A nice cold front makes for good WAMRAP weather. 7 men showed this morning to prove that out.
Disclaimer – oops. With the temps all PAX got out of their cars and we got right after it.
COP – None
Thang- Up stairs to level 4, 25 donkey kicks, Down Stairs, backwards run upstairs, run down ramp to level 3, 20 Drag Flags, down ramp to level 2, 15 full extension jump squats, down ramp to level 1, 10 single merkin burpees, hold elbow plank for 30 seconds.
Repeat. Each round add one more merkin to burpees – double, triple, quadruple and then the professional level quintuple merkin burpees.
Frostbitten skin – It was cold, a little bit of ice on the deck, and all men pushed hard. Busch brought Red Card who proceeded to dust him and the rest of us so no one for Busch to talk with. Job learned the hard way that those fingerless gloves don’t provide much warmth in the winter. No slackers today, everyone pushed it and got in 5.5 rounds and burning lungs in these cold temps.
Announcements – sign up (late) for the Christmas party on 11/22. Pay Mighty Might
Apparently a certain pax missed the post that Target will pay you (yes, PAY YOU) $5 to come get a flu shot. I received a text from Carb Load yesterday afternoon saying he had come down with Flu like symptoms and needed to bow out of today’s Q (Hope you feel better Carb). With Rudy recently Substi Q’ing for triple B (bad back banjo), and the likelyhood of Banjo getting out of bed in below freezing temps unlikely, I figured it was my time to step up and take the helm.
I arrive early having planned nothing. I sat in my car by myself in a daze contemplating if anyone will show….thinking of how depressing the COT pic would be with just one person in it…..then, all of a sudden a car. Wait, its just Rudy dropping off the site flag before he bolts to Dromedary. Maybe no one will show……Wait, another car. Dough boy to save the day! Oh no….I’ve sat in my warm car contemplating if anyone will show instead of planning the wienke….ok quick….what can I do….Another car, and another, and another. 5 brave souls in all showed in this 26 degree weather. I had to make it worth there time for fighting and winning against the fart sack monster (I heard today was an especially tough battle). I also wanted to keep us warm…so with that…disclaimer and we are off.
WARM UP
Hot lap around the parking lot stopping along the way for exercises that I knew would get the blood flowing. 15 Jump Squats. 20 Toe Taps. Keep running to the cinder block pile. Grab a block and hold it over your head while you lunge walk towards my car. Seemed closer when we were running there but when you are lunge walking, all of a sudden it seemed really far. Modify half way to cars with curls.
THE THANG
Press and hold 11’s. 10 presses and 1 hold. 9 and 2. Down to 1 press and 10 hold. This burnt the shoulders up quite well.
Cinderblocks on the curb for foot release squats. The 2 inches of curb along with the 6″ of cinderblock makes for just the right height for this. you legs go slightly below parallel so you get a good burn on the up.
It was at this time that I realized the sweat we built up was starting to ice over. Time to get moving. Hot lap around the parking lot.
Back to Cinderblocks for AMRAP. 10 Curls. 10 Presses. 10 Sumo Squats. 10 Bent Over Rows. Hot lap. As may as you could do in 10 minutes. Surprisingly (to me anyways) Doughboy led the pack with Ricky Bobby quickly on his heels. Draper still recovering from Plantar Faciatis cussed me silently from the rear having to run on the still tender foot. But little did he know, I can read minds so I heard everything (Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?).
Grabbed some weights out of the car for some circuits.
Circuit 1: Curls w 27lb bar. Cinderblock squat jump. Curls with 25 lb dumbbells. Cinderblock foot release squat. Hammer Curl with 30 lb dumbbell. Double Cinderblock lunge walk for the timer (also secretly knew this was going to be a forearm burner)
Circuit 2: 27lb bar press. Cinderblock Row. 25 lb Dumbell press. Cinderblock row. 30 lb dumbell press (yikes). I think we all felt the 30 lb press. Timer was when both rowers hit 20 reps.
Getting cold. Hot lap. Cars coming in for bible study…modify to shorter lap to stay away from cars but do it twice to get same distance. (Ok ok ok, I get it Draper).
