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When I reached out to Site Q (Real Tree) about who was Qing the Maze he responded “You want it?” Since I am not one to turn down an opportunity to lead, especially at the Maze (Great AO with endless possibility), I jumped at the chance. Plus there has been something I have wanted to try and the York/Clover HIMS were the perfect crew to test it on.

Spent the night, refining the Wienke and testing out the new exercises in the living room, much to the chagrin of my M. She kept saying, “You really are nuts!!”, but anything for the Pax. Finally got the wienke done and materials ready, so it was time to hit the fartsack for tomorrow we do battle.

Got there early or so I thought, only to find Mr. Rogers and Nunchuck already in the parking lot. Once all the Pax finally arrived we had 17 brave souls ready to defend the wall on the Quest for 300.

Quick disclaimer and we were off. Mosey to the back of the middle school on the other side of the tennis courts including some high knees, butt kickers and karoake. Once there we circled up for 30X SSHs and 20X Morracan NCs, just to get the blood flowing.

The Thang

Quest for 300

The goal was to complete all 300 exercises before we had to leave for COT.

After each exercise below, the Pax were to perform 2 laps around the circle:

• 40 Seated Knee Tucks
• 20 1-Arm Inverted Chin-Ups (10 per arm)
• 40 Assisted Singe-Arm Merkins (20 per arm)
• 40 Single Leg Heel Touch Squats (20 per leg)
• 40 Skier Single Leg Burpees (20 per leg)
• 40 Mountain Mules
• 20 Ninja Box Jumps
• 40 V-Up Twists
• 20 Wall Plank Cross Knee Plank (R/L =1)

Expectedly, the Pax accepted the challenge with fire and fight and gave it all they had.

With two minutes left it was time to head back to COT so we got moseying. (T-Claps to Gauge for the push back to COT.)

I finished up with a quick word on doing the impossible and facing the challenges of life. Watching the Pax not only push themselves, but work together to get each other through today’s workout was amazing. Even in the darkest of days or the most challenging of times, we can accomplish the impossible as long as we surround ourselves with great people and carry the torch for HOPE.

Moleskin

“The tragedy of life is often not in our failure, but rather in our complacency; not in our doing too much, but rather in our doing too little; not in our living above our ability, but rather in our living below our capacities.”

One of my personal struggles is that I am always looking for what’s next or to push harder or for where the next challenge will come from. In the right circumstances this is a blessing, however there are times where I have allowed this to lead me down the wrong path.

Fortunate for me I have found F3 which has been an amazing outlet for this. Being surrounded by like-minded men that are constantly pushing and challenging me and are always willing to accept the next new challenge. It has allowed me to direct this energy that I have in a positive direction and not allow it to lead me astray.

I just wanted to thank the Pax for allowing me this outlet.  And creating an environment that encourages innovation and supports you through failure, all the while having a willingness and enthusiasm to take on any challenge, even if it seems completely stupid and utterly pointless

Announcements
Go Ruck is still looking for some more HCs,
Ragnar – Rock Hill team looking for one more
Orlando F3 Launch- Reach our to Chaser or Cspan it you are interesting in making the trip

Prayers/Praises
Pray for our communities that it finds the unity it needs to thrive

Thanks for Real Tree for the opportunity to lead.

Gotta get back to the Hunt, its Witch Season…

In Honor of my boys first Birthday we had a nice workout in his honor.

Parking Lot

Warm up: a nice run to the parking lot at springs

High Knees w/hands up (called it “The Pentecostal”), Side Straddle Hops, Merkins, Repeat…

J-Jack Webb-20 Merk /1 jack  19 Merk/2 Jack  (finish at 10 merk/10 jack webb)

A-Alphabet – Ab’s – Make Alphabet with your legs

C- C2C – Suicides from outside parking lines and work in – 5 Carolina Dry Docks Per Stop

K-King Of Hearts – Suicides from outside parking lines and work in – Karaoke, Side shuffles, butt Kickers, high Knees, Bear Crawl,

S- Side Straddle Hop Burpees – 5 Side Straddle, 2 burps  (5 Sets) OYO

O- OYO- 15 burps OR 30 Merks (when finished join the rest. Go until everyone is done)

N- Never Cross Dolly – Like a Hello Dolly except you have your arms out wide

C.O.T.

YHC arrived to an empty parking lot at 0500, explored the church campus, set out a few cones and returned to see Rhinestone and Joe dirt hanging out in the parking lot. Everyone must have been recovering from the weekends cause the mumblechatter was light!

Time, as she does, slipped by and it was 0515 before YHC realized it! So a brief disclaimer (we’ve all heard it before anyways) and off we went on a slow mosey to the fire pit. We warmed up with 10 IC of SSH, Merkins, Windmills, imperial walkers, hillbilly walkers and dips.

