The Hive- a little of everything

Welcome and quick look around no FNGs- Quick disclaimer- 12 got out
Grab your bells and lets roll for a mosey to an area of the parking lot with a little more light.
Circle up for a 5-10 min of stretching/ Broga
Mosey up entrance hill to get blood pumping.
Exercise 1- Kettlebell swings (1 or 2 arm depending on weight of Bell)
12-10-8-6-12 do 10 big boy sit up in-between sets.
mosey to bottom of hill and back.
Exercise 2-snatch to overhead press.
12-10-8-6-12 Alternating flutter kicks in between sets
mosey
Exercise 3- Goblet squats (you know the reps now)
Rosalita in-between, mosey
Exercise 4- alternating curls- American hammers-
Mosey to COT- Hold plank until 6.

announcements-
prayers and praises- fellow Pax with injuries and health concerns, marriages, Airborne son being deployed, safety and well being of our country.
Appreciate U-Haul inviting me to Q.

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Round 2 at Laces In

Lack of creativity? Potentially. Simple yet effective? Undoubtedly. That could be how I describe several stages of my life.

Yesterday at the JOC, we did round 1 of the Deck of Cards. Whenever you have a round 1, you have to have a round 2. Taking yesterday’s learnings on clock management, I modified the warm-up, flapped the gums a little less and up’d the tempo. That would ensure we get through the deck this time.

We had a total of 20 at Laces, with 2 of those being Road Runners. The other 17 joined me as we circled up.

River Rat got to hear this twice but I shared what Billy Bob said on the Roundtable podcast recently about modifications. You can always modify as needed BUT do not use that as an excuse to not push yourself. It’s appropriate in so many areas of life and it was appropriate for the PAX & I this morning.

So, we jogged over to the start line for our abbreviated warm up consisting of (2) 50yd runs at 50% pace and 75% pace. We followed that up with windmills in cadence and butt kickers in place, also in cadence. And that was it for our warm up.

For the 1st-timers, the deck goes like this, your rep count is the number on the card, 2-10 are obvious, Jacks=11, Queens=12, Kings=13, Aces=14. Suits represent the following exercises:

Hearts: 8ct Burpee (It’s a burpee with a plank jack & the push up)
Diamonds: 4ct Mountain Climbers
Clubs: Jump Squats
Spades: Diamond Merkins
Jokers: (25) 4ct Flutters

In total, we did:
(104) 8ct Burpees
(104) 4ct Mountain Climbers
(104) Jump Squats
(104) Diamond Merkins
We had 3 Jokers in the deck so that is (75) Flutters, of the 4ct variety

We finished the deck at 0551 so we had 9mins left on the clock which was filled with:
(30) Flutters
(12) Hand-Release Merkins
(15) American Hammers

4 more 50yd runs at 50%, 75%, 100%, 75%

Moseyed back to COT for:
Heels to Heavens
Freddy Mercury

COT today was pretty powerful for me. We had men that brought some real stuff today that they are walking through life with. As we say, you are not meant to carry this on your own; that would crumble any man. You have been called and designed to lead but the best leaders have a group they work with. In F3, we call that group a Shield Lock.
Remember, sometimes you need to modify the game plan. However, DO NOT use that modification as an excuse to not give it your all.

It’s been my honor.
Maximus

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Hills and More Hills

Nine men showed up this chilly morning to get better.  It was nice to see Walker venture up from Rock Hill to show us how things are done.  After the disclaimer, Senator Tressell kicked us off.

Mosey out of the parking lot, take the path to the back of the park, down the big hill, hang a left and go up to the cul-de-sac on Mariner’s Court for COP. All in cadence:

SSH x 30, Merkin x 10, Squat x 20, IW x 20, Freddie Mercury x 20, Carolina Dry Dock x 20, Mountain Climber x 25, Jumping lunge x 15, Moroccan Night Club x 40 and begin walking toward the bottom of the hill.

