Never Forget

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9/11 Tribute WOD – Focus on the Passenger

Imagine you’ve woken up on a seemingly normal day, getting ready for a work trip, and then heading to the airport. The traffic isn’t as heavy as you would think, in fact you think maybe today will be a good day based on that. You arrive at the airport, get your ticket, and go to the security line. Security wasn’t so bad, it only took 5 minutes. This could be a pretty nice business trip. You arrive at your gate and then the plane starts to board. You board, sit down in your seat and pull out a book you’ve just started and are excited to read it on this forced 5 hour break. The plane takes off and everything seems fine.

Then it isn’t.

A group of men some how gain control of the plane and it changes course. The next thing you know, you have no clue where you’re heading and there is an air of fear growing in the cabin. You look out of your window and you see a city that you should be very far from at that point in the flight and wonder what comes next.

That’s it. That’s how 246 passengers/crew on four planes lost their lives on 9/11/01. They weren’t warned, told, or able to make the last decisions about their lives. Some weren’t able to tell their loved ones that they loved them for the last time. Life ended for them on that fateful day.

Today we honored them.

Mosey around the entire church and then circled up for a warm up stretch.

COP

30 SSH

10 Tappy Taps

30 Moroccan Night Clubs

10 Little Baby Arm Circles – both directions

Al Gores w/4 count pulse

High Plank, Side Plank, Side Plank

Yoga Flow and Stretch

Mosey to the concrete bench area.

Four Flights – 246 Victims in the air.

Flight 11
87 Total
76 Passengers
11 Crew

Flight 77
59 Total
53 Passengers
6 Crew

Flight 93
40 Total
33 Passengers
7 Crew

Flight 175
60 Total
51 Passengers
9 Crew

Weinke

Flight 11 – North Tower
76 – Step Ups (Count Each Leg)
11 – Turkish Get Ups (11 Each Arm)
Run Lap

Flight 175 – South Tower
51 – KB Swings
9 – Curls (9 each arm)
Run Lap

Flight 77 – Pentagon
53 – Straight Leg Deadlifts (1 Leg at a time)
6 – Clean & Press (6 each arm)
Run Lap

Flight 93 – Field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania
33 – Goblet Squats
7 – Halo’s (7 each way)
Run Lap

Mary – Total Per Flight
87 – LBC’s (2 Count)
60 – Pickle Pointers @ Bench Area (KB on Hips)
59 – Flutters w/Press (2 Count)
40 – American Hammers w/KB (count each side)

We ran short and had three minutes to spare. We took time to pass the Dutchie left and right one revolution.

JWOWW made a great point while we were running our fourth lap – you don’t come to realize how many people actually lost their lives until you start counting them out one by one, rep by rep, and the pain grows with each rep. Just remember this when you’re thinking about giving up when honoring those who lost their lives.

We had 12 PAX, each of which struggled through this unique weinke.

We headed back to COT and I gave one last word with regard to those who lost their lives:

NMM

In total, 2,996 people lost their lives on that fateful day of 9/11/2001. At this time 18 years ago, none of them knew their time would come to leave this earth. They had plans, families, loved ones, futures, goals, dreams. Don’t take what you have for granted. Live the life you have with those you’re surrounded in the best way possible. Give all of yourself to God and let Him use you. Don’t hold back. You never know when something might happen and put an end to all of it.

Prayers/Praises

Flat Tire’s son is going to take his on the road drivers test – prayer and praise!

Pray for marriages – and don’t take for granted the fact that you have an amazing M.

Pray for Winnie – my 2.3 – who is the last of our family to catch our little illness going around.

Praise for our newest Region, Lake Wylie! And for our new leadership in The Fort.

Announcements 

Christmas party coming up! Get your sweaters!

Punch List out.

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17

7th Year Convergence for The Fort

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The 7th Year Convergence for The Fort followed an exhilarating Invergence from the night before.  Hoping to continue that acceleration, the 4 Q’s had a plan to talk about the 4 Skills needed for Virtuous Leadership: Vision, Articulation, Persuasion, Exhortation.

CakeBoss to start us out with Vision: Recognizing advantage and the movement required to achieve it.

Disclaimer and welcome
“Go Hard or Go Home!”

Take off for 100 yard mosey up path, Get in 3 lines – Indian Run across WEP

Break into 4 lines, 2 groups of seal teams -20 seal team sit ups in cadence

Back into 2 lines , Everyone plank – Tunnel of Love (25 guys per line) – Plank series while guys army crawling under

Crowd pleaser for sure!