A slow mosey down the path past the graveyard took us to the field where the cones were laid out. The PAX lined up and it went something like this:

1 merkin – lt. dan ~15 yards to the next cone
2 merkins – lt. dan ~15 yards to the next cone
3 merkins – sprint back to the starting line and R&R until you end on 12 merkins

R & R w/:

1 squat – karaoke ~15 yards to the next cone
2 squats – karaoke (facing the other direction) ~15 yards to the next cone
3 squats – sprint back to the starting line and R&R until you end on 12 squats

A quick 10 count and we moseyed back up the hill to the playground for a round of inverted rows and LBCs. Starting with 20 ea OYO, we decreased each set by 5 until we hit 0.

Another 10 count and then took off down the hill that leads to the softball field.

Then it was NUR’s up the hill, jog down, R&R. When the six was in it was 20 morocan night clubs IC followed up by another double dose of nurs and 20 overhead claps IC. We wrapped up our hill exploration with a two trips up the hill, one followed by 10 morocan night clubs IC, and the last followed by 10 overhead claps IC.

I was able to introduce the guys to the tunnel of love and they had so much fun the first time we went through it twice.

A mosey up the hill and we wrapped up with several minutes of dealers choice Mary.

We even got young man Cedar in on the Qing action!

Thanks for having me at Guns-N-Moses guys! Really appreciate the chance to lead!

Catfish, out!

Four of Rock Hill’s strongest joined YHC on a warm Tuesday morning at Iron Academy. I had planned a little Tabata with our Kettlebells for a simple, but effective workout.

Warmup:
Mosey around Sam’s Parking lot
SSH x 20
Merkins x 20
Morroccan Night Club x 20
Windmill x 20

The Thang:
4 minutes of each exercise, 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off

Curls (switch arms each exercise)
Tricep Extensions
Goblet Squats
Lawnmowers
American Hammer
Sit Ups

NMM:
It was an honor to Q this workout and I hope I did well. Each man here pushed me to do better.
Dream House–you get better each time I see you. Thankful for your dedication.
Burr – Its time we get you on a Q schedule!
Voigt – You are clearly in the class with some of the Rock Hill elite, keep up the great work!
Catfish – My brother–you and I have been at this together since the cold days out at PHOP in 2015. Thankful for your friendship and push over the past 18 months.

Three of York’s finest joined YHC for a Monday morning beat down at Guns ‘N Moses. Being that it was my first time out in Tirzah, I decided to do one of my favorites for the boys in York.

Warmup: (IC)

SSH x 20
Windmill x 10
Morrocan Night Club x 20
Merkin x 20

We then took a lap around the church for me to get my bearings, then we started with the pain.

4 Corners (do each exercise at each corner)
Lap 1: 10 Merkins
Lap 2: 10 squats
Lap 3: 5 burpees
Lap 4: 10 calf rises
Lap 5: 10 SSH

We then set up 4 corners in the parking lot, where we did a running drill
Jog 3 legs, sprint 1, jog 2 legs, sprint 2, jog 1 leg, sprint 3, jog a lap, sprint a lap

We then did 10 counts by each man of BTTW and People’s Chair, followed by ab lab.

NMM:
It was impressive to see the growth of the men in York this morning.
Redwood, great leadership at this AO.
High Pockets, I couldn’t keep up with you on some of the runs!
Vila, great work pushing yourself with each exercise!

Aye!

Kicked off with the following passage:
“Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.”
‭‭Genesis‬ ‭12:1‬ ‭ESV‬‬
http://bible.com/59/gen.12.1.esv

Explained that just as Abram (later Abraham…name changes were given by God many times in Scripture to signify a new life. 2 Corinthian 5:17, i.e. Saul to Paul, Jacob to Israel) had to trust in the Lord enough to “go to the land that He would show him (without knowing where that might be), we too can learn from Abram’s example of faith. The Lord doesn’t always tell us His entire plan. Most times He tells us just enough where we know that we have a choice…to obey or disobey. May we all realize that God has far better plans than we have for ourselves, but we are often full of pride and think that we know best. I believe the Lord knows to only tell us “some” of His plan, because if He told us more, we would, by our sinful nature, try and take over like we have the better plan. I speak from experience and I bet many PAX do as well. May we “exercise our faith,” and trust God with all of our being, as Abram did.

We trust the QIC at every workout to take us to places we don’t necessarily know we are going and to provide a good workout. Why does it seem easy to trust the QIC, but harder to trust the Sovereign God of all creation? May we ponder this question daily.

