is on Monday, May 29. Register or sign up to volunteer. Rampart Flag handoff on Saturday.

Lords of the Rings

THE SCENE: 66 degrees and a calm and beautiful morning
F3 WELCOME & DISCLAIMER
WARM-O-RAMA:
Karate Jacks, Imperial Squawkers, Tempo Merkins, Bird Dogs, Knoxville Cherry-Pickers, Moroccan Night Clubs, Stretch on your own

THA-THANG:

Ruggers Run: modified Indian run with a rugby ball – pass it back, last man sprints it back to the front of the line.

The mission: Gather the required hash (tally) marks for each exercise group.  Most hash marks required multiple reps to count, and approved modifications to earn a tally were included.

  • Karate Jacks (4 count)
    1 hash = 20 KJ’s
    40 hash marks required
  • Rings Pull-ups
    2 Inverted Rows : 1 PU
    1 hash = 5 PU*, 10 IR
    40 hash marks required
  • Running Laps
    1 hash = 1 lap**
    30 hash marks required
  • Imperial Squawkers (4 count)
    1.5 squats : 1 IS
    1 hash = 20 IS, 30 squats
    40 hash marks required
  • Bird Dogs (4 count)
    1 Big Boy : 1 BD
    3 LBC : 1 BD
    1 hash = 20 BD, 20 BB, 60 LBC
    40 hash marks required
  • Derkins
    1 merkins : 1 Dk
    3 incline merkins : 1 Dk
    1 hash = 15 Dk, 30 Mk, 45 IM
    40 hash marks required

* A rather heavy towing chain was present.  Any that did pull-ups wearing the chain got to put a bonus hash mark in any category.

** A 45 lb weight vest was present.  Any that ran the lap wearing the vest got to put a bonus hash mark anywhere they wanted.

Mission was accomplished with time to spare.  Outstanding effort, HIMs!

Mosey back to the flag.

MARY:
Shoulder burn to finish out the day!  Grady Corns into Moroccan Night Clubs into Little Baby Arm Circles (both ways) – high reps with no breaks in between!.
COUNT-OFF & NAME-O-RAMA
CIRCLE OF TRUST/BOM:

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9, NIV)

Four Approaches to Salvation.  What saves us?  How is salvation accomplished?  Some people believe that you are saved by subtraction.  You just need to stop doing certain bad things and you will be right with God.  Others believe that you are saved by service.  If you just do enough good things, go to church, be nice, get baptized, and give enough, you will qualify for salvation.  Still others believe in salvation by comparison.  In comparison to really bad people, they are justified before God.  None of those options work.  None of those will make you “righteous” or right with God.  You can’t earn it, and you’ll never deserve it.  We are saved by grace – God’s grace!  Salvation has nothing to do with what we can do.  It’s all about what Jesus has already done!

MOLESKIN:
A record turnout for me and a huge welcome to Rocket’s father and triple respect: “Keating”!  We hope to see you come out again soon!
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Hardship Hill is almost here!  Flag handoff this Friday at Rampart.

Job 42:5

THE SCENE: cloudy with some rain
F3 WELCOME & DISCLAIMER:

Was given
WARM-O-RAMA:
SSH, KNOXVILLE CHERRY PICKERS, thread the needle, Tempo merkins  Tempo diamond merkins

THA-THANG:
36 minutes of EMOM: every minute different exercise,  5 second rest. Rince repeat 3x

  • OHP
  • ROWS
  • CMU SQUATS
  • CMU SWINGS
  • CURLS
  • FREDDIE MERCURY

run one lap around the parking lot. Then Did Thunderstruck.  Mosey back to AO  flag

MARY:
Moving hello dolly that Slappy led. Then awkward turtles then some duck jousting
COUNT-OFF & NAME-O-RAMA

CIRCLE OF TRUST/BOM:
“I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear, But now my eyes see you” Job 42:5
MOLESKIN:
God allows obstacles to help us remember that he wants us to see Him and have a more personal relationship with him
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Hardship Hill

The Rule of Lurches

THE SCENE: Cool spring morning, don’t get much better. Waxing crescent
F3 WELCOME & DISCLAIMER
WARM-O-RAMA:

  • SSH
  • Hairy Rockettes
  • Imperial Squawkers
  • Tempo Lunges
  • LBACs
  • Grady Corn
  • Moroccan night clubs
  • Cherry pickers

THA-THANG:

