Category: Quagmire

Spoon Feeding Instructions

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Learning to give clear instructions and the power of commanders intent.

Gekko was supposed to have the Q this morning but life called and he had to answer. Prayers for him.
5:15 struck and SlowJams brought out an FNG so the disclaimer was disclaimed and an overview of F3 was made.
YHC called his own number and grabbed some cones and headed towards the Home Depot for the warm-up.
Luckily I have been fortunate to get to spend some time with Tesla during the few times I show up for a PreRun at Quagmire so I learned that he had not led his VQ workout yet. So I gave him a heads up that today was his chance to practice leading a few exercises in cadence during the workout so we could all give some feedback before his big day.

YHC started the warm-up off with some SSH and some windmills then passed it over to Tesla to lead some SSH and some merkins. He did pretty well after a few corrections and will be ringing that second bell in no time.
Passed the baton over to Console to lead a few other exercises since he is fairly fresh to the game and I have missed his first couple of Q’s because of scheduling conflicts. As expected he shined like the stud he is. Way to live up to the hype and not be frightened by the thought of being compared to Tesla.

On to the Thang.
Mosey over behind Home Depot on the way to Target and get in a few seconds of peoples chair while waiting on the 6 to join.

Continue over to the Kohls parking lot for the meat and potatoes portion.
This part was supposed to be a lesson in preparation and the chaos that is unavoidable when a leader fails to convey the message clearly.
So YHC started out with no clear instructions to the PAX rather giving them just a single instruction meer moments before they needed it. The PAX were stumbling over each other because my instructions were not delivered in a clear and confident manner and there seemed to be no method to the madness. We started at one end of the parking lot and were moseying to the first street light pole performing the exercise then coming back to the starting line to perform some burpees before going to another light pole but sometimes we would come back to the starting line and other times we would just move on to the next light pole and exercise. The objective was to show how failing to communicate a plan, even a bad plan, was ineffective in achieving the mission (the current mission that I always try to achieve when leading a beatdown is to push every member of the PAX outside of their physical comfort zone while keeping everyone together as well as possible and allowing each member to not feel like a burden to the group or that they should have stayed in the fartsack).
When there is poor leadership the entire group is at the mercy of the commands of the Q. The Q is forced to either abandon the guys at the 6 or handicap the guys at the 12 in order to keep everyone on the same page. Just as in life each one of us men is at different places along our journey and therefore has different needs.

Once we finally got down to the end of the parking lot I let the PAX know my intended message for the workout and apologized for the intentional poor leadership.
Gave the PAX new clear instructions on how to proceed on the way back across the parking lot and turned them loose to go at their own pace. We spent the remainder of the time working through the exercise and encouraging each other to push ourselves to get better.

Finally, it was time to jailbreak back to the COT for Count-A-Rama, Name-A-Rama, FNG naming (welcome GuyTai), announcements, and prayers& praises.

Thank you to the men that showed up and pushed yourselves to get better. Hopefully, I was able to challenge you to look at the people that you lead and reevaluate how well you are communicating instructions to your team. Are you spoon-feeding them one bite at a time or are you laying out the buffet and letting them get after it?

Remember that those you lead are faced with many decisions every day and you want them to have the knowledge and confidence that they can make the decision without having to go into a holding pattern while they run it up the chain of command and await a response.
Set clear expectations, communicate them often, and allow your people to react and overcome.

Garrett Purvis 36
Build your guardrails out of bricks!
Olaf

Stay frosty my friends

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Balls of Pain to start your Thanksgiving week off right

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Because of technical difficulties by YHC I had no idea who had the Q this morning so as we waited for 5:15 to roll around I was frantically planning a backup beatdown just in case.
So 5:15 is when we start so without any more suspense I gave a steller disclaimer and led the 7 other gents towards Homedepot.
Warmup:
SSH
Merkins
Windmill
Peter Parkers
Parker Peters
Burpees (In Cadence)
At some point, Flounder joined the party so we had a solid 9 HIM ready to get better.