Circuit 3: Upright row with 27 lb bar. Cinderblock swings. Upright row with 25 lb dumbell. Cinderblock swings. Upright row with 35 lb keddle bell.
10 minutes left. My mind went blank. What do we do. What do I do….hmmm, I will do what any good Q does…. “Hey pax, do you have a body part you really want to work out?” Ricky Bobby “Abs” Really? Abs. Q overide. Hell no. Its 26 degrees and I don’t want to lay on the cold ground…not to mention Foundation tried his best to reenact the Alien movie on me yesterday at his Q (You know where the alien comes out of the guys stomach – at least that’s what my abs felt like during the final 3 minutes). Dough Boy “Calves”. Calves? I mean, ok…better than laying on the ground. Jack Webb ladder….presses for the 1 and curb calf raise for the 4. Finished with about 2 minutes to go.
Head towards transformer with your blocks and do your favorite exercise. Apparently the pax really love curls. I did a mix of curls and tried doing some overhead tricep presses but learned that’s not easy to do with cinderblocks. Jog back to car just in time for 6:15.
MOLESKIN
Thanks to those that braved the elements and came out today. If you layer up, its really not that bad. I suggest two layers for legs, feet, and arms. A good pair of thick gloves and a toboggan. I really never got cold today….which is saying something considering we were stationary lifting cold metal weights and cinderblocks for most of the Q. Don’t be a pansy. Dress appropriately and get out to the workouts.
Thanks for Dough Boy for being the first to arrive and jog me out of my day dreaming state to actually start planning.
Chainsaw rolling in with style. We were all impressed until we heard it was his wifes car and he only had it as he was told she needed gas and it was too cold for her to get out to get it.
Cinderblocks were frozen together….that’s a first. Thanks to Dough Boy for stepping in and quickly prying them apart. I was just standing there staring at them thinking my heat vision would magically warm them up.
Until next time….Fuse Box out.
19 Pax welcomed a substitute teacher today at Watchtower and got to enjoy a single parking lot of exercises mixed with running and modifications call outs per Miss Trunchbull Recalculating.
Warm up:
Thang:
4 Corners:
While waiting for 6 create single line and burpee Indian run around perimeter back to starting area
7’s
Jane Fonda Time
Moleskin
Announcements:
The age old question came up at the beginning of the workout from none other than Sprockets. After everyone arrived on time, except OT, we headed through the campus and stopped for a little warm up.
20 x SSH
20 X IW
15 x Merkins
Continue through the parking lot out to Providence road then down Raintree Lane to the bottom of the hill. Reminds me of my old Fast Twitch days. Up and down the hill 5 times, with 5 hand release merkins at the top, and 5 squats at the bottom. Definition:
F3 | Exercises
| Find a hill. Start at bottom, run to top and complete 5xcalled exercise, run to bottom and complete 5xcalled exercise, 5 repetitions (5/5/5=Triple Nickel). Can easily be done on flat surface with launch point and target point. |
Continue back through campus and find the tennis courts. After some help. Line up abreast. Lunge walk each court, 20 LBCs, all the way down. Run back to the start. Bear crawl each court, then 10x Sister Mary Catherines. Run back to start and wait for the PAX.
Now head to the top of the stadium for 3 rounds of 4 corners. 10x merkins at each corner, with the loop starting at the top of the stadium, then down and around track, and back up to the top of the stadium. Once completed we headed back to the launch point for some Can Openers and Spanish inspired Rosalitas.
Moleskin:
Great work by all, and Marge continues to lead the charge on hill workouts. I am pretty sure he is cheating. One eye and Sprockets keep trying to catch up with him, which is why he has to be cheating. Kinda like Hopper on the 4 corners. I am not sure if he modified, or just didn’t listened to instructions as he flies by a few of us doing merkins and says his way was much faster, which didn’t involve any merkins. Commish, Strawberry and Heartbreaker showed up because they either got lost, or didn’t know I was on Q. Great to see those guys. It has been too long. And so is Heartbreaker’s beard. Thanks for letting me lead and glad the rain held off.