7 Burpees for 7 Years!

Vision is what I spoke about and the men that saw the advantage of F3 and planted it (moved towards it) in Charlotte, the The Fort and we continued to give it away in Rock Hill & Lake Wylie.

Hand off to Maximus

Articulation: Describing vision to others in a clear manner. Being able to tell others where we’re going and being able to describe that vision to others.

So, with that said, we’re going over to the top of the big hill to start with drill bits:

½ the group goes one direction while the other goes the opposite way

At each white post (drill bit), 10 Jumping Lunges (10 each leg)

10 Jump Squats

Mosey to the base of the other hill, the one with the statue on it:

NUR (backwards run) up the hill

3 Burpees at the top

Bear Crawl down

5 Burpees at the bottom

Hand off to Fun House for the “P”.

Persuasion – The initiation of first Movement.  Convincing people to move in the direction of advantage, abandoning their Status Quo,

YHC gave an awesome yet forgettable speech about Persuasion.  Then the Thang:

Circle Up – Duck, Duck, Goose – One guy runs around the circle the rest of us plank, the next guy goes when the running guy finishes.  Planking excercises were called out: High Plank, Low plank, Mountain Climbers….. Audible called to get the next guy running after 1/2 a lap around the circle of Pax….. Peter Parker, Parker Peters….. Audible called to get the next guy running after 1/3 lap around….. Mak-Tar-Jai, Left Hand High, Right hand high…..Done.  That took 10 minutes!  60 guys is a lot of guys to be running around in circles.

Stay in circle, 5 minutes left, Jack Webb: 1 Merkin to 4 Overhead hand claps.  We got to 8!

Hand off to Pusher for Exhortation!

Exhortation – Incentivizing The Breach Of Obstacles.

Burpees x 10 OYO
Flutters IC x 10
Mosey to a corner of WEP
Burpees x 9 OYO
Flutters IC x 10
LBCs IC x 10
Mosey to another corner
Burpees x 8 OYO
Flutters IC x 10
LBCs IC x 10
Rosalita IC x 10
Mosey to another corner
Burpees x 7 OYO
Flutters IC x 10
LBCs IC x 10
Rosalitas IC x 10
Hello Dollies IC x 10
Mosey to another corner
Burpees x 6 OYO
LBCs IC x 10
Flutters IC x 10
COT
Naked Moleskin – The name-o-rama took forever.  That is a good thing. When 60+ PAX post to celebrate something that has obviously changed their lives, then change is happening!  Thanks to Maximus who put this awesome weekend celebration together!  His leadership is not only Effective (Using VAPE) but he is a Virtuous Leader! (Check out the Q Source for the 5 C’s Virtues of Virtuous Leadership) Can’t wait to see what year 8 brings to The Fort!  More importantly, who it brings!  Time to go EH someone.  See you in the gloom.
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Dirty D’s

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Another great LKW start to a Monday morning. 16 PAX showed up to work off “whatever” they consumed during the NFL kickoff weekend.

I gave a good disclaimer, asked if anyone had any injuries I needed to know about, and off we went for a FAST mosey.  I announced where we would end up and let the PAX filter in as we started some CoP exercises, which included:

SSH (20)

Windmills (8)

MNC (15)

I then asked if anyone knew how many points the Steelers lost by the night before.  Since I stayed up for that debacle, I made everyone do a Flying Squirrel for each point my team lost by… so 30 Flying Squirrels, OYO.

Then finished up with something a bit different.  I had all the PAX get in plank and I yelled out down (6” hold) and up (back to plank) at various intervals for the next couple of minutes, this was fun.

I’ve been working my way through the Exicon and today was the letter “D”, so whatever exercises or routines I picked would be found in that section of the Exicon.

1st routine:

Dirty McDuece

Pretty simple routine (keeping it simple is good) that had the PAX doing 4 sets of 3 exercises followed by a lap after each set.

The sets included; 12 4-count Merkins (24), 12 4-count Squats (24), and 12 4-count Hello Dolly’s (24).

After doing about 100 apiece of those exercises we were all nice and warm.  Next up…

2nd routine:

Doracides

Another simple yet effective exercise that most PAX quickly understood and off we went.

We partnered up in typical Dora fashion and performed the following exercises:

100 Bombjacks

150 Step-ups

200 Dips

250 2-count Flutters

While PAX A was dong the reps PAX B was doing a short 10-yard Bear Crawl/Crawl Bear to kick off the “suicide” followed by sprints of about 25 and 40 yards before swapping with their partner.  Most finished, but I called this one a little early because get to my last routine.

