F3 New Orleans

Category: Backblasts

  • “Pain exists in the mind.” – from America’s Best

    What is the most resilient parasite? Bacteria? A virus? An ear (ehr)worm?
    No… a free men’s workout. Resilient… highly contagious. And once an idea for a beatdown has taken hold of the brain, it’s almost impossible to eradicate.
    Months ago, the idea for this beatdown was planted into YHC’s fragile eggshell mind by Paradox.
    Now, YHC had not seen Inception in years, so a refresher was necessary.
    (Since the movie is currently available only on Canadian Netflix, YHC may have had to commit some “light violation” of Netflix’s terms of service in order to view the movie.)

    Began as usual, with Warmarama, but YHC wanted to set up the disorientation and confusion early. Only 3 SSH were done; Enron looked up from setting his Whoop, and it was over.

    The first thang:
    The entire PAX enters together into the first dream layer:
    Dream on (Aerosmith)- Hold Al Gore during music, SSH during lyrics. Burpee on “sing,” merkin on “dream”, then change to hold plank and and merkins all subsequent “sing”s and “dream”s.

    Second Thang: for the next dream layer, it’s necessary to break into smaller groups.
    So we divided into partners and performed a Musical Dora – one partner does curls during song 1, and thrusters during 2nd song. Other partner is running a lap, and doing 5 derkins on the hill.

    Deepest dream layer: Limbo, on your own.
    In the world of Inception, Limbo is an “expanse of infinite raw subconscious,” described as “unconstructed dream space.”
    And so it came to be that we would suffer the deconstructed burpees of Yankee Jeaux’s dreams (Jurpees) in unconstructed dream space. AMRAP. On your own.
    For your listening pleasure: Sweet Dreams (are made of these) and Good Old Fashioned Nightmare.
    Not sure if the entire PAX experienced the extreme time dilation YHC did here, but these two songs seemed to last about 4 hours.

    “Non, je ne regrette rien” was the song used in Inception to alert the dreamers to wake into the higher dream state.
    So when it played, we ran a lap around the civic center to “kick” back out of limbo and up into the second dream.

    Second Thang again:Repeated Musical Dora, this time with sit ups on the (up) hill.
    May I submit that this exercise henceforth be known as “the drug mule”? Because when I was done I had so much grass in my crack I felt like I was crossing the border with Cheech and Chong.

    “Non, je ne regrette rien” played again, so again we ran a lap around CC (before song ends!) and reunited entire PAX to finish up in the original dream.

    And the last thang:
    “Wake Me Up” : flutter kicks until chorus. Big boy sit ups during chorus, Big Boy Sit Up Ups (stand ups)on “Wake Me”; Freddy Mercury during breakdown

    “Non, je ne regrette rien” was supposed to play one final time. Maybe we were supposed to run one more lap?
    Either way, not sure if we got to that final bit… but I hope this blast has summed up the rigorous confusion of the beatdown.

    COT. Goose prayed us out.

    Thanks for showing up for the mayhem. Always an honor to lead you maniacs.

    AB Sees…
    A parallel between Han Solo and Yankee Jeaux:

    How was I confident that we could make the lap around the Civic Center before that French song ended? First, a story:
    Han Solo claimed that his Millennium Falcon “made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs.” Critics and nerds love to point out that this makes no sense, because a parsec is a unit of distance, not time.

    A few weeks ago, YHC was planning this beatdown and so asked YJ “how long does it take to run a lap around the Civic Center?” His answer: 0.3 miles.

    So how was I confident we would make it in time?
    Not at all. But Goose was back! And showing up only minutes after me, informed me “I’m going to run a few laps to warm up.”
    Giving me the perfect opportunity to time him… as long as we can all run like Goose, we should be fine. How confident was I that we could all run like Goose?
    Not at all. But sometimes you have to take a leap of faith. Or otherwise, “become an old man, filled with regret, waiting to die alone.”

  • The Ides of March – from BBQ

    KISS-warmup- lots of stretches, including a BBQ new one, a reverse Al Gore Thorogoods.
    The Thang: 11’s (Burpees and copperhead squats, lunge walk 5 parking stripes, then reverse lunge walk 5 parking stripes, run the rest of the parking garage.) Then Star Jump every 5th parking stripe on the way back.
    Wife pleasers at the end.
    COT- Akbar has a St. Patrick themed beatdown tomorrow. Come on out and support him.
    SYITG

  • City hall scramble – from Waterpik

    4 posted for the weekly scramble at mandeville city hall. Akbar was the only rucker. He is planning an Irish themed beatdown for the lakefront Saturday morning.
    It would be nice to have a good showing, as numbers have been meager lately.

