Tag: On The Rocks

DPQ – New F3 Acronym (Don’t Poke the Q) Rad Brad’s Fault

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Rad decided it was a good idea the night before to start ragging on my Monday Q and that pre-runs should be required in order to get a decent workout.  Well, didn’t really need that motivation, but it definitely pushed me to add more weight to the flat bed relays.

Warm-up (or lack thereof):  2 songs played – one drove merkin count, one drove squat count
– The Police – Roxanne:  every time you hear Roxanne, drop it down to 6 inch hold, next Roxanne push up.  Do it for the whole song w/ plenty of instrumentals played at the 6 inch hold
– AC/DC – Thunderstruck (sorry DaVinci):  same as above, only squat and hold down on the word “Thunder” and then when you hear it again, come up but then immediately do calf raises until the next “Thunder”

  • Next up – flat bed relays.  Prior to the workout, Olaf, Lutefisk and myself hit Home Depot looking for some flat bed carts.  After being questioned by the manager on duty for some “shady-ness”, we convinced her it was cool and that we’d return all Home Depot assets post workout.
    We then proceeded to load up each flat bed w/ the following:  2 cinder blocks, an engine, a car battery, and about 3 bags of metal pellets (each weighing approx 15-30 lbs).   2 teams (one for each flat bed cart) – while one pax from each team pushed the cart the full length of the Home Depot parking lot and then back, the rest of the pax did as many they could of the following exercises (each exercise was done 3x, ie. 3 seperate team member flat bed pushes) – carolina dry docks, jump lunges, toe touches
  • 2nd station – wall sits between Target and Home Depot.  All pax held a wall sit until all of the following was complete:  each pax sprints to the opposite wall one by one, does 5 burpees and sprints back (then the next guy can go), each pax sprints to the opposite wall one by one, does 5 vertical jumps (touch the highest brick you can on the wall) and sprints back.  We then finished her off w/ single leg wall sits for 20 sec holds each.
  • 3rd station – moseyed on over to the fountain and did some new wave tabata (thx for the inspiration On the Rocks).  No timer w/ this tabata – our “timer” was 2 pax at a time doing suicides.  While they did suicides, the rest of us did the following exercises max rep – single arm row planks, diamond merkins, crab cakes, knee to elbow merkins.
  • Finished it off w/ all you got 50 yd sprints in front of Best Buy x 3 w/ a jailbreak to COT.

Thanks for allowing me to lead DaVinci.  Had a blast.  Left the pax w/ some words around making more time for what’s important.  I’ve been struggling w/ putting in way too many hours at the office, and have sacrificed time w/ my kids, wife and in the word.  I recently got my hands on a leadership book from a guy at work (Leading…for God’s Sake) and one of the passages states “If you are too busy for God, maybe you are busier than he intended you to be”.  Make the time.

ChaChing

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Board of Pain Tabata style

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As the Pax started to gather around this morning I gave a heads up that they needed to get loosened up because there wouldn’t be a warm-up this morning.  Some heeded my warning and some didn’t.  When it hit 5:14 I began to give the normal speech and tell the group we were about to take on the Board of Pain.  However there was one catch to it.  We would work our way through the Board of Pain, but we weren’t going to be counting.  We would do 7 rounds of Tabata each exercise.

For those who don’t know what Tabata is it is where you do a set of exercises for a predetermined amount of time by exercising for 20 sec and then take 10 sec off and keep rotating through.  For us we rotated exercises after 7 rounds of 20/10.  Needless to say I didn’t get to 100 burpees, but I was fine with that.

During the workout I failed as a Q because I had promised music and when I attempted to play the music the speaker wasn’t working.  I believe it had to do with the 150% humidity that morning, but its still a failure on my part.  Luckily fellow pax Change Order and Lutefisk saved me by performing for us several songs including Ice Ice Baby timed perfectly during one of our 10 second counts.

The Thang:

Burpees
Calf Raises
Ski Abs
Merkins
Squats
LBCs
CDC
Am Hammer
Mac Tar Jai

100 Maracain Night Club because I didn’t want to have to Jump Squats for the last 2 minutes

This workout was one of those workouts where you get all 3 Fs during the 45 minutes which was awesome to be apart of.