Mosey back up the hill to the pull-up bars along the path park. Split into 4 groups:

Group 1: 5 burpee pull-ups
Group 2: Big Boy Sit-ups
Group 3: Merkins
Group 4: Step-ups

Rinse/repeat until time runs out

Hand off to Fish Sticks

Mosey to the bottom of short hill, backwards run up the hill to the top.  Back down to the bottom, lunge walk up to the top and back down to the bottom.

Ran down the side street and up the hill to the corner.  One set of dips (15) on the landscape timbers.

Mosey back to the park for some boulder exercises:  Overhead press (15) and curls (15).

Ran to the baseball field, split up into two groups.  The first group ran to the outfield fence, jumped over the fence, and did 5 bomb jacks (no jump over the fence, 15 bomb jacks). The second group planked until the first group returned.

Round two:  5 burpees at the top of the hill (no jump over the fence, 20 burpees).  Olaf chose to take the 20 burpees option (great example of choosing to do difficult things to make you better).

Round three:  bomb jack option.

Mosey back to the basketball court for six minutes of Mary.

COT

Prays for all who are battling cancer along with their families supporting them.

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Trifecta Tuesday

On Tuesday the 7th, 15 #HIM descended upon Golden Corral to continue making 2020 a year of acceleration.  10 PAX started early as YHC encountered Dark Helmet leading a group around the grounds.  Fortunately, they did not mess up the sidewalk chalk – that came in handy later to give PAX some not so subtle reminders about what to do…..many times.

After the 10 extra credit (BTP) PAX joined for the boot camp or ruck, here’s what the boot campers did:

Mosey to COP – 12 low slow squats (D/C), hold the people’s chair after the 12th squat while doing 12 double count Moroccan night clubs, Imperial Walkers X 12 (D/C), Hillbilly Walkers X 12 (D/C).  Mosey some more……COP (continued), 15 SSH’s (D/C), 10 Windmills (D/C), 15 Merkins (D/C), 15 Mountain Climbers (D/C), 10 Plank jacks, then mosey to the main event.

The sidewalk chalk served as the guide, the date was 1-7-20 – those numbers add up to 28.  Every sequence was an exercise followed by a bear crawl a set distance (25-ish yards) (no one went as fast as Tesh would have), another exercise, a mosey back to the start line and repeat.  The exercises of the day were……squats and merkins – always adding up to 28.

26 squats, bear crawl, 2 merkins, mosey back

24 squats, bear crawl, 4 merkins, mosey back

22,6  20,8  18,10 16,12 14,14 12,16 10,18 8,20 6,22 4,24 2,26

The squats got less, the merkins more and all PAX got better,

Over 2700 merkins and over 2700 squats were done in total.  YHC heard about it later.

After one fast and one not so fast 10 count, we moseyed around the building to do, of course, 7’s – it was January 7 after all.

The exercises were Kracken burpees and Carolina Dry Docks – 6 KB’s a 15-ish yard lunge walk, 1 CDD and a mosey back to the wall, 5 KB’s, lunge walk, 2 CDD’s and a mosey back 4, lunge walk 3, 3 lung walk 4, 2 lunge walk 5, 1 lunge walk 6.

After Pusher proclaimed how terrible all this was (YHC thought Carolina Dry Docks would make him feel better), we had just enough time to get to COT for 2 minutes of Mary before the Ruckers saved us from going past the 0600 bell.

Slow Flutter kicks (D/C) x 15

Protractor at varying angles, finishing at 0 degrees and 0600 for COT.

Announcements:

1-29 Grapevine fundraiser for Classroom Ready – Celebrity bar tenders.  Who will be there? (#showtoknow)

Let Me Run seeking coaches for teams in schools in both Fort Mill and Rock Hill – reach out to Cyclops or Double D with interest and/or questions.

Word of the Year – Focus on it and live it out.  Use your shield locks to hold you accountable. Together, we all get better than we ever would alone.

Praises and Prayers – Lutefisk’s Father-in-law, Cyclops’s Dad, Tinsel’s brother, Duck Dynasty and his niece and for continuing to be a hope and light to others in a world that is often darker than we like.

