Step Away from the Air Conditioner, Law Enforcement is En Route

Step Away from the Air Conditioner, Law Enforcement is En Route

Like a Phoenix rising from the ashes, the gone but not forgotten Saturday workout known as Olympus lived again, albeit only for a day at Ascent.  YHC arrived early to set up the gear that would be used and pulled around the school to the basketball courts.  Upon stepping out of the car, a loud and stern voice made me jump out of my skin.  After taking a moment to compose myself and appraise the situation (looking around frantically and hoping nobody saw) YHC realized that an automated message was playing repeatedly  warning that somebody or something had wandered too close to the coils on the air conditioning unit by Rea Road and that YHC needed to (“step away from the air conditioner” because “law enforcement is en route”).  Now it was decision time, abandon the location set up somewhere else, or press on and risk the possibility of having to explain to the cops why I have a sledge hammer and some rope in my trunk.  Not hearing any sirens, YHC decided to press on.  YOLO, as the kids say.

Warmup:

20 SSH IC, 2o Imperial Walkers IC, 20 kettlebell swings, 20 mountain climbers IC, 20 kettlebell swings, 20 LBC IC, 20 kettlebell swings, 10 merkins IC, 20 kettlebell swings, 20 Freddie Mercury IC, 20 kettlebell swings.

The Perfect Pair:

Kettlebell swings and merkins: rounds of 25, 20, 15, 10, 5 of each exercise.

Olympus Portion:

Several gear stations placed around the basketball courts set the stage for a high intensity sufferfest.  The timer was a jump rope where each PAX would take turns getting to 100 reps while the others rotated through the stations.  The menu consisted of slam balls, sandbag thrusters, wall balls, battle rope pull ups, and kettlebell deadlifts.  After three rounds through each station we moved on to desert consisting of a merkin mashup where we did regular merkins, wide arm merkins, and diamonds in rapid fire sets of 5 reps each, 4 reps, 3 reps, 2 reps, 1 rep.  A few minutes remained which we filled with Mary and plank work.  The final exercise was to mule the gear back to YHC’s car which had been moved to the regular launch lot.

NMM:

It was good to lead a gear workout again.  Olympus used to be my favorite workout of the week.  My first or second week in F3 I gave the workout described as kettlebells and gear on the old website and was way out in Matthews a try.  My first time there we smacked huge truck tires with sledgehammers, cleaned barbells, dragged sleds, and did other awesome stuff.  As I became a regular there I got to pull pickup trucks with a harness, flip tires, experiment with homemade squat racks and yokes, and have a blast while not having to do much running.  Maybe one day we’ll get a regular gear workout back in the region.  It will take a group effort I believe though, since loading and unloading all the equipment gets old fast, especially on cold and rainy mornings.  Thanks to the good people of Ascent for the invitation to bring my trunk full of nonsense out to play for a day.