Palisades=Hills

The hills were alive. Rolling in from Tega Cay I was like “How hard can a stroll through Palisades be?” Turns out hard! A couple of notes from YHC before leading a running workout.

  1. Try to post a few times when you are not the Q. It helps with getting a lay of the land. And getting to know the regulars.
  2. Review some of the recent routes so as not to be repetitive and reflect an air of not caring or just “winging it”
  3. When laying out the route on mapmyrun, take a peek at the elevation changes and adjust as necessary (or not)
  4. Know where your going (this is key)

Item 2 above gave the necessary ground for some light twitter cyber-bullying of YHC (deserved). Item 3 resulted in some grumbles, mostly from YHC. And item 4 resulted in some wayward Pax (again myself included). Tclaps to Hauschka for getting me back on track.

So the 13 of us rolled out and took on Palisades. The route is posted somewhere in the Twitter-verse and should stay there. We had a good time, got the heart rate up, got lost (some of us at least), found about 4-5 different ways to get back to Palisades Park Elementary. All told the distances ranged from 4.5 – 5.5 miles. A special thank you to Jedi and Witch Hunt for the conversation rolling back into the school. If you’ve ever wondered the many uses of a credit card and/or penny, just hit Jedi up. He brings new light to the term “penny pincher”.

COT and BOM on me.

Haushcka, thanks for the opportunity as always.

Zima out!

 

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Simple Math at Quagmire

After staying up late into the night writing a much more complicated Weinke…. barely anybody showed up to the Quagmire, an AO known for getting 20+ on a regular ocassion. So needless to say, we went with option B and I was now making it up on the fly based on the basic principle of random numbers and letters dictating our workout today.

After a standard disclaimer, we moseyed around to the center rivergate fountain (called Muh Fountain for some reason?) and did a bear crawl around the traffic circle

The general idea was to ask PAX for a number and pair it with an exercise in my head. Sometimes I didn’t like the number so two numbers were asked and either added or multiplied together based on what the numbers given (ask a real street magician, they don’t know what trick they will do until you pick the card)

For example, Cha ching said 20 times Jedi’s reponse of 2 gave us 40 seconds of Al Gore which started off on a really good note.

Olaf showed up a few minutes late so he didn’t know what to expect when I asked him for a number. This gave us with 27 Gorilla Humpers IC….

No idea what the order was, but ended up doing
2 minutes AMRAP hip slappers on the benches
20 derkins
15 Carolina Dry Docks IC
11 burpees
and some random number of squats, LBCs, inchworm merkins

At some point I started asking for letters of the alphabet instead which gave us some
Derkins, Gorilla Humpers, Werkins

asked for 4 more numbers which gave us our Dora 1-2-3-4
107 flutters
27 burpees
101 LBCs
144 squats

7 PAX present meant 7 times up the stairs

Indian run back to the shovelflag for some quick MoM
Olaf led his favorite Homer to Marge to Mr Burns
10 Crunchy Frog IC
Cha Ching style Freddie Mercury
and then my standard 5 burpees to finish it off

CoT
Invergence PLEASE SIGN UP ahead of time
Convergence Sep 29 at WEP 0600
I am looking for someone to do the Pathfinder Advanced with me for accountability

Please pray for my family in Wilmington as they cannot get out of town, they stayed at my hometown church to help take care of the homeless and others who could not leave but the city as a whole was hit worse than it has been in over 40 years and are running low on resources at a city wide level and no one can get on I40 into the city so its slow going taking back roads and cutovers through smaller towns.

Couples Retreat next weekend for my church

Please take a minute in your day to pray for stronger marraiges among our PAX

Olaf’s half cousins parents died as a result of Florence, please pray for the family. He grew up with this side of his family

Please stay safe on the roads today

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Start and stop, repeat

Man it’s been too long. Cha Ching set me up with the opportunity to Q at the SWAMP and I must say, I do miss that place. But then again, I think I say that with every AO I have the opportunity to Q at. So for this one, I “solicited” a few ideas from my Ragnar team and even got to incorporate a few of them while only 2 of them graced us with their presence.