Just prior to COT, YHC shared the 3 elements of a high impact relationship – 1) it meets you where you are  2) it provides safety to allow you to grow and 3) it teaches you about yourself.

Thanks to F3 and the high impact relationships it provides its PAX.  We have the privilege and honor to be sharpened and honed by many high impact men within our community when in one another’s presence – through all 3 F’s – what a gift it is.

As we all seek to make 2020 a year of acceleration, YHC is grateful for 2 things today:  1) To Lutefisk for the opportunity to Q – it’s always an honor and 2) To the brothers of F3 for being a reason YHC chooses the harder thing far more often than I used to.

Stay after it.  Keep going.  Kamwe Kuacha (Never Stop).

Honored.

Cyclops

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Halloween Kettlebells at the Hive

So admittedly this just a tad late but I’m thankful I have both written and video evidence to reference for my first Kettlebell Q at the Hive.

As I recall It was a relatively cool and damp morning for the day after Halloween but 9 sturdy and resilient PAX plus  one FNG braved their (candy) hangovers to partake in an iron pax inspired beat down courtesy of YHC.

A “professional” disclaimer was provided and we took a quick mosey around the parking lot.  Once we completed a lap we circled up and began a quick warm up.

IW x 20
HW x 20
MC x 15
MNCx 20

After the warmup we grabbed our bells and moseyed over to a portion of the parking lot where I had chalked out the next 30 minutes of pain.

The Thang

The bulk of the workout was divided into 3 sets where the Pax would have 10 minutes to get through each set as many times as possible. Each of these sets were inspired by weeks 2-4 of the Ironpax challenge.

Set 1

10 Merkins (5 each side w/bell)
15 Thrusters
20 Curls (10 each side)
25 Goblet Squats
Once through those exercises you would then complete 1 lap around the parking lot.

After 10 minutes were up we moved right into the next stage of pain.

Set 2

10 Lawnmowers (5 each side)
15 Burpee Jumps (Burpee then jump over the bell and do another burpee)
20 Tricep Extensions
25 Chest Presses
30 Flutters with Bell raised
Followed by another Lap

10 more minutes flew by and we didn’t waste anytime moving onto Set 3

Set 3

This set was pick your poison. Meaning that you needed to do the number of reps cumulatively but you got to pick the method of your pain.

50 Merkins OR Squats
Followed by carrying your bell to a predetermined distance and back.
50 Thrusts OR Lunges
Followed by the same bell carrying lap
75 Curls/Extensions/Flutters
Followed by the same bell carrying lap

After the third set was complete we did a 10 count and then finished with thrusts, squats, and….. I think burpees because we had 30 seconds left.

Back at COT we had the privilege of naming a new FNG who happened to be from Chicago. I suggested Windy City but after that was dubbed as “too nice” we settled on Wrigley (he’s a White Sox Fan)

All told it was a great way to work off the 100 Twix I had the night before. Great work by all who showed. Also, big thanks to Bandcamp for the opportunity!!

 

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Exicon of Catan

YHC snagged a second substi-Q this week at the Pantheon, which make’s a fella feel good.

I loved bringing the stupid fun Kettlebells of Catan to the Armory two days ago, that I decided to bring it to a bootcamp.  The hardest part was coming up with the name, which only occurred to me as I was tweet-toring the count and uploading the video this morning.

5 PAX braved the tiny droplets of rain this morning to get better.  Started with the disclaimer and some introductions to PAX that were new to YHC.

The warmup

Then the half mile mosey around the school, with a stop for SSH, “Lego” pickers, merkins, Moroccan night clubs, and mountain climbers.  Finished our mosey at the first light under the awning were there was a small box with two dice, pens, and paper.

The Thang

Today’s workout list

We all started with the same roll, which came up 7. The PAX were to finish the set, run down and around to the sign (by the end of the fence) and do 5 big boy situps, run back, and roll again.

What happened was that if the PAX arrived back at the start simultaneously, they’d just do the same exercise, which was awesome because shared pain is half the pain.  This went on for roughly 35 minutes. YHC was pleased to hear a lot of panting, encouragement, and mumblechatter.