  • – from Bolt

    The Chaos Monkey posted in another channel that he’d be at a retreat which meant no Q and YHC could take the ultimate anti-fartsack medicine—The Q…so he did.

    Warmorama with a special song for Frac and the usual: Peter Parker, Parker Peter, LSS, SSH, FAC, RAC, OH/Seal claps, IW, finish with Morning Calls. Make our way to the gym switching MOT at light poles (mosey, KnOT, high knees, open/close gate, lunge) along with three burpees at each bench.

    The Thang: 5 pax, 5 exercises for 1min. each (counting reps) with 10 sec to switch stations x 2 rounds with round 2 designed to exceed round 1rep count by 3 reps. All pax except YHC bested themselves on at least one station except YHC—blame it on the time change. Horses to stables, COT.

  • Block Work at The Gipper – from Einstein

    Warmup: Long
    Thang: Grab some cinder blocks and then move them around a lot.
    Mary: Fletch stretch

  • Broga in the park – from Hogs Breath

    Two PAX got out of their fartsacks this morning and arrived at the 007.

    The pre mumblechatter was who would take the Q. Well YHC had a crick in his neck, so yoga was the designated beatdown of the day! Just a few fellows with no formal yoga training, walking through the body from head to toe. Every several minutes, we would break and take a lap. And ended just on time.

    Thank you for the chance to lead these HIM Through a beatdown and COT.

  • Bare bones backblast – from Russo

    Back to the good grind after what felt like months away this morning. Great weather in the low 50s, and good chatter with Steve as YHC jumps back into a normal routine.

    Warmup (all 10x)
    – good mornings
    – Self love
    – Seal jacks
    – Grass grabbers
    – Cherry pickers
    – Imperial walkers

    Thang
    No real rhyme or rhythm this morning, just laps around Granny’s, starting at the benches where it was 10x (mostly IC):
    Freak Nastys
    Durkins
    Step ups (2 is 1)
    BSSs (2 is 1)

    Over to the pilot house for 3 calf raises each step, then lunges from start to garbage can, followed by a short bear crawl, and a straightaway back pedal.

    Rinse and repeat 3 or so more times all of it, and you have an idea of our morning accomplishments.

    Mary (all 15x IC)
    – LMCs
    – gas pumps
    – Flutter kicks
    – crunchy frogs

    COT, NOR, Announcements, Prayer, in that order. Prayer focused on our family and friends that we continue to lift up.

    SYITG

  • Do Hard Things or KnOT – from Hawgcycle

    I stole the title from Mayhem. It’s too good not to use.

    The overarching lesson of the book Do Hard Things is that toughness is not created by mercilessly driving someone past their limitations. That’s the old-school way of thinking about toughness. Think Bear Bryant’s Junction Boys or any Indiana Hoosier Basketball team under Bobby Knight. But science shows that people must be given some level of control over their situation to develop true toughness. The theory being that if everything you ever do is for a dictator, then when faced with a tough situation, you will likely give up in the absence of the dictator.

    Tuesdays at Pontiff are not the typical F3 workout. Pai Gow takes the Q for almost all of them and he prescribes the sprint workout for the day. The pax has no control over designing the workout. That is always done by Pai Gow. However, he is far from a dictator. He gives instruction and goals for completing the workout, but leaves the rest up to the Pax as to how they want to complete the workout.

    Today PVC, Two Yutes and I were faced with a Pai Gow – less workout. We started with a slow one mile jog. At the end of our warm-up we had a decision to make. Do we continue to take it easy and slow jog the rest of the workout or do we borrow one of the sprint workouts that Pai Gow has given us in the past and push ourselves? Suddenly the most recent chapter of Do Hard Things started to make sense. The temptation to slow jog the rest of the workout was there, and had we been beaten down souls every Tuesday, we might have taken the opportunity to take a Tuesday off. But we are not beaten down souls. Our pre-fontal cortexes are fully engaged and they encouraged us to do the hard thing:

    The Thang:

    One Mile warm-up. Sprint a 100, 200, 300 and 400 with a 100m recovery between each. Finish with a 400m recovery lap. Then repeat the entire set. We did 3 sets and covered about 4.5 miles.

    Meanwhile Tenderloin did his own thing on the track, while Scantron dictated the KnOT workout to Rougarou. Does Rougarou have any control? Is he building toughness or just hatred for Scantron? Only Roug knows.