17 BC’ers and 2 Ruckers for a total of 19 was the count as we circled up to be disclaimed and get a brief unnecessary overview of what I thought would be necessary instructions. In short, this post would be about starting and stopping, that’s it. No deeper meaning, no Beyond discussion this time, just full on “get your work on and get it done.” We’ll be running between our COP’s at 2 different speeds and I’ll call it out before we take off: 1: All you’ve got and 2: As a PAX.

1: COP in THD’s parking lot: for a little warm up.

2: Lt. Dans

3: Merkins/Carolina Dry Docks

4: Kracken Burpee (Only 1 way to get better at these and when in the Lake Wylie area, these are a must).

5: Staggered Merkins & Jump Squats

6: 1 min of 6″ leg holds, 1min 45 degree crunch hold. Followed by Dips & Dry Docks again.

7: 2min Al Gore, 1 min 6″ Merkin hold and 1min Calf Raise hold. Bunny hop 30 yds and back.

8: Diamonds, Wide-Arm Merkins, Slow Sumo Squats & 1min Flutter Kicks with a press

9: 24 Dips & the fountain

COT: Prayers for Stang’s parents, Emma Holt, those in the path of Hurricane Florence. Be open to how you can help others in the wake of the storm.

Until next time…

Maximus

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Mostly Legs at the Poopdeck

4 today stayed behind for the bootcamp, others went out for a run to get some miles on their legs for the upcoming Ragnar relay.

The bootcampers put in some stretching and then went out to the marina for some laps. It was a good strong pace and we kept it up for 5 laps

I decided to throw in some sprints so we used the lightpoles as All You Got markers and pushed through a shorter length each time, all in all doing 4 sprints.

As we headed back towards the shovelflag we lunged the entire length of the shopping center and it’s unclear if Cat Lady was seen or if they were YMCA goers

Over at the field next to the flag I had set up a short cone distance of about 20 yards and we partnered up for some….
Buddy BearCrawl (thanks 9/11 GRT)
Partner Wheelbarrow
Partner Carry x2
Partner…. Standing? Idk what this is called but you lay down and are assisted in standing up by gripping with one hand only, keeping your feet planted the whole time is the key. Standing up 20 times without being able to push off the ground with your off hand is tough. So we did it 20 times for both arms.

Dora 1-2-3 is one of my favorites but instead of 100/200/300 we did a Lazy Dora of 1-2-3 sets of 25 reps. “resting” partner was to plank while waiting
1 set of 25 burpees ( I had forgotten what I wrote down first and later remembered it was LBCs because I was going to do rinse and repeat )
2 sets of 25 flutters (each leg)
3 sets of squats

Nothing fancy, kept it simple so people could push their bodies today.

Announcements
There is an invergence/convergence coming up, read your newsletter!!
Ragnar training is hitting its peak momentum, if you are interested in running up to 20 miles in October at the greenway, ask

Please pray for those in the path of the hurricane, damage will be done, its just a matter of how much and will the PAX and surrounding community be there to help.
Keep our injured brothers in prayer, we do some stupid stuff and we get physically injured but make sure to keep in contact so the Shieldlock is not lost.

Aye!

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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

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Tour of The Swamp

We started promptly at 0515 this morning. The parking lot at The Swamp is pretty dark, and since there weren’t any FNG’s, I made a partial disclaimer and we were off. Of course, it was pointed out to me that it may have been the shortest disclaimer ever…

When we got over in front of The Home Depot we attempted to make a circle so we could stretch:

SSH’s – 20

Windmills – 10

Sun Gods – 10 each direction

Plank to Downward Dog and into Honeymooner x 2

Recover for shoulder stretches – Each arm across, each arm behind the head

Mosey over to the front of Target for The Thang:

We partnered up and got started:

Partner 1 found a spot on the wall for People’s Chair while partner 2 Duck Walked to the second Big Red Ball (or the other side of the cross-walk) and ran back. Partners then switched. We did this twice.

