The Abyss – Pushing the Perimeter!

Put this one together fairly quickly the night before my Q while laying in bed w/ my 2.0.  Those tend to not work out so well for the Pax as it’s super easy to write down everything that is awful and hard and then ask the Pax to make it happen.  Well, that’s what I did.  It felt lazy.  It felt last minute.  It was both of those things.  And I was happy about it.

Had a solid crew of 18 boot campers – gave them the general theme of what this would be about, quick disclaimer, just enough to scare them a bit, and then we were off for a very quick warmup – something I am known for.

Warm-up:  seal jacks, merkins, plank punches, shoulder taps, superman coupled w/ Moroccan night club, slow as day windmills and we were done.

I didn’t know how long this next part would take, so I had a few extra things to do if we had time, but I was a bit uncertain from the get-go.  If you’ve been to Abyss (Palisades Elementary School), you know the front of the school is a standard school set up – a long road in w/ some turns, making its way to the parking lot, a roundabout for the drop off, etc, etc.  My goal was for us to do the outer perimeter with exercises as our mode of transportation – for the entire thing.  Starting at the loop at the front doors of the school:

– Lunge Walk (90 yards / 80ish meters) to the first turn
– Burpee Broad Jump (175 yards / 160 meters) to the next turn that then goes uphill to 49
– Crab walk up the hill (230 yards / 200 meters)
– Bear Crawl down the side walk parallel to 49 and then down the stairs (140 yards / 130 meters)
– Grand Finale:  Burpee Bounces around the loop / circle back to your starting point…you make ground by doing one burpee and as you push-up, you explode up and throw yourself forward 3 times on all fours.  Pop up, jump, that’s one burpee.  Keep it moving.

After the last of the pax finished the full loop, we had about 10 minutes, which we leveraged for partner carry work.  Thanks GRT from Friday night.  Felt inspired.  Partner up –
– Partner 1 does Spiderman Merkins while Partner 2 runs the length of the parking lot.  When they get to the end, they call for Partner 1 who starts to run to their Partner 2 (while Partner 1 is catching up, Partner 2 does Spiderman Merkins).  When they meet up, they partner carry each other the full length of the parking lot back to the starting point.  Did that 2 more times so everyone carried their partner 3 separate times.  The other exercises while one partner was running were squat touches (squat low enough to touch the ground w/ your fingers) and crunchy frogs.

2 minutes left – good old fashioned sprints.  Everyone back pedal 1/2 the length of the parking lot, all you got, and then turn and sprint the second half.  Did that 2 times and then it was time for COT.

Praises – new jobs / promising job interviews
Prayers – marriages, big flo barreling our way

Thanks to Bones for giving me the chance to lead these great men.  Big thanks to all the guys who made it out today – was awesome to bust a$$ together and get after it.

ChaChing

TClap |
8

Burpees, Bearcrawls, and Barf!

A great crowd this morning at The Abyss.  We had a bunch of runners and a bunch of bootcampers and 1 FNG.  Those that stayed for the bootcamp probably wish the would have joined the runners, I know I did.  This workout was hard and we didn’t complete it, but there is always next time…

We started with the typical mosey to get the blood flowing a bit, we circled around the parking lot and did some shuffle steps, NUR, and back to mosey before circling up for warm-a-rama around the basketball hoops.  I decided prior that the warm-up was going to set the precedence for the workout (hard) and warm-up the muscles we’d be using a lot (shoulders, core, arms).

Warm-a-Rama

  • 10 Windmills
  • Elbow plank (called on random PAX for 10 counts, at least 2 rounds)
  • Back to regular plank – 10 Merkins
  • 9 Diamond Merkins (Q-Shame, I didn’t have one more in me)
  • Recover with 25 SSH IC
  • Back to Plank – 10 Peter Parkers
  • 10 Parker Peters
  • 6″ hold – Called on Random Pax for 10 counts (at least 2 rounds)
  • 25 Moroccan Nightclubs IC

We then moseyed to the grass hill for the next exercise.

For the first routine we paired up and started at the bottom of the hill on the sidewalk.  PAX A was to do Burpees while PAX B went backwards up the hill (NUR) and forwards down the hill x4.  After 4, we switched and PAX B continued the Burpees while PAX A ran backwards up/forwards down x4.  We did this until we reached 120 Burpees… a few of the PAX finished, most were over a 100 when I called it for time (I had another routine I wanted to get to).  Our Friendly New Guy thought this was a great time to splash merlot, so he did, but he kept on trucking right after.  He definitely brought the GRIT!

Congratulations and welcome Doubtfire! No better way to start F3, it’s all uphill from here!