    Things we learned:

    • Mosquitos eat bitcoin
    • More NHL players are born in January than any other month.
    • Dentists open at 7:00 am

  • 9 to the Left is 2 to the Right – from Hawgcycle

    Warm-Up:
    Moseyed to the t-ball field by the tracks. SSH x 20; IW x 20; LSS x 20; Tempo Merkins x 15; Windmills x 10; Jack Web to 10 (2:1 Air Press:Merkin)
    The Thang:
    We ran back to the rock pile to pick a rock and then returned to the t-ball field. We circled up and did a Rock Stack. We paused between each set of exercises to share the number of children each man has. Once we finished that we shared their names.
    • Man Makers x 5;
    • Man Makers x 5; Presses x 10
    • Man Makers x 5; Presses x 10; Squats x 15
    • Man Makers x 5; Presses x 10; Squats x 15; Curls x 20
    • Man Makers x 5; Presses x 10; Squats x 15; Curls x 20; Rows x 25
    • Man Makers x 5; Presses x 10; Squats x 15; Curls x 20; Rows x 25; Bench Press x 30
    We returned our rocks to the pile and finished with some Mary before Horses to the Stable back to the flag: LBC x 20; LBT x 20; Crunchy Frog x 15
    What we learned:
    • Hand Grenada named his kids Davis and Beauregard. Beauregard is a girl.
    • The Wedding Planner is a virile man (but we already knew that).
    • The most popular names among the pax kids were Colin, Christian, Colleen, Carrie, and Caligula
    • Mahatma and Boge named their kids the exact same thing
    • The Architect has never uttered a two-syllable word
    • Rudy originally told us he had three kids. When it came his turn to name them he only named two. He had originally miscounted.

  • The Prayer of Pain – from Cardinal

    We find ourselves in the season of Lent, where people tend to try to recommit to focusing on the spiritual side of things. YHC, being a Catholic priest, sees it often and often hears the question of feeling like you don’t know how to pray. Some have said the psalms are a great place to start, because it’s essentially a prayer book in the Bible. YHC would agree with that “some,” because it’s the psalms that first brought him deeper into a relationship with God. (Sky Q? Nah.) So a beatdown based on the psalms was devised that would prove to be less prayerful and more painful…

    A standard fare Warmorama was had, including imperial walkers, side straddle hops, arm circles and cherry pickers, high knees and butt kicks, and some self-love. First lesson of prayer – let go of expectations (like you HAVE to start with SSH) and be open to what God has to say.

    YHC crafted a playlist of songs based on several of the psalms. Each song was paired with an exercise, with the psalm’s number of reps having to be completed before the song finished. (So for example, the song based on Psalm 139 would require 139 squats to be completed in the duration of the song.) The PAX didn’t know how long the songs were, so it was a guess as to how much time you had to finish it. Numbers were pulled at random to really let God have the final say.

    The PAX had enough time for 5 songs, which were as follows:
    1. Psalm 46 – 8-count body builders
    2. Psalm 57 – Burpees
    3. Psalm 98 – Big boys
    4. Psalm 84 – hand-release merkins
    5. Psalm 16 – 15-yard-choice of crab walk or bear crawl

    A couple of observations…
    1. The plank jack in the 8-count makes a HUGE difference. The burpees after that felt like a breeeeezeeeeeeeeee….mostly…until the second half…
    2. YHC wasn’t entirely confident that he had matched the exercises with the rep count and timing that well, but the PAX handled it like champs. They dug into it with everything they had, and it was really a sight to behold. Many were able to complete most of them. But whether you finished it or not, it was clear they were pushing through without holding back. I could really give the Animal (who’s got that again??) to any of them.
    3. That drive also kept chatter to a minimum.
    4. YHC can’t count to above 20 to save his life.
    5. The last bear crawl, YHC witnessed a bear crawl race…AB’s bear crawl is really a sight to behold.

    In between each song, we had a couple 10-counts and a recovery lap to prep us for the next one.

    We finished with a light penalty for those who didn’t complete any (mercy, right?? SSH vs calf raises) and then a couple minutes of MARY to close us out.

    COT and Paradox prayed us out.

    Grateful to the PAX for pushing through this morning. One of them commented “Prayer, fasting, almsgiving…and pain, the 4th pillar of Lent.” Praying with the pain, with the hard stuff, even if it feels fruitless in the moment, is some of the most fruitful experiences of prayer I’ve ever had. When we keep giving everything, whether we feel like we’re failing or not, God can do incredible things. Keep pushing through, brothers, relying not on your own strength or measure of success but on His.

    “Lord of hosts, you’re with us
    With us in the fire
    With us as a shelter
    With us in the storm.

    You will lead us
    Through the fiercest battle
    Oh, where else would we go?
    But with the Lord of Hosts.”

    SYITG,

    Cardinal