Mosey over to the front of Target for some Balls Of Pain
Suicide style. 10 reps each
Squats,
Merkins,
LBC,
Jump Lunges,
Regular Lunges,
Diamond Merkins,
Bomb Jacks,
Jump Squats,
Wide Arm Merkins,
Burpees,
Flutter Kicks,

Pick up the six then head over in front of Old Navy for some four corners.
Starting out with 25 SSH at each corner with NUR and sprint on the long sides with bearcrawls on the short sides.
Then move to the next round of 5 merkins, 10 merkins, 15 merkins, then 20 merkins at each corner.
Power Skip the short sides sprint the long sides.
Finally last round was a sprint round. 1 burpee, 2 burpees, 3 burpees, and 4 burpees with a sprint from each corner to the next.
Stopped to get in some dips at the fountain which must have been dirty because someone recently soaped it up and it was full of bubbles a plenty.
Ended with a jailbreak to the COT flag with staggard starts for those that wanted a head start so we could all be pushing until the finish.
A little bit of mary and count-A-rama, name-A-rama announcements and prayers and praises before our WarDaddy Flounder took us out with some touching words.
Great work by all. Tclaps to Tesla for crushing a preRun and still finishing out front for the main thing.

Garrett Purvis 36
Build your guardrails out of bricks!
Olaf

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Honoring Those Who Impact Us

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This week, on Wednesday, we honor all veterans who have served and continue to serve our nation.  As part of that theme, YHC decided to get a little jump start by assigning a workout where PAX would honor a veteran of their choosing and, based on the name(s) of those veterans, complete as many rounds as possible of exercises associated with the letters of their name.

We gathered as 5 to start and, by the time we moseyed roughly 1/4 mile for some COP, Olaf and Flounder joined in.

COP – 11 windmills D/C I/C, 5 burpees, 11 Imperial Walkers D/C I/C, 5 burpees, 11 Hillbilly Walkers D/C I/C, 5 burpees, mosey further up the lot because YHC did not like the smell of trash, continuing with… 11 low slow squats D/C I/C, holding the last rep and remaining in the peoples chair for 9 Moroccan night clubs and 9 shoulder taps – both D/C and I/C.  Legs were warm and off we moseyed to the board of the alphabet.

The main event was designed to be between 2 & 5 rounds and all PAX worked hard, likely did more wall sits than they would in most workouts and it seemed a lot of leg work was done, but the beauty of these workouts was the simple fact that PAX were doing these to honor someone who impacted them – someone who made them better in their life.  May we be so fortunate to do the same for others as a matter of everyday practice.

YHC called time with 3 minutes to spare and we moseyed back to COT for geometry class with a few positions on the protractor before 0600 hit and time was called.

Announcements – Read your newsletter, XMas Party coming up and Thanksgiving convergence at the Ranch with a little football in Lake Wylie afterwards.  Travis Manion WOD on 11-20 at the Swamp.

Prayers – for families, for Olaf’s Mom as she relocates and his step dad struggling with an addiction.  For DaVinici and discernment on the path forward.

Praise for Jekyll’s Dad who served in Vietnam and is spending a weekend with his family coming up and for all veterans who have served us all selflessly and have sacrificed so that we might enjoy the freedoms and blessings of this nation.

NMM –  Q-ing is an honor.  Leading is a privilege and serving is our greatest form of impacting others.  YHC is grateful to the men of F3 who continue to serve as visible reminders each day of what impact and positive ripple effect can look like.  I am humbled to be in your company and thankful that all of you keep me on a better path with you than without.  My thanks to Olaf for the opportunity.

With Gratitude,

Cyclops

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Cadential Extension at Quagmire

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Glad to be subbing in for Shady this morning.

Had originally set an AMRAP plan for Quagmire PAX to ponder. However, there was an FNG present, so I decided to modify a bit so we all stayed closer together.

Moseyed towards Tuesday Morning
Warm up in cadence
-SSH
-IW
-HW
-A little yoga

Moseyed towards CVS
-more yoga
-shoulder taps
-squats

Moseyed a bit for The Thang
Did all of these in cadence
-25 Merkins (50 total)
-50 Squats (100 total)
-50 Mountain Climbers (100 total)
-50 Freddie Mercury (100 total)
-50 Split Squats (100 total)
-50 Side Straddle Hops (100 total)
-RBG (elbow plank) with 10 counts all around
-50 VMO taps (100 total, 50 each leg)
-25 Merkins (50 total)
Originally planned to do this AMRAP with PAX moving at their own pace, but instead we went in cadence to stay together. One round was enough…

Moseyed to Target
Bear Crawled a little, cause I like to

Moseyed back to COT
Set a timer for 7min
AMRAP
10 Burpees
25 High Knees
I got in 4+ rounds. Pretty sure Copyright got 5. #King

COT:
With an FNG posting, I like to reflect on F3 core principles and mission. Added a little thought about where we were when we started F3. I couldn’t run a mile without stopping. Wasn’t gonna happen. Grateful for other PAX holding me accountable and helping spur me to be better: physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.

