Tag: Flounder

Christmas Dora

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Seven men + 1 late snowman (Olaf) showed up for the workout this morning.  We started off with a slow mosey to the back of Just Fresh.

Warm-ups

SSHs x10

Imperial Walkers x10

Windmills x 10

Gun Slingers x10

Next, we partnered up for a few rounds of stair climbs and exercises.  Partner 1 climbed the stairs across from Just Fresh while Partner 2 did the exercises (Carolina Dry Docks, Lunges).

We did two rounds of each exercise and modified the stair climb due to safety reasons.  Some of the steps were covered with water.

Next, we ran to Old Navy and back down the hill to the traffic circle.  The tree in the middle of the circle is decorated with Christmas lights so it was a fitting stop for our Dora exercise.  Partner 1 ran to the top of the parking lot near Old Navy while Partner 2 performed the exercises.  I asked the Pax to think about this week, the holiday, and what it means to each of them while they returned down the hill looking at the Christmas Tree.  Since we had some time, I adjusted the numbers a bit on the Dora.

150  Hand Release Merkins

250  Squats

350  LBCs

Next, we ran to the fountain for a set of step-ups and dips.  We had another time to bear crawl around the half traffic circle with some grumbling from the Pax.

Back to COT.

Great job Everyone!

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Just keep climbing…

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Sometimes it’s hard to find a Q in the winter months at Pantheon. Doubly so the day before Thanksgiving. So what do you do? You have fun!

The Gloom

YHC rolled up to an empty parking lot with a few minutes to go.  The temperature at Pantheon tends to be much colder than anywhere else, but this morning felt somehow warmer.

Divac pulled in as I was taking in the gloom, and Flounder soon after. Divac and YHC have been trading off terrible ideas every couple of months at Pantheon, and I didn’t want to disappoint.

The disclaimer was quickly disclaimed.

Warm up

There wasn’t one

The Thang

Everyone had an easy trot over to the small field just past Trailhead Park. You know the one. It’s across the street from the police station and at the start of the path with those terrible, awful, no good hills running through Tega Cay.

The plan is simple. Do a thing at the bottom of the hill, then go up to the top and do it again.
Rounds 1-5:  10x Big Boys
Rounds 6-10: 10x Merkins
Rounds 11-13: 10x thrusters (shoulders and feet on ground, hold for 2-3s)
Rounds 14-15: Alternating Superman (prone with arms straight past head, Raise and hole L arm and R leg, 2-3s hold, alternate for a two count)

I’ve done this routine a few times in the past, this is the first time it was self-inflicted. And, just like all those other times, nobody liked it at the time. But I know in my heart that everyone will be thankful.

After round 15 it was a slow trot back to…

CoT

Some good chatter at CoT. Announced some announcements. Lots of stuff coming up, even though it feels like things are ruined, they don’t have to be ruined.

Flounder asked to life up two of his friends, Denny who lost his wife over the summer, and another friend whose name escapes me who is going though a similarly difficult time.

Divac asked to lift up his great-aunt, who broke a hip at 90years old. And he’s got in-laws incoming.

NMM

Some day, I’m going to be thankful that the “pandemic” is a thing we talk about in the past tense. This year our family will have its second nuclear family thanksgiving, and it looks like we’re going to have a purely nuclear Christmas as well. While it’s a bit sad, it certainly removes a lot of stress on me.

But that’s not the case for everyone…

My prayer this morning is that those of us who call ourselves Christians would be better at not filtering the light we’re supposed to be reflecting in its pure form.  Help me not be the reason someone thinks God doesn’t love them.

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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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Pantheon Pyramid

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Prior to posting, YHC was requested to wear the shortest of shorts by our 1st F Q – Gears. YHC was happy to comply. 

A chilly 38 degrees made for a nice leggy start to the morning… in the height of the current political drama (that YHC is so wrapped up in), a bible verse was spoken prior to the disclaimer. 

Hebrews 13:8 – 

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” 

YHC spoke said verse because the focus shouldn’t be so much on earthly things as it has been. 

Disclaimer was stated, and we were off. Lap Around to Back of School, jump onto the playground/turf.

 

COP

20 SSH IC

15 Tappy Taps IC

15 Moroccan Night Clubs IC

Yoga Flow/Stretch Out

Line up facing Basketball Court (watch out for the ropes!)

 

Pyramid  

Each round added an exercise to the mix, starting with 5 burpees. Once we reach 30 SSH, we worked our way back down by removing the exercise with the most reps. Between each round we ran about 50 yards total. 