Warm up (IC)
SSH
IW
WM
MN
MERKIN

MOSEY ACROSS THE STREET TO OLD GYM

PC-2 long 10 counts
BTTW-long 10 count (PAX got a little rest before BTTW, as a FIA group was passing by…important to remember to be gentlemen)

Mosey to hill at end of parking lot

Partner work (1 does exercise, other runs up hill and back-collective total)

50 burpees
100 Squat jacks
100 Diamond Merkins
100 CDD

Mosey to Harris Teeter

Each cart return

Round 1
10 burpee pull up
20 chest dips
20 regular dips

Round 2&3
5 burpee pull up
10 chest dips
10 regular dips

Back to COT

4 corners (10 blast offs merkins, 10 jump squats, 20 calf raises, 20 LBC)

Prayers
Bill Nye job interview
Law enforcement

The Patriot, a staple F3 AO in Rock Hill with so many great options for a work out, how do you choose just one?  This morning Sapper and I (Nunchuck), received the honor of leading the Q for this great AO location.  Sapper decided on 6 locations utilizing all the open fields in Cherry Park.  We arrived around 6:15am to layout the plan and place cones in the strategic locations.  The Goal for this Saturday morning was almost like a miniature Spartan run.   Sapper selected four team captains, then we numbered off to build 4 individual teams with the Captains responsible for calling the workouts at each location.   Drifter gave me 4 old tires that we used as coupons that had to be 2-man carried from location to location.    Each Team had a different Order they had to run the course in, so there were never two teams at once at a single location.

Workout consisted of:
Stop 1)  25 Side Straddle Hops,  25 Imperial Walkers, 25 Wind Mills, 25 Overhead Claps, 25 Moroccan Night Clubs,  all counted In Cadence
Stop 2)  25 Merkins,  25 Derkins,  25 Irkens
Stop 3)  2 Minutes Partner Assisted Big Boy Sit Ups, 2 Minutes Little Baby Crunches,  1 minute Partner assisted Feet Push Downs
Stop 4) 20 Squats called In Cadence followed by Zombie Walk across the field and back (roughly 100yrds x’s 2)  (That was fun after all the squats)
Stop 5)  10 Burpees,  Crab walk across the field and back,  10 Burpees,  Bear Crawl across the field and back, 10 Burpees  (I noticed somebody shortened up the cone layouts, so I assume the bear crawl was a crowd pleaser)
Stop 6)  Wheelbarrow – Partner Assisted Cone to Cone then Run back,  Low Crawl cone to cone (mimic a barb wire crawl)
Return to AO,  (where we can witness bloody elbows and knees and the pax wringing sweat)

Upon returning to the AO, I circled the group up and delivered a brief word based on a story I recently read.  I opened it up by talking about a Heart full of grace.   Terra Storch unfortunately learned a lot about the heart and grace in a tragic way.  In 2010 her Daughter Taylor died in a tragic ski accident, thus being thrust into every parents worst nightmare.  Her and her husband decided to donate Taylors organs to patients in need.

For Patricia Winters, this was grace that she desperately needed and gave her a fresh start on life.  Terra had 1 request though, she asked to be able to hear her heartbeat.   So a few month after the transplant surgery, Terra and her husband flew out to Phoenix to meet Patricia.  After a long embrace, Patricia gave Terra a stethoscope, and to her amazement she hear her Daughters Heart Beating for the first time since she lost her.   Now her heart dwelt in a new body, but it was her daughters heart she heard nonetheless.

Galatians 2, v20; Paul tells us, It is no longer I who lives, but Christ who
Colossians 1, v27;  Christ In You, The Hope of Glory
Paul mentions Christ Abides in him 216 times, so this is a major part of what Christ does for us when we are part of his grace.

In John, chapter 8, it opens up with the story of the Lady caught in the very act of Adultery.  The morality police of the day couldn’t wait to shame her and thrust her in the crowd where Jesus was teaching.  Hey, Hey, looky what we have here teacher….This woman was caught red handed!!!!  The Law of Moses says we Stone Her….What do you say.   What did Jesus do?  He stooped.  He knelt down, lower than anyone there.  The “holier than thou” thumpers looked down their nose at the lady they couldn’t wait to accuse, but they now had to look even lower to see Jesus.  They kept on, making a fuss, until Jesus Stood straight and tall between the woman and crowd, and calmly said, OK, go ahead, Stone her.  But let you who have never sinned throw the first stone.   Ooops!  Ouch!!  The PC Police didn’t see that one coming…

Have you ever messed up?   I know I mess up, daily.  Even when I try my best, I still screw up.   One, by one her accusers dropped their stones and left.  Finally it was only her and Jesus.  Jesus stood and looked and said, hey, what’s this, where did your accusers go, is there nobody here to accuse you?  She said, “No Lord, not one”.  To which Jesus said, “Neither do I, no go and sin no more”.  That’s Grace.

