Life Skills with kettle bell babies at the Cannonball

Disclaimer disclaimed while in plank.
Start the party with an Indian run complete failure on my part.
Circle up with kettlebells for some suicide squats, Merkins, and circle of kettlebell rows.
Bring your kettlebells and make a lap around half parking lot. a crowd pleaser for sure.

Then time for life skills. Again a failure on my part of explaining the difference between two rows or columns and two lines.
For the record, a line is what you learned how to stand in back in Kindergarten. You find the back of someone’s head and stare at it. That’s a line.

A row is where you are standing shoulder to shoulder with a fellow PAX facing in the same direction. If anyone wants to correct me I welcome the discussion.

Sadly in today’s broken world, there are some terrible, evil individuals out there they want to cause harm to innocent people. This mornings life training was an attempt to prepare fellow men for such a situation.
The first row of PAX dropped down to a plank with head up facing the church with the kettlebells in front of them. These PAX are going to be jumping up from plank, grabbing two kettlebells, their own along with kettlebell belonging to pax opposite them in row 2, and sprinting away from the starting point as if an active shooter attach was taking place and the kettlebells were their shorties. Use your imagination people! This could save someone’s life.
The row 2 PAX were instructed to also start in the plank position but facing the woods. When YHC says “go” the row 1 PAX jump up, grab kettlebells, and take off towards the woods. PAX in row 2 perform 3 hand release merkins before jumping up and giving chase to PAX in row 1 that just kidnapped PAX 2 shorties. Think of it as a modified “catch me if you can” exercise set.

Finish it up with a more successful attempt at the fuel tank farmer carry Indian run.
I had plenty more planned, let this be a lesson to newer Q’s: always plan at least double the amount of exercises than you think you have time to complete, but given the rapid growth of the @F3_LakeWylie region I wanted to get some future Q’s in the spotlight. Let us not forget that we are challenged to invogorate male community leadership. Great job to those men for going along with being voluntold.

Finish up with Count-A-Rama, then Name-A-Rama, praises and prayers before BOM.
Thanks for the opportunity TwoFerns to lead such a strong group of HIMs.
Until next time “Stay Frosty My Friends”
OLAF.

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4 Basic Exercises, Indian Runs, Achievement Recognitions and Pop Quizzes

3 “Peg Leggers”, Me. Whitesnake and O’Reilly, met to get better (Cannonball Pre-run Staple to Peg’s house and back) before any other Pax showed up.

15 men Circle up on a muggy day and the disclaimer was given. I recently posted in Myrtle Beach and they added the Phrase “I do not know your injuries” to their disclaimer and I liked that so I added that.

We then moseyed to the far corner of the parking lot for my usual and now retired COP
Basically a Deconstructive “Worse Ever Merkin”
30 SSH in cadence – Because u should always do 30
20 Werkins in cadence
30 Seal Jax in Cadence
20 Merkins in Cadence
15 Smurf Jax in cadence
10 Diamond Merkins in cadence

A couple Kettle bell Indian Runs back and forth to the 2 parking lots with The “Thang” worked into them.

Also did 102 kettlebell burpees in recognition of O’Reilly loosing 102 pounds. My math was 102lbs divided by 15 pax = 10 each rounded up
Also recognized Costnaza and his weight lose and running achievements

3 rounds of The “Thang” in between the Indian Runs:
Kettlebell curls on my count till my arms hurt
Kettlebe Tricep ext. on my count till my triceps hurt
Goblet Squats with a kettlebell overhead press on my count till my legs hurt
Big boys with a kettlebell push over knees on my count till my gut hurt

Quiz with Kettle bell hold away from body until the new Pax told me F3 Mission Statement and 5 Core Principles (they did ok)
Quiz on Me – I asked a few personal questions about me and the Pax seemed to know me pretty well. Questions were pretty easy or I talk about myself to much.

A little time for some Wall sits and burpees and merkins sprinkled in.

My take on the whole thing, we all got better and very wet. So wet that I had to hang my clothes on my brush guard all day and they still didn’t dry by the time I went home. I guess that is what happens in 100% humidity and a lot of work getting done. Also, I told these guys again I didn’t want any new friends when I started this thing but crap now I do and I can’t see to shake them.

Till next time
Forever – I will be TWO FERNS!

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Buddies and Bells

I’ve definitely had my fair share of Q’s at this point, but I still get a little nervous before each and every one, not out of fear, but desire to give everyone a good workout.  The PAX trust me with their time and I want to deliver, it’s as simple as that.  In any case, this morning was like most in LKW lately, hot and humid with a dozen+ PAX.  I showed up a little earlier than normal to setup and get ready.

At 5:15 sharp I gave the usual disclaimer and since O’Reilly was back-talking a bit I picked on him on the spot to give the F3 mission statement, he failed miserably, so I think we’ll start reviewing this before my Q’s.