With five minutes left everyone gathered at the starting point and YHC “rolled a mental two”.  Everyone did 15 burpees, ran to the end for 10 BBSU and back to the start, whence the clock hit 0600.

A few seconds later we were in COT. Moonshine had to roll.

Announcements involved the likely Thanksgiving day convergence and reading of the newsletter. Bear Grylls also reminded the PAX to try to sign up for Watch D.O.G.S. at Tega Cay Elem if you can (on a personal note, this is how one might go from PAX to HIM).

Praises were offered and the PAX dispersed.

It was a most excellent morning to be outside.  Here are the results as promised:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/5sUFWkGo9NxyxDXU7
https://photos.app.goo.gl/eFrBHKmMSaLBg4gr9

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Swamp Pain

17 HIM pushed through a nasty beatdown by YHC today at the Swamp.  YHC got to the AO about 15 mins early to check out the Broga dudes… no wait it was to prep the winkie.  Anyway, I ran the hidden greenway trail behind best buy to home depot (not target) and wrote 5 pain stations.  3 for the starting line and 2 halfway through the loop.

Started on time (barely) with a windmill warmup and that was it.   Mosey to the start.  The trail is about 0.65 miles with the loop back around a half mile.  We did it twice with the 5 plank position pain stations (ending with 25 burpees of course). Moseyed to COT area for COP burpees or flying squirrels, diamond merkins or merkins (all dependent upon how far you got on the loop). Hold  Did right arm and leg and left arm and leg for a while and ended with worst merkin ever x 5.  Recover for some painful Moroccan night clubs.  Next hold Al Gore and went around the circle naming some positive things going on in each PAX life.  Way to lift each other up!

Lastly we did some random parking lot drills in time for COT.  In COT we had a couple of guys get out of their shells and open up.  What a great thing!  Shield Lock!!!

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Hurpee Outbreak at the Quagmire

F3 grows through “addition by division”, this is a true statement and it’s a great thing to be a part of.  The downside is you simply don’t get a chance to get out to some of your original stomping grounds as often as you would like since there are so many choices closer to your home. Long story short, it was great to be out here and lead the other 11 men that showed for the Quagmire this morning.  I love the opportunities I get that brings me to these places (hint hint).

I’ve been working through the Exicon for most of my Q’s lately, it has been a nice change of pace to experience some of the craziness that our PAX have come up with across the nation.  So for better or worse, I give it a shot and see how it goes.  Today was the letter “H”.

We started with a mosey around the back of Best Buy which I guess isn’t normal because I heard some grumblings, but we did some shuffles and toy soldiers along the way and then quickly circled up for a round of Windmills in cadence.

1st routine was a timed “HIIT” exercise.  We only had what ever time we had left after we finished the below exercises to recover.

  • 5 “Hurpees” (Hand-Release Burpee)
  • 10 Hillbilly Squats (IC)
  • 15 Hello Dolly’s (IC)
  • 1 Minute timed x 6 Rounds

We then mosey’d to the parking lot behind the fountain (near the stairs).

2nd routine, which admittedly took longer than I wanted, was “Hindenburg Blimps”, though I ended up cutting the S off the Blimps so we did a “Hindenburg Blimp”.

Hindenburg Blimps are like 4 corners combined with Blimps so I took the parking lot islands and divided them up into 4 corners and we would run/sprint the long sides and bear crawl around the short sides of the islands.

  • Round 1 – 10 Bombjacks x4
  • Round 2 – 20 Lunges x4
  • Round 3 – 30 Incline Merkins x4
  • Round 4 – 40 Monkey Humpers x4
  • Round 5 – 50 Plank Jacks x4

3rd routine, we stayed in the same area and did some “Heartbreak Dora’s”.  Normally we would do this on a hill, but I thought the stairs would substitute nicely.  So we partnered up and did the following while the other PAX would run a normal lap around the parking lot islands and then up and down the stairs before tagging his partner and swapping.