The site Q’s of The Matrix, Base Camp and M*A*S*H decided to converge this morning to honor the service of our military men and women. We also decided we should start a little later at 7:00 and make it a one hour workout. 8 pax showed up. The first thing they saw as they pulled in were several shovel flags eloquently planted by Kid Rock…..thank you brother for the reminder of why we are here today!
After a quick disclaimer (honestly more of a disclaimer about Vet’s Day than anything else), we headed out. Hopper had the first 30 minutes and Thunder Road the last. Here is how it went:
Hopper Q:
Warm Up:
Jog to the front parking lot. Exercises included 11 counts of IW, LSS and MC’s (11 counts were aplenty today to signify Armistice Day!).
The Thang:
Jog to the corner of Strawberry and Rosecliff, but along the way, 11 merkins at each speed bump. Once we got to Rosecliff we plannked a little, then triple nickel on the hill. Jump squats at the bottom, CDDs at the top. Kid Rock and Geraldo were killing it! Plank some after, then head back toward SCMS.
We stopped on the way at Fairway Downs and partnered up. Partner 1 runs up the hill to the cul-de-sac while Partner 2 does stated exercise. Flapjack upon Partner 1’s return. Exercises included: Freddy Mercury, Heels to Heaven, Flutter. Mosey on back to SCMS for round 2.
Thunder Road Q:
Run to the track at South Charlotte for 4 corners. We did three laps with 10 reps at each corner of: Merkins, Heels to Heaven, Low Slow Squats. Again, Kid Rock and Geraldo were setting the bar high with stellar performances. Kid Rock, in Veteran Day style, honored the “no man left behind” mantra and made sure the six was supported.
Run to the main parking lot/launch site. Partner up for Push/Pull. Two rounds for the length of the parking lot, alternating positions half way.
Jog to the rock pile at the steps near the restrooms. Partner up again. Partner 1 runs the loop and down to the baseball bleachers for 10 dips while Partner 2 does curls, O/H presses and tricep extensions with a rock. Flapjack and run three rounds.
Back to the launch site for some final mary with 11 counts.
That’s a wrap!
Moleskin:
It was a fairly quiet pax today, but I chalk that up to the spirit of the day. There is no greater sacrifice and show of selflessness than duty to our country. Our men and women forfeit so very much for our freedom and I am sure that significance was in each of our heads this morning.
Thanks to all who showed up and thanks again to our brave troops, both past and present!
Announcements:
Holiday party may have been cancelled due to lack of sign ups. More info to come.
Kid Rock announced that today a running carriage will be donated to a veteran at the Hickory Tavern at the Metro building in Midtown as part of a charity he and other Waxhaw F3ers work with (apologize I did not record the name of the organization KR). Very noble!
Thanks Thunder Road for the great prayer!
We’ll launch at 0515 from the NEW Ballantyne Corporate Park parking area across from Duckworths and in front of the OrthoCarolina Urgent Care Ballantyne. We’ll be running on familiar roads that have bike lanes and sidewalks, but there are cars and other hazards so you should wear reflective/visibility gear and have a headlamp or flashlight.
We’re going to shift down in the Length of the Interval this week, but we’re also decreasing the rest to hopefully bring new levels of Fitness. These intervals will still be run at “MP-10”. This means at your goal marathon pace, minus 10 seconds per mile. If your goal marathon pace is 8:00/mile then your goal pace for this workout would be 7:50 per mile.
Don’t have a goal marathon pace? Well then use this Race Calculator (click for link). Enter a recent race effort (Distance, Finishing Time), click Calculate, go to the Equivalent tab and look at Pace/Mi on the row for Marathon.
More on Marathon Pace minus 10 (“MP-10”). If you’ve been a Swift regular and recall Threshold Pace (aka T-pace, aka Comfortably Hard, aka Lactate Threshold), MP-10 ends up being slower than Threshold and somewhere near half the difference to Marathon goal pace.