It was an honor to lead!  Thanks for the opportunity

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Oshi Shinobu

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What a great morning for a workout with 14 men at The Swamp.  We quickly split off as Ruckers, Runners and Bootcampers.  A short mosey led us to our 1st stop for the warmup:  15 SSH, 3-burpees, 10 Windmills, 3-burpees, 10 Moroccan Night Clubs, 3-burpees, 15 SSH, 3-burpees.

Good and warm we mosey’d to backside of Jush Fresh to the stairs.  Partner Up.  P1 Holds Plank, P2 runs stairs, Flip/Flop; P1 Flutter Kicks, P2 runs stairs, Flip/Flop; P1 Hello Dollies, P2 run stairs, Flip/Flop and finally P1 Wall Sits,  P2 runs stairs, Flip Flop.

Short stroll to the Fountain w/a round-a-bout version of 4-corners.  Working in Decending order w/4-stations;  8, 6, 4 and 2 reps at ea.  Starting at Fountain, Incline/Decline Merkins, run to top of lot, Squats, run around to fountain, step-ups (ea leg), run to bottom of lot, burpees and back to fountain.  Rinse and repeat to next descending count.

I wanted to do something a little different with the PAX this am and introduce a little Jiu Jitsu warmup so we mosey’d over by the Q’s truck and pick up some Martial Arts belts.  Partner up, P1 places belt around himself and sprints while P2 offers resistance by holding him back across the lane.  Rinse&Repeat x 2.  From there we demonstrated what each warmup is for and how to execute it in BJJ with:  seated shrimping, breakdance, alligator crawl, gorilla walks, leg drag drills and finished w/another bout of the belt resistance drills w/new partners and ab-work.

COT

Always a struggle getting moving in the am and putting our bodies through the workouts but love the results and who I get to do it with.  In Jiu Jitsu we always finish w/a bow and handshake to one other with the statement of “OSS!” also known as “ossu”, means Oshi Shinobu, which conveys the idea of “persevering when pushed”. In other words, never give up, have determination, grit and withstand the most arduous of training.

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Tower of Babel

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IMG_0271

Pantheon (Tega Cay Elementary)

Disclaimer: As I’m not a professional, no one even bothered to pay me for the free beat down this morning

Warm-a-rama I: Short mosey around the big loop, including high knees, butt kickers, side shuffles, toy soldiers

Warm-a-rama II: To ball field for some SSH, Merkin, Moroccan Night Clubs, Imperial Walkers, Hillbilly Walkers

Thang I: Indian Run: Last man drops, does 5 burpees, sprints to front of the line

Thang II: Line up on baseline, first guy runs a suicide while the rest do exercises listed below, then the suicider does a 10-count (Sputnik with the Russian 10-count and Straight Up with the Spanish 10-count, hence “Tower of Babel”)

  • 10 sets Jump Squats, 6 sets alternating one-foot Calf Raises, 4 sets Burpees, 5 sets Carolina Dry Docks, 5 sets Mountain Climbers

Thang III: People chairs for 10-counts from 10 PAX, balls-to-the-wall for 10-counts from 10 PAX (note: someone called out no hands balls-to-the-wall to no avail BUT Crash called out one-handed and did it, both hands – impressive)

Mary: we had 2 minutes for abs: protractor angles were quite specific this morning (27 degrees???)

COT: 10 PAX posted this morning, including Jedi in his first week, prayers for family health, travel, and for PAX to be a light in a dark world.

Skin: Nothing like your very own personal sweat splatter puddle along the court baseline. Smells like… victory.

 

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Week 1 of Q School at #F3BlockParty

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23 strong for Q101

Disclaimer and official notes listed below:

See you next week

Q101 – First Time Q

PURPOSE

The purpose of this document is to assist the new Q in preparing for and leading his first workout,

 

PHILOSOPHY

Q – Pax Relationship:  The unspoken social contract between the Pax and a Q:  “We will follow until you give us a reason not to”.  The Pax are very forgiving toward a new Q.  Most have been through it and understand the anxiety.