  • 100 Hurpees
  • 200 Big Boy Sit-ups
  • 300 Squats

Nobody was able to get through the final routine, but that was more on me for having too much planned. I think about half of us were working on Squats by the time we finished up and mosey’d back to CoT.

CoT

  • Nessie on 10/26!
  • Prayers for Lutefisk and his father battling cancer and Duck Dynasty’s sister who is having complications with her pregnancy.

Thanks for getting me out here Mile High!  I always enjoy it.

Until next time,

Flux

 

 

 

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OLAF’S Inchworm Suicide at TheSwamp

Disclaimer was disclaimed and a short mosey was started…. Or so the unsuspecting PAX thought.
So plan is to mosey around the whole outer prerun loop of Rivergate stopping every tenth of a mile to perform an exercise all together in cadance. Once we make it back to Best buy it’s everyman for himself for the next loop. But where does the Inchworm Suicide come in? Glad you asked. Instead of going from one cone to the next you must first go back to the previous cone before proceeding. So start at Best buy and jog to stop sign going towards home depot. Free space ten count, lucky you. Go back to best buy then return past free space and to next cone at turn into homedepot garden section. 10 SSH cadance count style. Next back to cone for free space 10 count then to wall beside Target for 5 over the wall jumps. U get the idea so to save everyone some time bc reading is hard I’ll just list the remaining exercises and post a picture of the workout summary map.

10 burpees to start the party,
Free space 10 count,
10 SSH,
5 wall getovers
10 Merkins,
5 Suicide squats aka goldilocks squats,
10 Chacha merkins,
5 Regular squats,
10 CDD,
5 lunges,
One other uperbody exercise,
10 burpees to end the party.

Warm hugs as promised to all surviving PAX at COT.

Over 4 miles logged by most, suspect the front runners got closer to 4.5miles. Great work gents and thank you to @ChaChing for the opportunity to lead. Until next time
Stay frosty my friends!
Olaf

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Hill Street Blues

YHC was tagged as the Q for one of the baddest Saturday AO south of MacDougal where a downpainment is expected and typically is given. Smuggler (Site Q) tagged me with a partner but things went awry with that HIM so I tagged Double D to join me and a plan was made.

Late Friday, DD got the opportunity to choose a #Concentrica based choice. We face these all of the time. It usually goes something like this “Well honey, I already promised (insert male friends name here) that I would be there for (insert something relatively important although not really here).” However, Double D is an accelerating HIM who contacted me and said “I’ve got a bigger name on the other side of this choice!” It was the right call and YHC is confident it paid dividends with his M and 2.0.

Interestingly enough, I received a text from Gears at exactly the same moment. Gears, a longtime Pax of the Fort, has been a leader in many different areas over the past 7 years. More importantly, we don’t get to see each other enough. Expansion created many different options at the Fort and our paths just don’t cross enough. I quickly tagged him and his response was “I have a plan, it will probably suck”. Boom!

The Thang

Weather: high 50’s. Had to choose between short vs long sleeve. Short sleeve was chosen

Disclaimer

Mosey around the park

IW x 15

Windmills x 10

Merkins x 12

Men Climbers x 20

Squats x 20

Mosey to parking lot

Dirty McDeuce (4 rounds – IC – 12 reps)

WAM

Flutters

Monkey Humpers

Full lap around the park

CDD

Big Boy sit ups

Squats

Full lap

Diamond Merkins

Hello Dolly

Lunges

Full Lap

Merkins

LBC

One legged stretch (for me basically)

Indian Run full lap

Handoff to Gears

Crazy 8s on hill (this did suck FYI)

CDDs x 8 and LBCs x 8 at the bottom

Bombjacks x 8 and Some Squat Sequence that Gears just learned x 4 at the top

Rinse and repeat for 25 minutes (I said it sucked)

Mosey home

 

Moleskin

  • Prayers for marriages
  • Fishsticks turns 50 on Thursday
  • Prayers for the Pax dealing with injury, pain and suffering
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