We had a little too much mumble chatter while transitioning to the next exercise so I extended it. The group had to lung walk from the first big red ball to the last, moving towards 49 in front of Target, and had to stop and do 5 Flying Squirrels at every other ball. At the last ball the Q forgot about the Flying Squirrels, but the PAX provided a very gracious reminder.

Next, we mosey’d around to the back of the building. Partners again: Partner 1 performed the exercise while partner 2 ran to the building and back (about 50 yards each way). Partners then switched. Exercises were: Plank, Shoulder Taps, and Big Boy Sit-Ups. Seemed like so much fun the first time Q called for a Rinse and Repeat.

After two 10 counts we mosey’d over to the stairs near the fountain. Partner 1 performed Air Squats while partner 2 ran up the stairs, across the platform, down the other side and back. Partners then switched. We did this for 8 minutes.

At the end of the 8 minutes, giving us 10 minutes left, we mosey’d over to the fountain where the PAX were instructed to find a spot on a bench. Since I haven’t been able to work in upper body much lately, I threw one upper body exercise into the mix. On our bench we were to do Irkins, followed by single count step ups on our bench, with a short break in between rounds. Amount to be performed was 30, 20 and then 10.

A slow mosey brought us back to COT with two minutes left for MARY.

Announcements: Lots of announcements today, which included but was not limited to: 9/21 Invergence, Ragnar, and Bourbon Chase.

Prayers: We are praying for the PAX doing the GRT tonight. We are praying for job searches and next steps in life. We are praying for healing for injured PAX and sick family members.

Thanks Cha Ching for the opportunity to lead. Now that we have more local AO’s in relation to my house it’s been a while since I’ve made my way to The Swamp. As always, it was a blast!

  • Peg
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Colosseum 9418

What a delicious swampy suckfest at The Coliseum today.  10 (real) men were brave enough to post today including two former nantans(DD, Pusher), a former #kotter (LULU), and a former #D1(Crab Cakes). Who among us doesn’t love a dirty McDeuce?

YHC came in on 2 wheels this morning but was ready to go disclaiming that which needs to be disclaimed and off we went for a yog/mosey where we learned that McGuyver still hates me from a Sunday run where I may have underestimated the mileage.  In the back of GHMS our freshly minted black top served as our warming grounds.  Various heartpumpers: SSH, Squats, LBC, Flutters got it going.  Oddly I thought we would have a Chippendale this morning but everyone kept their shirt on. looking at you Jedi.  Making an appearance in our warmup was the always welcome 10- down burpee count sprinkled in.  got down to 7 before we changed direction to a new section of our Roman fortress.

The THANG

Dirty McDeuce- 3 exercises, 12 reps, 4 rounds.  Usually Upper, Middle, Lower but Q’s call.

  • Merkin, LBC, Squat
  • Carolina Dry Dock, Dying Cockroach, Lunge
  • Wide arm Merkins, Big Boy Situps, Jumpsquat
  • Diamond Merkin, Freddie Mercury, Apolo Oh-no

Spliced in some more burpees with 6 through 4 down.

Mosey to back parking for suicides, 5 points, 3 burpees each.

curb action with 60 seconds each of alt shoulder plank walk and steps ups.

Finish with Mary and the rest of our Burpees: 3 through 1 down

Naked Man Moleskin

Good to see Rebel this morning.  Strong, fit and at front of pack today in Dirty McD.  No question he could beat the 55th ranked tennis player unlike Federer.  Coliseum regulars JWoww, and Objection crushed as usual.  McGuyver lead from the front in his silent assassin way while LuLu  still had enough breath to explain the origin of his name.