5 Burpees

10 Big Boys

15 Merkins

20 Squats

25 CDD’s

30 SSH

 

Mosey to Basketball Court

Line up on base line. Crab Walk to Half Court, feet first. Flip and crab walk head first to other base line.

Suicide foul line, half court, foul line, base line. 

Bear Crawl to half court, craw bear to other base line. 

Suicide from this base line. 

Inch worm to half court, on your six.

Windshield Wipers with legs per YHC’s count (left/right).

 

Begin Mosey back toward COT, stopping on the way for some Fifer Scissors x 25.

Reach COT, flutter in wait for six. 

Rosalitas x 20

WWI Sit Ups x 10

0600.

 

A great showing by all. YHC was gassed after Honey Badger and Block Party. Divac apparently loves suicides. Who knew?? 

 

Announcements – 

The Fort is traveling to Rock Hill this Friday, and Metro next Thursday. Hit up Shady for info/clown cars. 

 

Prayers/Praises – 

Prayers for Fish Sticks’ MIL – Flu like symptoms developing.

Prayers for MR. T and his family.

Prayers for Short Sale’s family with multiple people battling illness/pneumonia.

Prayers for Opie’s FIL – bad car accident causing 6 cracked ribs and now pneumonia. He is out of the ICU thankfully.

 

Thanks 38 Special for the opportunity to lead.

Punch List out. 

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Sweep the core

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YHC  took over for Pantheon at the last minute to allow the scheduled Q to attend the memorial beatdown at the Coop.  I hadn’t Qed since before the pandemic and figured with numbers low, it’d be a good time to keep distant whilst also dishing the pain.

Five PAX gathered in the gloom this morning near the shovel flag at Pantheon. Divac, Tesla and Flounder I knew, but Slow Jamz I’d not yet met. The disclaimer was disclaimed while holding a chunk of cardboard that was carved off a shipment of wine that the M has been importing since February.  Fitting that the box for the merlot would have scrawlings of a madman, intent on seeing merlot on the pavement.

The Warmup

Quick mosey over to the parking lot space by the crosswalk for a quick warmup. Let’s keep it simple with 10 SSH, 10 Low Slow Squats, and a few ten count hamstring stretches. That’s it.

The Thang

Quick jaunt over to the crosswalk to explain. On the cardboard are two columns, aptly labeled “1” and “2”.  PAX are instructed to choose a column, do all the exercises and run a (.34 mile) lap on the queueing road, and continue until COT. Alternating columns is suggested as column 2 is a bit more difficult than column 1.  PAX may also choose to do both columns for a short lap in the parking lot. It’s UvU here, with about 40 minutes to see how many laps one can get in.

Column 1
10x BBS
20x Flutter (2 count)
30x LBC

Column 2
10x Rocky BBS (two punches at the top)
20x Box Cutter
30x LBC

It’s an attack on the abs, Sweep The Leg style!

COT

YHC shared some thoughts about the 3rd F (see NMM).

Announcements were announced.

Prayers were offered up:
Flounder’s friend, Sue, who we’d prayed for last week, has gone home as expected, and for her husband who has seen two wives lost to cancer.
Slow Jamz’s M, who just returned from NY. The family has lost a brother/son to a hit and run in New York.

Naked Man Moleskin

Some great mumblechatter was heard at the crosswalk. YHC was pleased with the number of complaints as well, though it was a bit disturbing as many of these complaints manifested in noises that are generally reserved for the boudoir… I suppose I’m not complaining.

Tesla smoked everyone with nine full laps. YHC got a solid eight.

Slow Jamz tried to get the flying EH on a sad clown that has been flying by Pantheon for a few weeks now, but he’s not biting. I believe Olaf spoke with him last week.

The 3rd F from CoT…

In CoT I talked briefly about how the 3rd F, Faith, is often hard to explain to people who reject faith.  I translate that pretty frequently to “Faith that I am not the center of the universe”.  And spoke a bit about my personal conviction that we need to try to put others needs in front of our own needs. And we should always be putting the needs of others in front of our convenience and luxury.

Here I expound:

I find it difficult talking about F3’s core principle “Open to all men” in relationship to the 3rd F, “Faith”.  On the surface it’s hard to make the relation work, they seem incompatible because no matter what I say, what men seem to hear is “Open to christians”, and I don’t want that to be the case.

F3 obviously isn’t for every man (if it was there would be mass logistical chaos in every city at 0500).  But how do we stop the word “faith” from auto-translating to “barrier”?  I evangelize F3 pretty frequently, and I’ve seen the facial twitch when that third F is uttered more often than not. When I witness that tic, I try to weaken the barrier.

