The ball and some cards

F3 is important to me.  It is important to many of you.  Fitness, Fellowship, and Faith.  Three powerful words.

It is my opinion that those words do not, and cannot, stand alone.  Is F3 the answer for everyone, like it has been for me?  No.  But it can be.  I truly believe that.  Hear me out.

In a man’s life, he can get in, or be in, great shape.   He can be athletic, cut Deeboian, or not so much.  He can be as physically healthy as humanly possible, to the point he eats vegetables.  He can even compete with or against others.  But does that make him whole?

A man can have friends.  He can be loved and adored by friends and family.  He can be trusted and respected.  He can be a man about town or he can be the life of the party, sometimes both.  His Facebook and Twitter can be awash with likes, retweets, and what not.  But is that enough?

A man can have faith.  He can have a faith that moves mountains.  But as Paul told the Corinthians, a man without love has nothing.  In James 2:24, he says “a man is justified by his deeds, not just his faith alone.”  So even The Bible tells us faith alone is not enough.

F3 can fill the gaps in our lives.  It can help us strengthen the bonds within our families and friends.  It can teach us to accept people as they are, where they are.  It can strengthen faith, or restore it, a faith in God, or a faith in humanity.  As it fills these gaps, it allows us to go forth and strengthen others.  But here’s the big deal… WE have to be the ones that go forth in search of others.  We have been given this thing freely, our only form of remittance is to give it away.  Give it away as freely as it was given to us.  Give.  It.  Away.

I don’t care if it is a dude you’ve been EH’ing for weeks or months.  I don’t care it is a dude you met in the lobby of a restaurant while you’re waiting for a table.  I don’t care if it is a dude that posted for a while, or just once.  As important as the three F’s are in our own lives, it is my opinion that recognizing those same components in another’s truly completes the circuit.  We have already done so much.  We can still do so much more.

And by the way, YHC q’d the Anchor Ball on Tuesday.  A beautiful morning, preceded by some Slack traffic and sabre rattling the night before.  YHC even received an HC from MyT Sharp, so an inventive plan was a must.  As a faithful member of the Casserole Carrier Clown Car, we often talk about different kinds of workouts.  So I stole this one from our patriarch Madof, like Mack Brown is going to steal recruits from the Wolf Pack.  Madof bought the exercise cards from the F3 store because he is rich.  And I borrowed them, because like Steamer taught me, why buy when I can borrow.

Arriving early, I placed the upper body and core cards at the picnic table by northern toilet house, and the cardio and lower body cards were placed on the little green box by the stadium.  With the three minute warning Devlin, Trailerhouse, and Aflac came in from an EC pre-workout ruck around the park.  Apparently, YHC’s workouts aren’t challenging enough for Dev as this is the second straight time he was worked out before we work out.  Challenge accepted Devlin.

With Lil’ Smokey and Trailerhouse amongst us, the disclaimer was given to remind the Pax about modifying anything that needed modifying.  Good thing too, because there was some modifications about to go down.  We took off on a mosey around the bottom parking lot and back to the upper lot for

Warmarama

SSH IC x25

Cotton Picker IC x10

Irish Potato Picker IC x10

Sun Gods IC forward x10

Overhead Claps IC x10

Sun Gods IC reverse x10

Seal Claps IC x10

Nature Boys x10

Up on our feet, we moseyed over to the green box and the rules for the workout were laid out.  The card would give an exercise, we would add 10 reps to the number, 25 reps for face cards, and aces were worth 100 reps.  Blue Cross said, “I’ll cut anyone that draws an ace, so you better lie.”  The Pax laughed an uneasy laugh because he sure seemed serious.  Poca volunteered to draw the first card, and sensing some shenanigans with the deck, chose to pull a card from the middle.  Ace of spades.  100 SSHs.  And away we went.  That was a heck of a way to start the party.  Immigrant did every single one.  I know because he stared at me with an I want to do you harm look on his face.

Following the exercise the Pax would mosey to the other card location, about 400 yards away.  It was a sneaky way to have some guys run a little farther than they wanted to, or maybe even thought they could.  On each mosey, a different member of the Pax set the pace.  You are all some sandbagging you know whats.  Reef Donkey ran us so fast that Lil’ Smokey’s pants fell off.

One of the cards flipped at the cardio section was a 200 m sprint.  Flanders was lightning fast.  Holy smokes.  That guy looked like he was fired out of a cannon.  In the end, we did a bunch of exercises at manageable reps and the Pax ran 2.9 miles.  Pretty strong effort by all present.

Mary consisted of Penguin crunches and 90 seconds of high plank holds with intermittent low plank holds.

Nippleshot led the Pax in the ball of man to take us out.

Keep pushing.

DB out