Welcome FNG Slider

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The Sweati 2020

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The Sweati 2020-
79 HIM took to The Forts annual summer CSAUP event. It was 78 degrees when 24 Ruckers launched from The Coliseum at 0530. They had their disclaimer and direction to the first of the 3 pain stations. Just After at 0600 54 runners took to the route. They departed and ran about 2.5 miles and got to meet Bones at Golden Corral for the first pain station. He worked them over as they came in for about 10-15 minutes. Once he finished dishing the pain they took off to Pantheon only about 1.5 miles up the Road. Fishsticks was waiting for sprints and pain. He had the PAX attention for another 10-15 minutes. Once they left they brought the route back to YHC. While waiting for the PAX to return and doing burpees I decided that my other two Qs most likely put the PAX through so much I would give them a choice. Either 20 burpees at 5 light poles with bear crawls in-between or they could buyout of it for a $50. going to our brother Cash. Most wanted to take on both challenges. We wore black for Cash and am still amazed at the Photos coming in from across the Country showing support to this HIM. We love you Cash. Here is a link to the pay-pal account if you feel you would like to support.

paypal.me/f3thefort

Backdraft Out

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Quagmire Gut Punch

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Pulled this one out of the archives from a couple years back w/ some subtle changes.  I informed the men that we may run a bit seeing that I was coming off a week of vacation and needed to detox a bit.  Here we go:

Nice 0.8 mile mosey to get things started, behind the Depot, Target, down to Kohl’s and back up Rivergate Pkwy to the Sun Trust Bank, with stops every quarter mile for some quick stretching / warm-up (1st quarter mile – wind mills x10, 2nd – mountain climbers / merkins x20, 3rd – squats x10 in cadence)

The real thang, taking up the remainder of the time:  pax will run the remaining length of Rivergate Pkwy, and stop 10 times along the way and do the exercise and rep count I tell them.  To be clear, they do the same exercise and rep count 10 times until they get to the very end, and then run back to the start.  I then change the exercise and rep count up.  Each set of 10 stops was a 0.30 mile run down, and then you had to run back so 0.60 miles were covered for each exercise.

  • 5 burpees per stop = 50 burpees + 0.6 miles
  • 10 big boy sit-ups = 100 big boys + 0.6 miles
  • 15 jump squats = 150 jump squats + 0.6 miles (this one was a d1ck move)
  • 10 merkins = 100 merkins + 0.6 miles

From there, we were out of time and headed back to CoT.  One of these days we’ll get the full weinke in with a 5 / 10 / 15 / 15 / 10 / 5 rep ladder, ending in burpees a second time.  For today, the 500 reps inclusive of the warm-up and 3.2 miles was enough.

I mentioned to the pax that when I was reading my old back blast from a couple years back, I had noted in the write-up that DaVinci was back in the gloom after 2-3 months on IR.  He had spoken to us back then about preparedness, and how we need to prepare for the unexpected, because his IR stint took its toll and he wasn’t ready for what it would do physically, emotionally, relationally, you name it.  It was fitting to read what he said 2 years ago because I had a gut punch myself a week and a half ago.  But honestly, because of this group, and the arsenal of resources we’ve built up supporting one another, I’m more prepared now than ever to pray, lean on others and power through this minor set back.

Prayers were said for Tsunami and his wife, Olaf and his 36 years, and my situation.  I really appreciate the pax who came out and gave it their all, even though some of the things I asked of you were pretty mean.  You guys all did and it and didn’t complain.  Just got to work and kept sharpening your body for when the time comes you’ll need that extra bit of gumption.  Go get it.

Cha Ching

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Quagmire Burpecides

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YHC was laying the trashtalk thick for your Monday beatdown. 11 HIM regretably showed up at Quagmire.  4 left to ruck #scared

We ran the dark trail for a good bit before we got lost, turned back and went to HD parking lot for the warmorama including windmills x 6, pickle pointers x 15, hillbilly walkers x 10, plank, 6″ hold, plank, chillcut hold. Ran to the Target balls for the thang: burpecides.

PAX lined up at the line, run to ball 1 = 1 burpee.  Run back.
Run to ball 1 = 1 burpee, run to ball 2 = 2 burpees. Run back.
Run to ball 1 = 1 burpee, run to ball 2 = 2 burpees, run to ball 3 = 3 burpees.  Run back.
Repeato to ball 9.  That’s 165 burpees and 2.5 miles today.  Cha Ching and Olaf did with a ruck… wow.

