Block-a-thon
Eleven gathered in the early morning muggy gloom to pay tribute to the Olympic Decathlon. It’s a grueling 10 discipline event testing strength, endurance, speed and finesse and the winner is often referred to as the world’s greatest athlete. In other words it’s a real man-maker (wait, what…?), at least until you retire.
Warm-o-rama
10IC Dandelions (SSH)
5IC Vortex Left (SSH on left leg only)
5IC Vortex Right
15IC Windmills
15IC Mountain Climbers
15IC Tony Hawks
Arm Circles
Big Hill Mosey
Retrieve Block and return to Parking Lot
Decathlon – Blockathon
Since we don't have discus, or shotputs, or javelins, or pole-vault/high jump pits, decided to use the one item we do have: concrete blocks.
We did a ten exercise with blocks rotation with one person running the small hill (with burpees at the top) as the rotation timer. Oh, and once we started you weren't allowed to set the block down until round completed except during the hill run. Block Exercises were:
Round 1
1. Curls
2. Squats
3. Shoulder Press
4. Lunges
5. Skull Crushers
6. Calf Raises
7. Bent Over Rows
8. Trifectas
9. Block Swings
10. Side to Side Merkins
For Round 2 we divided into two groups and alternated a hill run between each exercise. Group A did the exercise while Group B ran hill then flip-flop for each of the 10 exercises.
Return Blocks and time for Mary
Mary
20IC LBC
20IC Low Dolly
20IC Freddy Mercs
30s Mason Twist
WOD
Zechariah 4:10New Living Translation (NLT)
10 Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin, to see the plumb line in Zerubbabel’s hand.”
As Anvil noted, Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu stated that "a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step" and history is riddled with similar quotes expressing the same sentiment. In keeping with the Olympic theme for today I am reminded of an interview I saw with Olympic gold medalist and world record holder John Naber that I think about every time I get in the pool. In 1972 he watched his teammate Mark Spitz complete what, at the time, was the greatest Olympic performance ever by winning 7 gold medal at the Munich games. It bolstered his dream of competing in the 76 Olympics but he knew that to compete for a medal he would have to improve his 100m backstroke time by almost 4 seconds, a huge amount for a 100m race at the Olympic level. But instead of focusing on this huge improvement he instead figured out that in the thousands of hours he would train over the next 4 years leading up to the 76 Olympics, he would only have to improve about 0.001s per hour. So he approached every practice with the attitude of "what can I do this hour to improve" that tiny increment?
Often our faith can be the same way when we expect the Lord to reveal his grand plan for our life. We become disappointed and uncertain when we can’t see the grand plan instead of focusing on the daily steps we can take to grow our faith. We aren’t always shown the grand plan but if we place our faith in the Lord he will always guide us in the next step.
Moleskin
- Great effort by all today, especially all of the walking wounded. A lot of nagging injuries seem to be going around.
- Goodwrench tried to pay YHC a compliment by basically saying I did pretty well for an old man. Something about our age difference was half as much as the square root of the derivative of the something or other… I needed a calculator (or more oxygen) to figure out what he was talking about.
- Great job by all the 2.0’s. Especially with the limited choice of scalable blocks.
- Pleasure and an honor to lead today. Hope everyone has a great week!