We got in 70 burpees on the day to help our totals for the September of 1000 burpee challenge and support Double D in his efforts running in the NYC Marathon for Let Me Run.  If you finish with more than or less than 1000, pay up friends.  Lets financially support DD for this great program,

Twas a great morning.  Aye!

F3 the Fort Invergence 9/21 5:30 Rush Pavlilion!

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Octagon of Pain, same low price, but now with more jumping!

Great morning and a great crowd of 16 PAX at the Poopdeck.  I mean it was still hot and humid as hell, but that’s par for this summer.

After a quick disclaimer we took off around the lot for a mosey that included some shuffle steps, NUR, and Toy Soldiers before circling up near where the cat lady roams for some Warm-A-Rama.

  • Windmills x10 IC
  • Planks (2x 10 counts)
  • Merkins x 10 IC
  • Morroccan Nightclubs x 10 IC
  • Low, Slow Squat x 10 IC
  • Hold squat (2x 10 counts)

Short Mosey to the upper lot (deck?) at the Poopdeck, I’ve been Q-loaded the last couple of weeks and the previous 2 Q’s were brutal on the arms and shoulders so I decided to mix it up a bit this morning by giving the upper body a complete break at the expense of all leg plyo workout.  I wasn’t sure how it was going to go over, but everyone seemed pretty beaten by the end.  In any case, here is the breakdown of how it works:

  • 8 Cones setup in an Octagon in the parking lot (fairly large in diameter though I didn’t count the paces) with a 9th cone in the middle of the Octagon.
  • Each cone had a (jumping) exercise on it
  • Pair up (only for the push, none of this required a partner)
  • Pick a cone, do the exercise on the cone, and then Broad Jump to the center cone and do 8 Burpees, then Broad Jump back to one of the 7 remaining cones and continue through until all 8 are completed and a trip back to the center cone after each cone for 8 more Burpees.
  • The exercises were:
    • 100 SSH
    • 100 Jump Rope
    • 50 Jump Squats
    • 50 Jump Lunges (25 each leg)
    • 50 Lateral Jumps (25 each leg)
    • 50 Knee Tuck Jump-ups
    • 50 Squat Jacks
    • 25 Bomb Jacks
      • ~64 Burpees
      • lot of broad jumping!

Everyone made it through at least once, which was the goal. In typical Jedi fashion he made it through a couple extra.  With about 10-15 minutes left we lined up for some Indian running around the parking lot.  Lead PAX drops and does 4 Burpees and rejoins at the back of the line.  We cycled through each of the 16 PAX twice before heading back to CoT and about 2 minutes of Mary to end the workout.

  • 6th annual Invergance at Rush Pavilion 9/21 @ 5:30
  • Prayers for all the teachers and kids in school
  • Prayers for injured PAX

Thanks Peg for the opportunity to Q!

Until next time,

-Flux-

 

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Recovery Q

Almost evenly split, 6 for the bootcamp and 5 for rucking.  After a busy week of tough workouts and Qs, I did not have much time to plan for this morning’s adventure so I borrowed routines from some HIMs.

Warm-ups:

Butt Kickers

High Knees

Soccer Circles

Next, we jogged over to Just Fresh for COT.

SSH x 20

Imperial Walker x 20

Windmill x 15

Plank

  • Elbows, left arm out for Moroccan Night Club x 10
  • Back to plank
  • Honeymooner
  • Downward Dog
  • Elbows, Right arm out for Moroccan Night Club x 10
  • Back to plank
  • Honeymooner
  • Downward Dog

Next, we lined up for 7 minutes of sprints.  Each segment was 1 minute, any extra time would be used to rest between sets.

We took a break from the running and performed part of this week’s Iron Pax Challenge:

25 walking lunges

25 squats

Rinse and repeat 4x

Next, we went back to the clock for ten minutes of merkins.  Each 1 minute segment, we did 20 merkins, any extra time would be used to rest.  This exercise was tough, not much rest 5 minutes in.