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The Sweati

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The Sweati
8/15/2020

Want to Run or Ruck and Sweat? Join YHC for both. Let’s get out of your comfort zone.

Come out and enjoy 5.75 miles of running or rucking. Included with your ticket is 3 pain stations that will test out if you have been posting to workouts over the summer/ Covid pandemic. This has been and will continue to be the summer sweatdown.

Launch from Coliseum (1025 Dave Gibson Blvd) you will be told where to go next.

Ruck- depart 0530
Run- depart 0600

Water will be available at pain stations. Bring your own if you are against trash.

Coffee will be provided by The Fort. Donations to the fund are accepted.

Q Source will follow at this site. Please bring chair and Q Source manual (not required)
Q source will start shortly after PAX catch there breathe.

Fellowship, popsicles, and coffee to follow.

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PreMurph weird exercises at Quagmire

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Disclaimer was disclaimed to these seasoned veterans.

Brisk Mosey from StartEx to Kohls parking lot, lots of complaints already.

Circle up then instruct the PAX to assume the FLLP, forward-leaning-listening-position, some people call it a high plank but I don’t hang out with those kind of people.
Read first fun fact about Memorial day:

Sprint around the Kohls and Ultra back to circle up.

Introduction to the new “weird” exercises:
First exercise is the “Side Straddle Burpee”
“The what?” disgruntled PAX
you heard right ladies. Now start Side Straddling and when I say down you perform a burpee. Its not in cadence so get moving.
We did that for a few burpees past when everyone wanted to quit so everyone got better.

Time for another loop around the shops.

Circle up again for some “Cha Cha Merkins”. It’s a simpler form of the breakdance merkin because you don’t have to bring your leg all the way through but you do have to cha-cha your feet in order for the outside of your hip to be able to touch the ground. Its a merkin that instead of your chest touching the ground you’re letting your hip droop so the outside touches which also makes one shoulder work harder than the other. And that’s why we alternate hips. It’s all about finding that right balance.

Then we did some “Suicide Squats”. It’s three squats in one, the gift that keeps on giving like Russian stacking dolls, Start in the original starting position then lower into a little baby squat, then return to standing, then go down to a proper parallel squat, then return to standing, then finally go down to a deep ankle squat, then return to standing. Congratulations thats one rep.

Time for another lap around the shops.

Next up was some “Cookout Squats” Think about having to put your knees together to balance a full plate of food at your grandma’s backyard while you sit in a rickety lawn chair. Only you don’t get the lawn chair and there isn’t a plate of food on your lap. Start standing with your knees together and your toes slightly in. Then squat down as far as you can go. It only takes about 6-7 of these evil guys to get the IT band and your outer hips to feel the fire.

Then bear crawl for about 10 or so parking spots to do some derkins before bear crawling back.

Now its time for the “NutCrackers” a truly crowd-pleasing experience. Drop into a low slow squat and hold at the bottom. Now rotate your knees inward until you hear the nutscrack then rotate them outwards until you can feel it in your hips. I dare you to try and do more than 10. (Its a four-count exercise)

Time for one last lap before the final exercise.

Final exercise was the “Penguin”

Stand upright tall with hands by your sides. Then in cadence you are going to reach down and touch your right knee but you can’t bend forward at the waist, Its all obliques. Then rotate over to the other side, Now you understand the name right? If you don’t you are probably doing it all wrong. This also is one that will sneak up on you 24-36 hrs later.

Finally finished with new and exciting exercises so its time for a quick suicide in front of the shops before heading back to COT.

Count-A-Rama, Name-A-Rama, Announcements and last but not least Prayers and Praises.
Now whos coming over to my house for the Murph? Shoutout to @ChaChing for pushing me to do the Murph and for Larell Lake Ridge Hood for joining us.

Thanks for the opportunity Mile High to lead such a great group of guys.

Stay frosty my friends!

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Sidewalk Shuffle

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Five men showed up for the workout this morning at Quagmire.  After the disclaimer, we moseyed to the front of Kohl’s.

COP

SSHs x 20

Imperial Walkers x 15

Windmills x 15

Moroccan Night Clubs x 15

Next, the main event:

Run to the first crosswalk; perform 10 merkins, 10 LBCs, and 10 squats; and run back to the starting point.  Run to the next crosswalk and rinse and repeat.  On the way back to the starting point, repeat merkins, LBCs, and squats at each crosswalk

Total crosswalks = 28 x sets of 10 = 280 merkins, LBCs, and squats.

We had enough time to lumber back to COT.

 

Great job everyone!

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