3rd and final routine:

Del Brown

He was some fly fisherman or something, but the routine was simple, 10 diamond merkins, 25 yard crab walk, 10 diamond merkins, 25 yard crab walk back, followed by 10 more diamond merkins.  What I didn’t tell the PAX was is that I was timing them and if they didn’t beat their time on the 2nd attempt there would be a penalty.  Alas, we will never know, we were running short on time so I gave the PAX and option to finish up a couple minutes late and finish the 2nd set of the routine or head back… they quickly chose the EASIER thing and headed back. 

Oh well, there is always next time.

We finished up with the usual announcements, praises, and prayers in our CoT.  

Announcement – LKW official on 10/26, we’re launching with our 1st CSAUP that morning, the “Nessie” get your teams of 3 ready!  

Prayers for safe travels, (I’m on a plane as I type this), sick and injured PAX, and they death of a 19 year old girl who passed away recently. 

Thanks Iced-T for the opportunity to Q.

Until next time,

Flux

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4

Making Monday Great Again

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Just another case of the Mondays.  13 of us showed up to get better, including another FNG from Bones named Adam.  We walked him through the disclaimer and then set out to do our warm-up.

Warm-up – quick mosey over to the parking lot in front of office depot and did some quick drills on the parking lines:

  • Run up the lines, side shuffle right, back pedal down line, side shuffle right – repeat all the way down the parking row.  Once you finish, you run around the island and then did #2
  • Turn 90 degrees and do the same thing, so this time you’re doing a side shuffle right for the longer line, back pedaling to the next line behind you, and side shuffling left.  Again, full length, run around the island and then we turned to go hit the real work.

Simple = Hard:  that was the motto, so we did exactly that, we ran about a 1/4 mile down 49 to the corner of 49 and 160 and did our first set –

  • 30 side straddle hops (in cadence – so call it 60) / 15 merkins (in cadence – so 30) / 8 burpees OYO

Started running again, about another 1/4 mile and pulled over on the grass for the second set –

  • 45 side straddle hops (in cadence – 90 kind of sucks) / 23 merkins (in cadence) / 12 burpees OYO

Started running again, about another 1/4 mile, maybe a little more, got in front of Michael’s / Pier One, etc and did the third set:

  • 60 side straddle hops (in cadence – yeah, 120 left me not being able to count as I had no air left) / 30 merkins (in cadence – we stopped half way through to shake it out then finished strong) / 16 burpees OYO

Started running again to the end of the building we were at (in front of Kohl’s), peeled off and did the next set:

  • 15 jump lunges (15 per side) / 15 jump squats / 15 mountain climbers

Kept running, pulled over by the Suntrust bank and did the next:

  • 30 jump lunges (30 per side) / 30 jump squats / 30 mountain climbers

Ran to Buffalo Wild Wings and partnered up for….

  • Partner pushes – partner 2 has his arms on partner 1’s shoulders, is resisting and backing up as slow as they can while partner 1 pushes them.  Each partner did one set the full length of the parking lot
  • Wheel barrows – same, each partner did one rotation the full length of the parking lot

Run to the parking lot in front of Pet Smart and do the last set:

  • No more walking – sprint the length of the parking lot from island to island, jog the width, sprint the next parking lot length, jog, sprint, jog, finish w/ a sprint right in front of best buy and then head to COT.

Final count was 2.3 miles, 270 side straddle hops, 136 merkins, 36 burpees, 45 jump lunges, 45 jump squats, 45 mountain climbers and some partner  pushes / wheel barrows.  Nice little day at the office for the 13 who showed up to get better.  Appreciate you guys being there to encourage each other.  Welcome FNG Shake N Bake (Adam)!  DaVinci had his first respectable name-o-rama which I’m proud to say was at my Q!  It was the loudest “RESPECT” I’ve heard to date.

Cha Ching

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6

C

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So it is almost a week later as I write this.  Better late than never I guess. Hopefully I can recollect most of what happened!

It all started with the usual disclaimer and then a quick lap around the parking lot.

I’m not much for warm ups, but did to some this morning.  Certainly some windmills, merkins, squats, SSH’s.

I then got my speaker out for  a little fun.  Since I have been working my way through the Exicon and we would be doing the letter C today I play a song called Alphabet Aerobics, and made everyone go from Merkins to 6″ holds every time he began rapping a new letter.  The song is just over 2 minutes, but you felt it!

1st routine: The Cycle

We moseyed to the baseball field and started at home plate

  • bear crawl to 1st, 3 burpees, crawl bear to home
  • bear crawl to 2nd, 6 burpees, crawl bear to home
  • bear crawl to 3rd base, 9 burpess, crawl bear to home
  • bear crawl to home, 12 burpees, crawl bear to home

This one always sucks.