  • Mosey to the recruiting center, grab a block
  • CMU pyramid (5, 10, 15, 20, 15 10, 5)
    • Curls
    • Lunges (each leg)
    • OHP
    • Squats
    • Extensions
    • Rows (each arm)
    • 1/2/3/4/3/2/1 pull ups
    • 1 Irkie Dirkie
    • Stopped at 0600
  • Grab a battle buddy and a log
    • Lurches – together, lunge step forward, at the top golden arch to the other shoulder
    • To the top of the parking lot
    • 5 power merkins each
    • To the bottom of the parking lot

MARY:
We definitely did a little
COUNT-OFF & NAME-O-RAMA
CIRCLE OF TRUST/BOM:

I would like to propose a few types of rules that people live by

Rule of War – Do it to them before they do it to us

Eye for an eye – Don’t do worse to them than they did to you

Silver rule – Don’t do to others what you don’t want them to do to you

Golden rule – Do unto others what you would have them do to you

God’s rule – Love your neighbor as yourself (Leviticus 9:18)

Jesus new commandment – Love one another as I have loved you (John 13:34)

Now, if I were a preacher, this could be a whole sermon series, but since I am not, I just want to hang out around last step. When one reads “Love your neighbor as yourself”, it lands as the highest demand that you could make on someone. In fact, I think most people don’t really distinguish the top three tiers of this list. But I think there is actually a lot going on up here at the top.

My eyes have been most opened to this as, over the past ten years, I have attempted to be a father to my son. Being a father has demanded from me an enormous amount of growth, which I frankly didn’t think I needed before I started. When I was married without children, I pretty much had the whole “love your neighbor” thing down. I was a pretty charismatic guy who knew how to steer a situation toward good outcomes, and pretty much did right by all, at least on a comparative scale. And having a baby made it tougher, cause it was exhausting, but I had served on a submarine, so sleep deprivation was kinda normal already. But then the boy turned two and things went downhill. For some reason, he didn’t obey my every word, in spite of my very good imitation of the way good parents act on TV. As the years went on, I descended into a mindset of figuring out how to force my son to behave, and as my methods escalated, I started realizing that I didn’t like the path I was on. But I was caught in a mental trap, on one side an intense responsibility to “raise him right” and an intense reality of how things were actually going.

Eventually, I arrived at the realization that the difference was the rule. For most people, I lived in the golden rule zone, treating them the way I wanted to be treated. But with my son, I was operating on the next level up, I was loving him as myself. Trouble is, I didn’t love myself very well. While on the exterior I was all relaxed and friendly to others, internally I was a slave driver. My son had the unfortunate experience of actually being loved by me more. Pride played a huge role in this, leading me to have low expectations of others while demanding more and more of myself, primarily in the form of external performance. But with Paul, I expected everything, even more than myself because he had the full attention of potentially the greatest dad ever born.

And that’s the genius of Jesus’ new commandment. Rather than allowing my own, twisted internals to set the standard, the expectations are nailed to a cross. I need to stop trying to make a better version of me and start acting like Him.
MOLESKIN:
Ran out of time for my planned work at the wall. Maybe next time.
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Hardship Hill, Forg3, Dragon boat race

Concentrica

THE SCENE: Cool and Gloomy
F3 WELCOME & DISCLAIMER
WARM-O-RAMA:

  • Projectivator
  • Run around the parking lot
    • High knees
    • Bernie
    • Butt kicks
  • Tempo merkins
  • Tempo squats
  • Cherry pickers

THA-THANG:

Concentrica:

  • M – Relationship with your wife – your center
    • 100 merkins
    • Hold Al Gore for the 6
  • Shorties – Relationship with your kids – your legacy
    • 50 LBCs
    • 50 flutter kicks
    • 50 Freddy Mercuries
    • Hold plank for the 6
  • Shieldlock – Your team for mutual defense
    • 100 step ups
    • Dips for the 6
  • Whetstone – Mentor/mentee
    • 20 burpees – it’s hard, but it makes you better
    • Hold Al Gore for the 6
  • Mammon – Your work, love it or hate it
    • Run 2 laps
    • Wagon wheel for the 6

MARY:
Because relationships can be hard, we did 5 walpies on the way back to the shovel flag.  Upon returning to the flag, we did “popcorn mary” where I picked a PAX to lead an exercise until time ran out.

CIRCLE OF TRUST/BOM:

  • How do you measure success in your life? Money? Things? Friends? Church attendance? Fitness?
  • Wrong scoreboards!
  • The Concentrica should be our scoreboard as seen from a Biblical worldview.
  • We should measure our success by the quality of the relationships we have on the Concentrica.
  • Which of these 5 rings are you missing in your life?
  • Which of them do you need to invest more in?

ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Thirsty Third Thursday at Orange Hat Brewing.  Free drinks for veterans.  OTB this Saturday if a Q steps up.