As mentioned in CoT, that third F may be described as “Faith that I am not the center of the universe”, you often hear “I am 3rd”. Which, I feel, is a lot more appealing to those men we will meet (generally on a daily basis) who may not share your/our/my faith. While I believe in Jesus, I cannot require others to do the same (Paul going so far as to say, if they reject you, shake it off and move on).

Despite this, I know that there is often great honor to be had in living 3rd. Though there are the depraved few who see Michael Douglas in Wall Street as their god, they still might be attracted to a free workout… unless they own gyms.

There are dozens of scriptures in the Bible that expound on the inherent wrong of living luxuriously while others live in want. To live 3rd, to me, my “faith that I’m not the center of the universe”, means that I have to decide between commodity (Starbucks, Beer, Wine, the newest cell phone, my ruck, the list is almost shamefully long…) and the aid of others.

Jesus said we’d always have the poor… Those who live in luxury will never be able to shed the responsibility of caring for them, and the result of shirking that duty is pretty well explained. Over and over…

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Wet and Wild Time

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We had seven on a wet morning at Slow Burn.  After the disclaimer, we jogged around the store front and did the typical warm-up exercises:  SSH, Imperial Walker, Windmill, Plank Stretch.

Next, we moseyed to the front of Persis Indian Grill.  It was too early to go in and enjoy some food so we partnered up for a modified Dora.  On a side note, I never tried Indian food until I traveled to India for work.  My favorite dish, Chicken Tikka…back to the workout.  Partner One did the following exercises until Partner Two returned from a short lap around the parking lot: 100 dips, 200 squats, 300 LBCs.

Next we did four round of bear crawl toe taps and hand claps. We used the parking space divider as our marker, backwards bear crawl to the center line, and performed the top taps/hand claps in cadence.

We took another lap around the store front and finished up with some combo exercises:

Merkin Bear Crawl

Side Squat Shuffle

Burpee Bear Crawl

 

Great job by all..Appreciate everyone coming on a gloomy morning!

 

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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 Hypest Hype Train Workout Ever

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Welcome to the most advertised AO in all of The Fort region. Trucker has a good thing going here and i wanted a part of it as a Q sometime. So i thought long and hard about who i wanted as my co-Q for this beatdown. Well as an expert trash talking Pax there was but only one choice that I knew I wanted! Mr. site Q himself ,Trucker the one person who can almost talk as much trash as me! HaHa

Trucker had the first part of the morning and started us off with some dynamic stretching in parking lot. We then moseyed out the road to the path beside Tega Cay Drive to the first hole green where we did 10 Squats. More mosey to the tennis court steps where we did 15 Merkins. Still more mosey all the way up to Hole number 1 tee boxes. Do 5 burps OYO. we where then instructed to run down cart path to the green and do 10 merkins and 15 squats then run back to tee box  and do 5 Burpees. Along the way the sprinklers came on and soaked a few of us. The grounds crew didn’t like us on their course so they kicked us off. Plus Trucker was on the red tee and the rest of us where on the white tees.

So we moseyed down to Tega Cay Drive again and made a right to the retaining wall for 2 rounds of 10 Step-Ups per leg and 10 Derkins. Yet some more mosey back to tennis court steps for 5 Burpees and 10 CDD. Mosey from there to the Firehouse for 5 burpees. Mosey back to parking lot for you guessed it 5 more Burpees. Trucker managed somehow for not being a runner to get us at 1.75 miles.

Next I had the real part of the workout. I thought 30 minutes of Warmup was a bit excessive but thats how all of Truckers Q’s are!

Had Pax mosey to baseball field and had them get in 3 lines planked feet to feet.

While in plank position all Pax did Mak Tar Dyes while the six bear crawled up to the front of the line and yelled for next person to proceed to front. Total distance was 100 yards. This sucked!!!

Next up I had 4 cones lined up about 30 yards apart from each other. Pax did 10 reps of 4 exercises at each cone then after all exercises done they bear crawled to the next cone. Exercises where Hand Release Merkins, Scorpion Dry Docks, Big Boi Sit Ups, and Sumo Squats.

Next round was same as above except we did Lt. Dans in between cones and the exercises where  Flutter Kicks 20 total, Wide Arm merkins, Monkey Humpers,and V-ups.

Then all pax bear crawled back to gates of field about 100 yards and did 5 burpees.

I followed my Q like i do all of them with 5 minutes of stretching which i heard more moaning and groaning then both our Q’s together.

Trucker thanks for letting me Q with you! Love you like a brother!

To all my F3 brothers y’all are like family to me. Y’all make me a better man daily mentally spiritually and physically.

Cornerstone Happy 40th Birthday! Thank you for our friendship.

Hope to see y’all on the Trails soon love each of you men.

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