2nd routine: C.L.I.M.B.

We went to the hill and did the following exercises:

  • Ran down the hill
  • Crab Cakes, Lunges, Imperial Walkers, Monkey Humpers, Bombjacks
  • NUR up the hill
  • The increments were x2 so it started with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and then 2, 4,6,8,10, etc.
  • We did this 4 times and x2 on the exercise count each time.

3rd routine: Catch me if you can

Mosey back to main lot and partnered up.  You all know how this one goes.  I called out various exercises and Partner A did them, then caught their partner who was NUR’ing, rinse and repeat.  We did 4 reps of this and I called out a new exercise each time.

I can’t remember what we announced or prayed for, but we did!

Thanks for the Q O’Reilly!  It is always a great time Q’ing here!

Until next time,

FLUX

 

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2

What Lacks in Creativity…

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Call it “coincidental”, impeccable luck, dumb luck, divine appointment, proper Site-Q planning or option “F”, None of the Above but I was fortunate to have the Q at the Swamp today; the morning of our region’s Invergence. If the PAX were grumpy this evening due to not having a decent workout to start their day, that would be on my shoulders. I was really hoping to not let that happen.

So when 19 other men rolled in for an even 20, I had to take note of who might need the extra push. Once the mental note was made (and it shall remain mental), I recognized we’d have to get some distance in before jumping right in and even try to gas people a little here and there.

Disclaimer was uttered and again, my request was made: “All of you are carrying something with you this morning. My request is that you be present for the next 45mins, engage, push and be present with us, here.”

We then…moseyed. Made our way the long way (as if there’s a short way) over to the Kohl’s parking lot mixing in Butt Kickers, High Knees, Toy Soldiers and a few rounds of Sprints (yes, on a warm up mosey).

Circle Up for 7 reps in cadence of each of the following:

Wide-Arm Merkins

Regular Merkins

Diamond Merkins

Mountain Climbers

Peter Parkers

Parker Peters

Then 5 Burpees

2 Lines for an Indian Run around the entire Kohl’s/Kirklands/Ulta, etc building coming back to the Ulta parking lot (can’t believe a beauty supply store just made its way into the BB…TWICE).

Then our typical warm up: Slow Wind Mills, Slow Squats

Catch Me If You Can with a partner and incorporating 10 Carolina Dry Docks and 10 Monkey Humpers when your partner catches you. Make the parking lot lap 3 times. Word to the wise, if you’re partnered with B.O.T., mandate that he jogs or shoot, walks…#speedy.

Circle Up for 7 more reps in cadence of each of the following:

Wide-Arm Merkins

Regular Merkins

Diamond Merkins

Mountain Climbers

Peter Parkers

Parker Peters

Then, mosey to the Old Navy parking lot and line up on a white line

Crab Walk 20 yards, 20 dips, crab walk back, 20 Dips

Repeat

Mosey to the Best Buy parking lot

3 reps each:

Wide-Arm Merkins

Regular Merkins

Diamond Merkins

Burpees

COT

See you at the Invergence tonight and the 1st Convergence tomorrow (Sat) followed by Q-Source.

Honored.

Maximus

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Iran is a country, I ran is a song from A Flock of Seagulls

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20 at Footloose as we enter the Crabcakes site Q era.

No FNGs, but a number of first timers for a Barry Manilow Q, I’m sorry for that.

The Thang:
Mosey to the big lot down the hill between the churches (you know)
high knees across the lot, windmills x 10, karaoke L across the lot, karaoke R across the lot, overhead claps x 25, 1/2 toy soldier – 1/2 knees to chest across the lot, LSS x 10, MN club x 20, 1/2 windmill walker – 1/2 squat walker across the lot, shoulder tap x 10, scorpion DD x 10, run 50% across the lot, 75%, 75%, 100%, Jonah Hill (3 broad jumps, 3 HR merkins x 7)

single file run snake the stairs (10-12 single flights), rinse and repeat

Circle up: SSH x 10, LBC x 10, OH clap x 25, HR merkins x 10, imperial walker x 10, Travolta x 10, hillbilly walker x 10, plank jack x 10, inchworm/merkin/bombjack x 5 OYO, Matt Foley (1 animated squat, 4 dying cockroach, 2-8, 3-12, 4-16, 5-20)

single file run snake the stairs, then mosey to the bottom of the big hill. The men from minnow pond were playing paddy cake at the bottom, so we sprinted up the hill … twice

mosey back to the First Baptist sign: curb step ups x 20 IC, mahktar n’diayes x 10 and in honor of his birthday in 1946, Freddie Mercury x 10

COT

Looks like we made it,

Barry Manilow

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Burpee Broad Jumps for EVERYONE!!!