We then took the short mosey to the paved hill the leads up to the rear gate to the school.  For the 2nd routine I brought back Paula Abduls, I’ve never done them on a hill so I thought that would be a nice (painful) new twist.  Paula’s aren’t really an exercise, its just a movement, 2 forward, 1 back, which is a nice metaphor on life.  Life isn’t a consistent line straight up, we all have setbacks, we all get knocked down, but it is how we respond to those set backs that contribute to our success.  We all know that through failure we become better, this is a nice way to build an exercise around that idea.  I didn’t have the energy to hammer that point home during the workout so I thought I would take the opportunity to point that out here.  In any case, back to the routine…

6 Cones were placed up the hill about 25 paces (50ft. or so) apart. We would always move in this order, 2 (cones) forward, 1 back until we reached the 6th cone and then we would work our way back. If you ever plan do this keep in mind cones will be hit multiple times depending on where they are placed, so plan accordingly.  Each cone had an exercise on it:

  1. True Americans x10 (hand release merkin & a plank jack =1)
  2. Donkey Kicks x10
  3. Squats x25 (this was meant to be a break)
  4. Crab Jacks (think plank jack, but in crab position) x10
  5. Diamond Merkins x10
  6. Absolution x10 – I haven’t done these before, but they will be back.  They were awesome and it was also a bit humorous watching the PAX get the coordination down for these.  It’s an 8-count exercise that goes a little something like this:
    • Start in plank position and perform a single Groiner (cadence “1” jump feet forward, “2” jump feet back), then Mahktar N’ Diayes to Chillcut position (cadence “3” & “4” with drop to each elbow), then Chilly Jack (cadence “5” feet out, “6” feet together), and finally Mahktar N’ Diayes to plank starting position (cadence “7” and “ONE, TWO, etc.” with rise on each hand).

Oh and I almost forgot to mention… we always went forward 2 by way of the Bear Crawl and backwards 1 by way of the Crawl Bear.  Brutal.

None of us made it back down, but we did all make it to the top, so I called it with about 5 minutes to spare to head back to CoT.

With only about 2 minutes left we did a couple of Ab exercises, I called LBC’s x 25 IC and called on Bones who did another 20-25 Flutters IC until we hit 6:00AM.

Announcements, praises, prayers

Read your newsletter!

Prayers for school teachers and our children as they head back to school.  Prayers for injured PAX and those with nagging injuries.

See ya’ll Monday at the Quagmire 🙂

-Flux

 

 

 

TClap |
2

Pain Stations and Partner Beatdown on tap at Bermuda Triangle

YHC is a big fan of getting up at 4:20 for the Q at the 5:00AM launch of Bermuda Triangle.  Fresh off 3 miles of Suicides courtesy of Which Hunt at Poopdeck, I was excited to get after it, hoping for a strong turnout.  Disclaimer was delivered and the we got to business.  Here is how it went down:

Warm-o-rama:

Started with a 400 meter (more or less) modified indian run where the lead runner passes back overhead a 10lb medicine ball.  Last man sprints to the front of the line and so on until we arrived back near the flag:

  • 20 SSH IC
  • 15 Imperial Walkers IC
  • 15 Weed pullers IC
  • 10 Merkins IC
  • 15 Mountain Climbers IC

Next on to Part 1 of the workout: a 3 station beat down with pain stations spread around the 400 meter track.

Station 1:

  • 10 Jump squats
  • 10 single count curls/arm (25lb dumbells)
  • 20 Nolan Ryan’s (10/side)
  • 25 LBCs (single count) => run to station 2

Station 2:

  • 10 Lunges per leg
  • 10 WWII Sit ups
  • 10 Tricep hammers/ arm (20lb dumbells)
  • 10 Diamond merkins => run to station 3

Station 3:

  • 25 SSH
  • 20 Flutters (per leg)
  • 15 Derkins
  • 15 CDDs

Rinse and repeat once

Unfortunately for the Pax, we still had 15 minutes left, so on the Part 2: 

Partners would split reps, with one running about 100 yards while the other got cracking:

  • 100 Lunges
  • 75 Ranger Merkins
  • 75 Bobby Hurley Squats
  • 75 Carolina Dry docks
  • 75 Crab Cakes
  • 75 Werkins
  • 75 Monkey Humpers
  • 100 LBCs
  • 40 Flying Squirrels

The leaders only got as far as the Monkey humpers.  Pax were told completion at home was optional.

In Closing

We circled up to name 31 year old FNG Matt Hickey , now forever to be known as “Love Bite”.  Praises and prayers for health and healing, comfort and celebration were brought forth.  YHC closed the COT with prayer.

As always, I’m grateful to be a part of F3 Nation and fort the opportunity to Q.

-Wolverine

TClap |
3