A dozen men got started early with a workout, a leadership discussion and some caffeine. Not a bad way to start a Friday morning.

I’ve been trying to get back to Emmaus for a while, but I kept finding excuses for missing. It took signing up to Q to make it a priority and I was pleasantly surprised to see so many faces walking up at the start. We even got Frogger and Amen until they realized we were here for Emmaus and not a Cauldron standard!

YHC brought a 30# KB with a plan to plagiarize Fast Pitch’s “Hurricane” workout which itself was a plagiarism of Outlaw’s “Cyclone” from 2 weeks ago. With those names taken, I considered “Twister”, but given the recent cold snap and threat of snowmageddon, it felt more topical to coin it the “Bomb Cyclone”.

Going around the circle, each guy takes a turn with the KB doing a set of a strength exercise…after calling out a non-KB exercise for the rest of the group to complete AMRAP until his set is done. After every 3rd man on the KB, we would take a short mosey around the parking lot.

The first KB exercise was the curl. YHC started things off by having everyone else do merkins. When I completed my set of curls, Turnpike stepped forward, called an exercise for the rest of us and knocked out his KB set. After Gnarly Goat’s turn on the bell, we all circled the parking lot. And on it went until all 12 completed a set of curls.

With time for a 2nd round, we went with skull crushers as exercise callouts continued. We completed 2 full rounds with several exercises called including merkins, squats, Apollo Ohno’s, LBCs, cat/cow, WWIIs, pickle pounders, jump squats, jump lunges, flutter kick, mountain climbers, crunchy frog, rosalita, and yes — burpees.

At the tail end, as Cauldron was just circling up and with one minute to go, we held a 60-second plank. YHC offered a short prayer to wrap up and we all relocated to the coffee shop.

After putting away my KB and changing into a dry shirt, YHC walked into Caribou only to find a long line waiting for their caffeine and a free mug. The free giveaway was more popular at 0530 than I was expecting so I opted to pass out a worksheet for everyone to review while they waited. By the time I sat down with my coffee, it was 0555 and I assumed the opportunity for discussion has passed.

But the gnarliest of goats did not concur. He was one of the first through the receiving line and had had time to read my assignment and gather this opinions. Jedi, being the born leader (pun intended) that he is, also initiated the discussion. 9-Lives and me added to the voices and soon we had the entire group focused on the topic — “Leaders are made, not born.” (PDF link)

At around 0615, guys from several other workouts started pouring in, I think we had representation from Cauldron, Odyssey, The General, and an OTB lake loop run. From the far end of the shop where we were sitting, every seat I could see was occupied by an F3 member. I think it’s safe to say that Caribou earned high marks from F3 Isotope this morning and there will be more #coffeeterias that relocate on a regular basis.

”Get me to Emmaus and the bell’ll be clangin’
Last week, grabbed the ruck and was four bangin’
Freakin’ brothers every way like TP & Stray
I can’t believe today was a good day.”