 

PREPARATION

Considerations for the first few Qs:

 

  1. Launch a quick grenade over twitter, let local Pax know that this is your VQ, most F3 vets enjoy being part of a VQ Pax.  
  2. Simplicity/Complexity and Originality
    1. Keep the Weinke simple. The fewer moving parts the better.  Many first-time Q Weinke’s are too complicated.

Keep it familiar.  New exercises or sets that require more than the briefest of explanations usually lead to confusion.

    1. Don’t be shy about stealing a Weinke, or parts of a Weinke, from another more-experienced Q.

 

  1. Go with strengths: “Don’t Q it if you can’t do it.”

 

  1. Cadence Counting – PRACTICE THIS, OUT LOUD, BEFORE FIRST Q
      1. Next exercise is [brief pause], the merkin.  
  • The Pax then repeats the exercise called.
  • Speak loudly so all Pax can hear.  You are in charge.
      1. Start(ing) position [brief pause], Move.  
  • Not “exercise” position.  Start position.  
  • The “Move” is to get the Pax to the position required to begin exercise. The “Move” is not a command to begin exercising.
      1. In cadence [brief pause], Exercise.  
  • In cadence simply means the Q counts the movements (1-2-3) and the Pax calls out the repetitions in unison (“One!”).
  • The Q counts should correspond to a distinct movement in the exercise. It is in rhythm. For example, for a merkin: “1” is the movement to the down position, “2” is the movement to the plank position, “3” is the movement back to the down position, the Pax call of “One!” is the move back to plank position.
  • The Q indicates the completion of an exercise by a higher inflection on his last repetition.

See Dredd’s excellent tutorial on the how and why of cadence counting:  http://f3nation.com/2012/02/22/f3-tv-how-to-count/

NOTE: When a Q does not lead an exercise in cadence that would normally be done that way, he is giving away his authority to lead the Pax.  He is implicitly telling the Pax that he not able to count in cadence or is not willing to learn.

 

  1. Weinke review with Site Q or experienced Q. Not required, but a good idea for a vet to check for potential issues.

 

  1. Too long, too short: It takes a few times go get a good feel for how long your Weinke will take to execute.  Be flexible if running too long and have a couple of stand-by ideas in mind in case you run long. Think through transitions from one set to another. Minimize dead time, standing around.

 

  1. Tap a vet – if you need time to get unsmoked or burned through Weinke in 30 minutes, there’s no shame in asking a vet to lead Mary or the next section of the workout.

 

EXECUTION

  1. FNG inquiry and Disclaimer – every workout should start with an FNG Inquiry and Disclaimer
    1. Disclaimer:  
      1. Why: We want to disclaimer in front of Pax because having witnesses adds a layer of protection above asking if they’ve read it on the website.
      2. What: Main points in your own words:
        1. I am not a professional
        2. This is self-policing: Stop or modify the exercises as required

 

  1. Take control—be the leader.  Be assertive, don’t mumble. If something doesn’t work and you have to audible, acknowledge it and move on to the next exercise. Don’t apologize, just move on.

 

  1. Observation – Do your best to keep an eye on the pax during the workout to see if you are losing people, either from it being too easy, too confusing, or too hard.  During your first few Qs, it is hard enough just to make it through the workout.  Ask your Site Q or another experienced Q to keep an eye on things and whisper in your ear if needed.

 

FOLLOW UP

  1. Twitter counts – check with Site Q on whether he or the Q will tweet the count.  Remember to use workout tag (i.e., #TheArmoryF3 also include @F3TheFort ) and the #F3Counts tag.

 

  1. Backblast –
    1. Part of the workout Qs responsibility to post the Backblast, not the Site Q.  The Site Q may volunteer to post the Qs first workout on his behalf but that is at his discretion .
    2. Get backblast credentials BEFORE first Q so that you are prepared to write up BB when it’s done.  The website interface is not difficult and will take only a few minutes to learn.  Here again, your Site Q will be an invaluable aid in assisting you to post your first BB.
    3. Get login credentials from The Fort’s Comz Q wordpress@f3thefort.com

 

  1. Post Mortem – follow up with your Site Q about what went right, what could be improved, what was a disaster, etc.  Seek out honest feedback from other veteran Q and Pax.  The best way to improve is to address your weaknesses head on.
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