1 John 5, v19 says, We know we are of GOD, and the WHOLE World lies in control of the evil 1.
Revelations 12, v9-10 calls Satan, The Dragon, The Serpent of old, The Deceiver and GREAT ACCUSER.

This ole world is full of people that are quick to show your faults, accuse, point, blame, cast judgment, steal and crush you dreams, rob you of your peace.   However, for those that know Christ, you have received grace.  Christ lives in you.   When God searches your heart, who’s heartbeat does he hear?   Does he hear the heart beat of the world, or does he hear the heart beat of Christ who lives in you?

-Nunchuck

It was a morning where I woke up and took the dog out around 4:30 and immediately started sweating. Beautiful, when you already smell like a Dothraki before you’ve already gotten in the car to head out. YHC has fallen off the wagon lately when it comes to doing pull-ups, so I thought it was the perfect morning to re-engage the biceps and drag 7 other PAX through the misery. And so it began…

Warm-up

• Mosey down to the Elementary school scaling the smaller walls against the school
• Circled back to pick up the late arriving Bounty Hunter
• Continued on to the big wall…you cannot just pass up the big wall without going over it
• Bear crawl past the trailers, back to regular and circle up in the empty bus parking lot
• BTW at this at a 6 minute mile pace (according to Birdcage)
• Circled up for SSH, Mountain Climbers, Merkins, Morrocan Night Club (which according to Lexicon expert Fire Hazard, is not in the Lexicon)

The Thang

• Partner Murph – Partner 1 runs around the track, Partner 2 knocks out the Murph until Partner 1 returns to switch. Track Run was an interval run, half comfort pace/half sprint
• Quick Tabata circuit (20 sec on, 10 sec recover) Box Jumps x 3/Dips x 3
• Mosey over to the Dragon’s back, may I add the recently trimmed Dragon’s back
• Maintain partners (Partner 1 – Hill Sprint up, sprint down, back pedal up, sprint down) (Partner 2- Freddy Mercury for Partner 1 sprint up; Solid-no honey mooning-downward dog-ass in the air Plank for Partner 1 back-pedal up) Partners switch…Rinse and repeat
• Mosey back to COT where time keeper Hazard informs me we still have 45 seconds in which we knock out Flutters and Springy Frog/X’s & O’s/Boats and Canoes whatever you wanna call it
• COT

Moleskin

• I’m glad Bounty Hunter decided to get out of bed and join us, almost thought he had forgotten where Arsenal was…
• Glad to be partnered up with Ringer as he completed about 80% of our partner Murph (YHC felt bad and performed some extra Merkins…actually these were not on purpose. Couldn’t believe Ringer knocked out most of our Merkins while I was taking a lap; apparently a slow lap
• Clark Kent showed up with the Superman shirt on and performed as such, dude gets stronger every time he posts
• Birdcage was pace setter and time keeper for our 6 minute mile warm-up mosey pace
• Fire Hazard managed to make it through with out finding an ankle breaking rock on the way to Dragons Back (although we heard it rustling in the woods), and made sure to push us for an extra 45 seconds of pain and ABony
• Bourne conquered the big wall for the first time
• Dark Roast continuing to post, glad to see him motivated and pushing it

Muggy morning with some solid upper body work and just over 2 miles. Solid work gentleman.

Over and out – General

While getting our 4 y/o daughter ready for bed she was doing a reverse wall climb into a headstand and then walked down the wall to a Merkin and I thought “Hmmm… since I have to Q tomorrow why don’t we do Merkins.” So I told the M and she said “Lucas don’t do that… I’m going to warn them.”

No warm-up just circled up and each PAX did as many Merkins as they could in one minute.
Then we added up the total = 1,117

Then around round of Merkins in a minute.
That added up to = 1,135

Another round of Merkins in a minute, but these were hand release Merkins
That added up to = 553
Since we didn’t hit 1,000 we did another round of hand release Merkins and got well more than 1,000

Ran to Alumni Walk on Winthrop University’s campus.
Once there we divided into two groups and the groups did 300 double count LBC’s. Then halfway through we did a audible to just single count LBC’s followed by just Hello Dolly’s to finish us up.

We did 10 Rounds of 10 Merkins – 10 LBC’s – 10 Squats

Then a mosey back to the COT followed by planks for 4 minutes until the clock hit 6 AM!

We had a pack house, so I wanted a workout to keep the PAX moving but always enjoy the mumble chatter regardless.
Appreciate the guys from Fort Mill/Tega Cay/Lake Wylie/Clover for making the drive down.