Shooting sparks and a deck of cards

23 and me. Oh wait. This isn’t a commercial for a DNA testing kit. This is a writeup for the workout that happened today.

Take 2.

23 men joined YHC at Hells Bells to kick off GTFO week. It stand for Get The F**k Out. A challenge for the PAX at AO’s they don’t normally come to. We had a good mix of PAX who are HB regulars and some “visitors” who may not have been to Hells Bells or at least not a regular part of their workout journey. All pushed hard and got better in the end. Sweat angels were left all over the church parking lot.

At a coffeeteria last week, Cheap Trick being the site Q extraordinaire asked me to sign up to Q at Hells Bells. I wonder how many people are regretting that question and the acceptance on my part. I have already heard from a few that it was a good/challenging/fun workout. There were 2 pre-blasts yesterday and one of them included the words pain train. YHC has to live to this kind of hype so I brought a non-stop 45 minute train of pain. It went a little something like this.

At 05:30 sharp, I announce that I’m the Q and go into my standard opening. Since we’re all guys, I start talking about D.I.C.C.S (insert eggplant emoji). This is pronounced like you think it would be. Yes Cataracts, the “K” is silent. Disclaimer - I feel that this should be given regardless if there are FNG’s or not. I.C.E - In Case of Emergency. Make sure your emergency contact is updated. YHC doesn’t know most of your hospital names and certainly not your M (or other emergency contact) info. Update your Slack profile to include it, wear a Road ID. Make yourself heard if you get in a situation where you can’t speak for yourself. Cellphone - I like to have at least one around during a workout in case there is an emergency. I was at a workout where we traveled from the AO. One of the PAX got hit by a car (he’s ok after some surgery / rehab). We had a phone with us and were able to get the rescue squad dispatched much quicker than if we had to run back to the launch to call. CPR - I ask the guys who know it to raise their hands. It is a helpful skill that everybody should learn and hope they never need it. Safety - modify as needed. push yourself but don’t hurt yourself. If we’re running, face traffic, wear reflective / bright colors, etc. Enough (?) talk about male genitalia. Let’s start with the pledge.

After the pledge, the PAX grab a bell and circle.

Warmup

Let’s start off by NOT running. This is a kettlebell workout. We don’t need no stinking running here. If you want to run, there are plenty of opportunities in Carpexlandia.

• Good mornings, including the usual good morning mumblechatter

• Side straddle hops

• Sir Fazio arm circles in both directions

Thang

Enough warmup. If you’re not warmed up by now, you’ll get there real quick in the workout.

When YHC started F3 outside of Charlotte back in 2017, a staple of our gear workouts were hair burners. I forgot how much fun they are and I wanted to share them with my Carpex brothers. YW4ML. A hair burner is performed like a bear crawl, except your hands are on a weight plate. Bear crawls are terrible on their own and then you add weight (35#) and the friction of the metal plate on the asphalt and you’re looking at a great time. There were only 2 plates, so the PAX took turns pushing them to the middle island and back before switching to the next PAX.

While the 2 PAX were enjoying their time pushing weight plates around the parking lot, the rest of the PAX were going through a deck of death. Most of the deck of deaths that YHC has attended are limited to four exercises. Each suit is typically an exercise and the number on the card is the number of reps. YHC wanted to mix it up and work the whole body with 13 exercises and the suit determines the number of reps. It looked like this

We ended with about 5 minutes of Mary.

See Slack for announcements and upcoming events. Shout out to Earhart who took us out in prayer. MIAGD

NMS

Some thoughts / observations. Honestly this is why you’re here. If you’ve read on for this long, you might as well keep going and enjoy some of the nuggets below.

• A 10 year-old did more work than Bolton did! This same 10 year-old also beat his dad in a hair burner race. Great hustle.

• Uncle Mike sounds like a problem.

• PVC was going to fartsack. He only came out because he saw I was the Q. Thank you sir. I hope you don’t regret your choice too much.

• FACT - 2 shovel flags are better than 1.

• As I was setting up, I heard Frisco coming back from his EC run LLLLOOOOONNNNNGGGGG before I even saw him.

• Shoutout to Frisco and Dadbod for their EC run. Mileage reports ranged from 3 to 13 miles. I think we know who was who. This was a tough workout, an EC run on top of that is a hard pass for me.

• School has been in session for a few months at this point. It is still unnerving when you’re working out and people start emerging from the woods like some children of the corn.

• Some of the guys wearing baseball hats turned them backwards to be more aerodynamic on the hair burners.

• Hair burner races got so heated that the PAX were shooting sparks. This was a cool sight in the dark. Way to push yourself gents.

• This a mumblechatter heavy crowd. The chatter was solid before even starting the pledge of allegiance. Give the crowd something fun that sounds like male genitalia and the jaws are soon the strongest muscle in the workout. By the second card, the chatter had all but died. This is music to my ears. When the crowd goes from non-stop talking to focusing on the workout it means that they are tired and my job is working!

• A 0.0 mileage workout is still a beat down.

• A welcome sight, was some of the guys are starting to sport facial hair. I don’t know if it’s Movember or they just want a change. Either way keep it up…they look great

• I didn’t want to totally kill the guys, so I graciously gave a 10 ten count in the middle of the workout. I’m nothing if not merciful

• Earhart was disappointed that swings were not in the deck. Ok next exercise is 30 kettlebell swings. Thanks for the suggestion

• For those who needed to modify the hair burners, great job to push through and do something instead of nothing.

• Sweat angels were plentiful in the church parking lot after we were done.

• Great job pushing yourselves this morning. Honored to lead you through it.

• You know it’s a good workout, when you think it sucks on paper. Real life sucked a lot more than I had anticipated.

• I will admit that I didn’t GTFO, instead I STFP (stayed the f**k put)

• To the PAX that posted, I welcome your feedback. Feel free to DM in me Slack. The only way to grow / improve is to listen to the feedback of my peers.

• I challenge each of the PAX reading this to not only Q a workout, but to take the time to write a proper backblast. The slackblast is temporary and doesn’t capture the shenanigans like this format. These backblasts can be a source for future Q’s and capture the inside jokes that happened to give guys a fear of missing out.

  • I was talking to Banjo at coffeeteria, and I mentioned that in my previous region, they gave you until about noon to get your backblast written and then they would start @ mentioning you in Slack every 5 minutes until it was done. The verbal beating stopped once the backblast was posted. We may not need to be that vigilant, but take some pride in your workout and let the whole world read about it.

See also

• Time Flys.
• <strong>First Contact at Phoenix</strong>
• A Day in the Life
• We'll take it from here, Cardinal
• It's a Jungle at Lion's Den