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7 was the number at Pantheon, sans the SiteQ (whom YHC still needs to give some P200 hardware).  Seems everyone posting for a good beatdown got their money’s worth. And even if not, the standard fare of FunHouse mumble chatter was worth its weight in hot air.

The Thang

Started with a warm-up lap around the “big loop”, with some shuffles, toy-soldiers, and a few COP warm-ups, consisting of (in no particular order):

  • SSH x25
  • Cherry Pickers
  • Imperial Squat Walkers x20
  • Windmills (of acceptable quality, according to FunHouse) x10
  • Mountain Climbers x20
  • Peter Parkers x20
  • Superman >> Paratrooper – with some Moroccan Nightclubs added in x10
  • perhaps a few others exercises, lost in the annals of this 47 year old mind

The Main Event

Pax moseyed to a cone in front of the main entrance.  They observed a second cone about 100 yards away.  We then split into 2 groups.

Group 2 ran down to cone 2 and did the first stationary exercises on the list
Group 1 started at cone 1 and performed the moving exercises for 100 yards to reach cone 2
When group 1 reached group 2
  • group 1 ran a “little loop” lap back to cone 1 and began the first stationary exercise on the list
  • group 2 began the moving exercise for 100 yards to cone 1
When group 2 reached group 1
  • group 2 ran little loop lap back to cone 2 and began the second stationary exercise
  • group 1 began the moving exercise for 100 yards to cone 2
The moving exercises:
  • 1 pair of lunges, 1 broad jump, 1 burpee, then 2, then 3,, 4, and 5 until opposite cone (100 yards away) was reached

Stationary exercise:
1) Plank punches
2) Monkey Humpers
3) Box cutters
4) Dry Docks
======  Ran out of time ======
5) Deep Squats
6) Plank Jacks
7) Apolo Ohno
8) Chop Sticks

For a few minutes, we a couple ab exercises, then about 30 seconds of total body destroyers.

 

Great work by all men!  Thanks to Bear Grylls for the opportunity to lead!

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Fire Ant Q – 9/3/19

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Training for a Go Ruck HTL is a little different than training for a long race – everything takes a lot of time when you’re not moving at an 8 min mile pace.  You get miles in when you can, so at this point in the training, I’ve pretty much acknowledged most days I get out, there needs to be some pre-ruck miles.

Mainframe arrived at 4:40a so we set out for a couple miles sharing the 60 lb sandy I’ve borrowed from Nasa.  The other 3 pax arrived a few minutes before 5:15 so we got right to work.

Warm-up was a quick ruck over to the bottom of the hill on Hubert Graham Way where we then started the fun:

  1.  Partner up hill work (group of 3 and 2 pax)
    • Set 1:  Partner 1 double times up the long hill while partner 2 does jump squats (ruck on).  When partner 1 gets to the top, they wave their arms around like an inflatable flailing armed guy and then partner 2 begins his ascent while partner 1 does jump squats until their partner arrives.
    • Set 2:  Partner 1 double times down the hill w/ ruck overhead while partner 2 does plank pulls w/ their ruck.  Once Partner 1 gets to the bottom, they give the signal and partner 2 begins their overhead jog down the hill while partner 1 does pulls
    • Set 3:  Partner 1 double times up the long hill again while partner 2 does ruck LBC’s.  Same thing as before, switch when partner 1 gets to the top.
  2. Ruck back to the front of Tega Cay Elementary and use 100 yard straightaway between cross walks to play a quick game of modified catch me if you can.
    • Partner 1 begins lunge walking while partner 2 does 12 merkins w/ ruck on.  Once finished w/ merkins, they run to catch their partner and they switch.  Finish when you get to the end of the straightaway.
  3. Head over to the parking lot for some ascending rep man makers
    • crab walk w/ ruck on lap 3 parking spaces, and do 2 man makers
    • crab walk 3 more spaces and do 4 man makers
    • crab walk 3 more – 6 man makers
    • crab walk 3 more – 8 man makers
  4.  Time hack – throw the ruck on and do a mile in under 13 minutes.  We crushed it with an 11:30 pace!

Upon finishing the time hack, we rucked back to COT and finished out some some mary for a couple minutes.  Great job today guys – appreciate you making it out when you had so many good options to choose from Tuesday.  Until next time.

Cha Ching

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