Here are some other thoughts about the target effort for this MP-10 Strength workout, “So, usually through a combination of running too fast and not maximizing the recovery jog, they get to the 3rd or 4th one and realize they’ve dug a hole they can’t get out of. Remember, speed work usually brings acute discomfort. It’s usually an eye opener from the get go. Strength workouts should sneak up on you. The same effort for the last few should feel fairly hard compared to the first one or two. That’s when you’ve done it right- think slow cooker. You are slowly building that lactic feeling. Never fully recovering from the repeat prior and letting the discomfort slowly add to each successive repeat.“
So I knew that I signed up for Q on or around Veterans Day but after doing the Vagabond on Saturday my system shut down and I didn’t want to think about moving… my plan was low mileage – but high heart rate. Between Flash and Ignition 21 showed up for some Pre-Season conditioning.
Warm up – the basics of SSH/Mountain Climbers/Merkins and Bobby Hurleys.
Station 1 – Headed to the benches in front of the middle School for 15/20/25 (this is my standard opening) Dips/Derkins/BH’s 3 sets – 15 reps of each/ 20/ 25. I found someones kryptonite – balk, balk. This is a good one to get the blood flowing. I heard some mubble chatter – time to take care of that
Station 2 – Head to the covered overhang on the side of the MS. Lunge Walk length of overhang then hot lap around to start again. We did 3 more laps: side slide right, side slide left and bear crawls.
Station 3 – Mosey to Basketball Court for 15’s, 13’s, 12’s and 11’s. Sideline to sideline for a minute. Partner up – if you don’t make the prescribed line touches = combined burpee penalty for you and your partner. We did a total of 6 sideline to sideline sprints. The with your partner under a basket – 5 merkins and 1 burpee. We in a circle hitting the 6 hoops. Not much mubble chatter – a good number of Pax did not incur penalty Burpee’s – way to go!!!!
Station 4 – Mosey to Transporter/Rudy’s Shed for 64/32/16/8/4/2/1 Apparently the methane lingers a bit at the shed or maybe there were some Pax contributing>>>> ask Glidah who politely moved away from said pax.
64 AirPress/32 Donkey Kicks/16 BH wall dunks/8 – double touch wall merkin/4 Big boy/2 Big boy/1 Big Boy.
Head back to the parking lot – mosey to first cut out – run to gravel – back pedal return. On the way back to COT – 5 Low Slow Squats at every tree. Trees on the Left – Trees on the right
Great job today by Chicken Little – as a Site Q your goal is to 1) ensure that a challenging workout is scheduled and 2) man the back of the pack and pull the six or FNG’s forward.
Turnbuckle pushed today- keep coming out brother!!!!!!
Drop Clothe continues to post in week 2. Gator Cub returning to form
Blades of Glory becoming a regular post!!!!
COT
Announcements
F3 Xmas Party this Saturday Lawson Clubhouse – Decorating Committee starts at 3PM. Burn some extra calories at Gladiator (Cuthbertson Location) this Saturday.
YHC has lived in Charlotte for 4 years. During that time blood has thinned, there has been a noticeable decrease in consumption of good italian food, and a noticeable increase in barbeque consumption. Not sure about the correlation here but YHC can say this, 40 degrees is now officially cold. That was this morning’s edition of the KB program, week 6, day 1, leg day.
You know who never skips leg day? Batman … and 6 pax.
Only 6 pax showed up this morning, maybe one of them is batman, maybe not. YHC was expecting to see a parking lot full of buff dudes pre-running, meat-running, slamming brotein shakes, and generally unable to lower their arms. Instead there were 5 reliable pax and one fat Thor (YHC will let you guess who fat Thor is). Wild theories flew across the parking lot about the missing pax including one twerking in his Ms shoes at a wedding that sparked an old football injury. #nojudgement The Wells Fargo pax must have been DR all weekend and taking advantage of the floating holiday, or they converged with MASH/Base Camp/DMZ. They were afraid of getting swole.
Thangs: You should know the program by now. plank hold x 2 for 30 seconds, hollow-body plank x 2 for 30 seconds, glute-bridge x 2 for 30 seconds. Then pyramid the squats up to 6 or 8. Pretty sure most pax went for 8. After 5 minutes of snatches, pretty sure all of these pax are secret service material by now. then back to the static holds. Endex at 0615 on the money.
Cold Moleskinny: Yeah, it was cold. Until set 3 or 4 of squats and then the blood was flowing and the top layer was shed.
Header was flexing his shoulder muscles today trying to imitate Stone Cold. Don’t worry, a few more bowls of Wheaties and you’ll get there, little one.
