AMRAPalooza IV: The Quest for Pain

THE SCENE:
70ish and pretty nice, considering it’s July in Memphis.

F3 WELCOME & DISCLAIMER
Done x2 (FNG arrived during unsynchronized SSH penatly burpees)

WARM-O-RAMA:
SSH x20 (10 IC, 10 silent)
Burpees x10 OYO because Flobee had his shoes on and could not count to 20.
Windmills x15 IC
Imperial Walkers x15 IC
Baby Arm Circles x10 IC (each direction)

THA-THANG:
Today was stop #4 on my AMRAPalooza tour.  Stop #1 was terrible; I made Stop #2 worse by changing up some of the exercises.  Stop #3 was made worse by lengthening the runs.  Making today worse was easy – the runs were completed on the super hilly portion of Neverland’s jogging trail.

The other change to today’s installment was that I did away with the long list of exercises and shortened it down to 4 that we rinsed and repeated – an AMRAP within the AMRAP.

Complete As Many Reps As Possible for one minute of each of the following exercises; take a break between exercises by completing one 0.2 mile lap around Neverland Mountain.

• 8-count Bodybuilders
• WWI Situps
• Merkins
• WWI Situps

We completed 2.5 iterations of the above, for a total of 2 miles of rest breaks.  Mumblechatter was minimal; mainly consisted of the FNG asking how much time was left at various intervals.

MARY:
Mary was Roxanne.  One Merkin for each “Roxanne”, one plank jack for each “put on the red light”.  This was not enjoyable.

COUNT-OFF & NAME-O-RAMA
5 PAX:  Choker (QIC), Crayfish, Flobee, TruGreen (FNG), and Zima.

CIRCLE OF TRUST/BOM:
This week’s QSource is on Exhortation.  I thought this was timely given a recent conversation on Slack regarding FNGs.  We have had almost 150 FNGs in June and July, which is awesome.  However, we have not done as good of a job in retaining them.

As leaders (that’s all of us), it is our job to help FNGs assimilate.  This is more powerful when it does not come from the guy that invited them, but from perfect strangers who make a point to encourage them, make them feel welcome, and take ownership in making them want to return.

From the QSource:

What makes a Leader a highly skilled Exhorter? There are probably as many factors as there are Leaders. But there is one common underlying element to all Exhortation, and that is empathy. The Q knows what the FNG is feeling because he felt the same way when he started out from the Status Quo. Exhortation starts right there, with an expression of “I know how you feel Brother. I was there, right where you are and I know how that feels. I have not forgotten. But, there is hope and that hope is how I feel now.” In F3, we call this the Was-Now, which stands for there I WAS, then this happened, and here I am NOW.

Telling a man that the Pain he feels is natural is critical to Exhortation, but it’s not the whole story. Exhortation also requires the Leader to dispense the hard kind of love that Influences Movement. It’s the kind of love that responds to “I can’t”, with “bullshit, you just won’t”. That is why F3’s Credo is leave no man behind, but leave no man where you find him. Though empathetic to how you feel when you start, we love you too much to let you stay there.

MOLESKIN:
I love my Neverland Tuesdays, but I’d love them more if certain PAX were not getting FiA’d.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:
GrowRuck.