We headed back to COT at a slow jog pace, passing the ruckers twice along the way.  We had time for one set of LBCs before time elapsed.

 

Announcements:

Q School – Golden Corral starting next week

The Fort Invergence – Sept 21 @1730, Rush Pavilion

Prayers:

Injured Pax

Family stresses (kids, jobs, etc)

New F3 Pax – life changing, keep coming out

Families traveling over the holiday

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Live Right through your Concentrica

My goodness it was humid again.  The day started at 74 degrees and just being outside for 1 minute you started to sweat.  It was going to be a tough morning!

17 men gathered before the 5:15 start, I was happy to meet Radar down from F3 Gastonia.  Tesla told him to come down and check us out.  Regal also brought Supafly who was posting for his 2nd workout this week while up from GA on business.

Bones allowed me the pleasure to Q at one of my favorite AOs.  Always a large and great group of guys out at the Abyss.  Today I wanted to bring more of a message to the group than usual, but this is a 1st F workout…so a beatdown came with it!

Gave the longer disclaimer (I needed the practice) and off around the parking lot we went for the warmup.  Standard running stuff, high knees, butt kickers, karaoke, toy soldiers then circled up.

COP consisted of Seal Jacks, Imperial Walkers, Moroccan Night Clubs,  Slow Squats, Merkins, Plank Jacks…all at different reps.  That seemed to drive Witch Hunt and Jedi crazy because the mumble chatter between those two wouldn’t stop.  Tough to yell at someone when you’re counting in cadence (and they know it).

Mosey to the back bus parking lot for the things I had planned.

The Thang

I really did find these on the F3 Nation exercises!

“Bo jangles Biscuit” = Use the oval track, sprint the straightaways & mosey the turns. Do this twice.

“Slowjangles Blueberry biscuit” = lunge walk around the oval and at four designated spots we stopped for 5 burpees.  One lap.  This was longer and harder than I thought!  I might have been the biggest complainer about this evolution.

The Main Event

I’ve truly enjoyed the 43 feet Podcasts and the Q source posts.  The messages are excellent, but the implementation is tough…but bringing this stuff to our PAXs attention should be something we all do as a Q in some detail.  Many of my most memorable posts are when the Q brings a solid message with the workout and I wanted to live up to that.  In my own life I know how backwards I’ve had my Concentrica lately and a good refersher for all followed.

We talked about the Acceleration of a HIM going from Get Right –> Live Right –> Lead Right –> Leave Right.  Today was a focus on the Live Right.

The discussion I shared was around intentionality, understanding the fallacy of a work-life balance being represented on a teeter-totter.  The picture is best represented as a target.  In the center is your “M” (and we properly defined M) then 2.0 (family) then Shieldlock Brothers then Friends then Mammon.  I explained each and there suggested relevance to your life.

But I had also drawn a large target representation of all this on the ground (Mr. Selfie forgot to take a picture)…so we were going to play a game! Each PAX was going to get an opportunity to throw a bean bag at the target from about 18 paces away.  (definitely not corn hole regulation distance I was told multiple times.)

Each section represented a different 10 rep exercise we would do…and DO NOT miss the target!

M = 10 count (we had ZERO hits here)

2.0s/Family = Squats in cadence

Shieldlock = Ranger Merkins

Friends = Jump Lunges

Mammon = Bombjacks

outside the circle = 10 burpees (about 5 men missed)

I thought it was fun, and we kept sweating quite a bit.   I hope the PAX enjoyed it as well.

Mosey back to COT where we had 5 minutes left of Mary.  10 counts for ab exercises picked by the PAX

Annoucements = (read your newsletter)

Prayers for Lutefisk’s mother, Tesla’s friend Meredith and her passing, Qbert and his church helping 100 children through the gospel.

A Honor to Lead!

-Royale

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