Chin Music protested when Purell turned off the Taylor Swift. As usual, he and Header were paired up. Maybe this is our Batman and Robin?
Piggly brought the smorgasbord of iron today and made friendly with Chin Music and Header. Someone finally broke up the dynamic duo.
Stone Cold has been keeping his bells in his freezer. Consuming all that high quality protein between sets has left the freezer empty. So fill it with some iron, the M will never notice. But your partner will when lifting ewith no gloves on. By contrast, Purell snuggles with his in bed. that’s how they keep that warm glow by which we can all huddle around to stay warm.
Purell had the Q, the playlist, the speaker, and the stopwatch, but not the backblast. He claims he doesn’t have Horsehead skills to pull it off. News flash: none of us have the loose screws, marbles, and small critters living in our heads that Horsehead can boast.
YHC pulled out the barbell and plates. No one was interested in partnering up. It’s all good, got 3 sets of deadlifts in and some curls-for-the-girls while waiting.
Thanks to Header for taking us out.
Announcements:
There is a holiday party, you might still be able to beg Mighty Mite into a sign-up.
Thursday is shoulder day, come out and tell Header how good his shoulders look.
A bunch of pax are running a bunch of races around town. Get out and support them.
Thank a veteran today. In fact thank a veteran everyday.
OMG, it was cold! 29 degrees, meaning it was the coldest morning of Fall 2019 to date. Nonetheless, 7 absolute, undeniable studs showed up for this week’s episode of Rock Zero. Important stat……4 dudes wore shorts. 3 dudes wore tights. I’ll be honest, I only wore shorts because I couldn’t find my tights and didn’t want to wake up my M by searching too much….we’ve all been there.
I offered an iron clad disclaimer….we would have a mix of on campus and off campus adventures today. Iron Horse told me this better be a boot camp as his right knee is nursing an injury. I respect IH because he is my elder, but mainly because I am pretty sure he could crush me…..so I quickly thought about how I could balance this workout. Keep reading.
Warm-Up:
We immediately jogged off the Calvary campus to The Carrington Swim Club parking lot. The jog helped produce some body heat, then we warmed up with:
IW, LSS, MC
The Thang:
Jog to the Windswept subdivision across from Davies Park. We did some Parker Peter and Peter Parker to help us gather our wits (Gummy did them in reverse by mistake….he went to Clemson, after all!). Partner up. Partners run to opposite cul-de-sacs and do 10 merkins OYO. Come back to launch point and do 10 derkins off of your partners’ planked back. Run to the opposite cul-de-sac, do another 10 OYO merkins, and flapjack on the decline merkins upon your return.
Jog across 51 to Davies Park. Wall work for a little while. Partner back up. Partner #1 does stated exercise while Partner #2 runs the parking lot lap. Flapjack upon return. Exercises included:
Dips, step-ups, incline merkins
Wall work again. Let’s mosey back to Calvary. Stopped on the way at Carrington for some Mary (LBC and American Hammer).
Once we got back to Calvary, we ran the North Face three times with 10 CDDs for working recovery at the top (I missed North Face).
Mosey to open area of Calvary parking lot. 4 sets of Mary (freddy mercury, heels to heaven, flutter, rosalita). Then, 10 gassers with various merkins and 10 counts in between.
Mosey back to launch for some quick LBC’s. That’s a wrap.
Moleskin:
Good times! Gummy and Geraldo led the Windswept merkin/running activity. Iron Horse said his sprinting was not impacted by his knee injury and he proved it during the gassers. He and Skipper led all of them (Gummy challenged Skipper to one of the gassers and after 10 yards yelled “OK, that’s too fast”……see title). Boerewors and Levi cranked out the Davies circuit activities like the exemplary veterans they are…..speaking of Veterans……thank at least one this weekend! There is no more significant and selfless act than defending your own country!
Geraldo and Hoover….thanks for letting me lead today! I love that AO!
Gummy, thank you for the prayer, man!
Hopper, out!
Announcements:
Sign up for the A51 F3 Holiday Party!
Convergence this Monday for Base Camp, MASH and Matrix. 7:00 at SCMS.