O’Reilly, if you are reading this, here you go buddy.

The mission of F3 is to plant, grow and serve small workout groups for the invigoration of male community leadership.

We started out with a long mosey out and around the parking lot, sans kettlebells, that included some karaoke’s and shuffles along the way.  We then circled up for a quick Warm-A-Rama that consisted of only Windmills.

We grabbed our bells for the 1st routine.

We had 70 seconds to do 7 reps of the following:

  • kettlejacks
  • bent over rows
  • curls
  • triceps extensions
  • goblet squats
  • american hammers 2x count
  • bench press

We repeated this 7 times.  If anyone exceeded 70 seconds we would be penalized, however, fortunately everyone finished with 5-10 seconds to spare each round.  This was a great way to quickly get in just shy of 350 reps of kettlebell work in. Nice job!

The 2nd routine was a 4 corners/buddy workout.

Each corner/cone had an exercise to do with your partner, it was always 100reps (50 each) and then a way to move between the cones.  The long sides of the rectangle we would go half way down the line via bear & bell (bear crawl w/kettlebell), then apple turnover into crab walk position with the bell laying on our bellies the rest of the way.  The short side of the rectangles we would move via lateral goblet squats.  Pretty much just as it sounds.  And all the movement sucked.

At each corner we did:

1st cone: 100 kettlebells handoffs, partners back-to-back, twist, and hand of a single kettlebell.

2nd cone: 100 partner merkins (no kettlebell).  I failed at explaining this one correctly at first, most PAX assumed that when I told to have 1 partner in plank position with the other also in plank with their feet on the backs of their partner that they would be doing derkins.  Nope, I quickly corrected them and told them that the partner with feet on their backs would be doing the merkins.  Most didn’t like this and much grumbling and complaining ensued.  I must admit, it was brutal.  I know a lot of PAX substituted on this one and did it the “normal” way, Royale and I did the whole thing and I’m sure others did, but it was painful and a real winner.

3rd cone: 100 bench press + overhead partner handoff.  Partners would lay head-to-head. Slight adjustment to this one as well.  It was a bit scary to hand off the kettlebell after each rep, so I said it would be fine to pump out 5-10 presses and then hand off the bell.

4th cone: 100 partner sit-ups.  Partners sat feet-to-feet, did a full “big boy” situp and handed off the kettlebell to their partner, rinse and repeat.

Royale and Ricky Bobby had to cut out 5 minutes early for work so the rest of us finished up and circled up for a couple of ab exercises to finish out the final minute.

CoT

Prayers for safe travels for some of our travelling PAX, prayers for Tom who is having heart surgery, and also prayers for Olaf because his grandchild is due today!

It was a pleasure to lead and a ton of fun.  I definitely wouldn’t have the continued motivation to get up and get after it most mornings if it wasn’t for the company of you great men.

Until next time,

-FLUX-

 

 

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Where’s The P?

On a rather comfortable June morning myself and 15 other PAX decided to get very uncomfortable at CannonBall. Last night as I was thinking up my weinke I was deciding between Kettle Dora’s or Escalating BLIMPS and I decided on the BLIMPS.  However, I noticed on the F3 Exercise page that the P in the BLIMPS are Mountain Climbers and one of the PAX rightly pointed out what was the P exercise so I changed the P to another M and we now have BLIMMS.

Started with a disclaimer and we did a mosey down the church driveway while holding our kettlebells overhead, then went into ketllebearcrawls then back to regular mosey up the other church driveway while also holding the kettlebell overhead till we circled up for some COP.

COP-KettleSSHx10/HALO’s clockwise/counter-clockwisex10/Hot Potatoesx10/Figure 8’sx10/Hold Kettlebell in front shoulder height and did 3 rounds of 10 counts

Main Event

BLIMMS-5 Burpees/10 Lunges/15 Imperial Walkers/20 Merkins/25 Mountain Climbers/30 Squats.  We started with 5 burpees then ran around parking lot with kettlebell then did 5 burpees/10 lunges in an escalating fashion till we finished with the squats.  The running with the kettlebell was the biggest challenge however as everyone was breathing heavy(even Flux!) You know the workout was good when Flux tells you that he hates you mid way through the workout.

With 8 minutes left on the clock I had us do 3 Turkish Get-Ups(each arm) then we grabbed some wall for some people’s chair. End Pax went out to do 3 burpees while the rest passed their kettlebells down towards the church shed where we store the bells. Our final exercise was putting the bells back in the shed.

Welcome FNG Dreadnought(real name Dave Redding-for real).  Hog and Coyote this weekend, Q school at Bermuda Triangle coming in July and other cool events happening around the region.  Prayers for Shakespeare and family moving to my hood and for those suffering with heart disease.  Thanks 2 Ferns for the opportunity to lead. Peace!

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