Something about Swanson’s name (F3 nickname, first name, last name – not sure) gave him the option of selecting an AO or selecting to go 1st or 2nd.  He chose to go 1st the an AO of YHC’s choice, so The Cauldron became the AO for the epic Q battle.

15 pax including the two Qs never even considered the fartsak – this battle would be too entertaining, too much fun and offer to much pain in a good way to miss.  We had a Kotter (The Colonel) and TWO first timers to the AO:  Scrappy and the co-Q Swanson.  Interestingly, both have posted at this deck countless times – Scrappy was the original MQ of Mad Scientist – the first AO YHC ever posted at away from my home AO The Wilderness.  And Swanson is a regular at the evening AO Night Ranger.  Welcome to The Cauldron, fellas!

Welcome and Disclaimer, distribution of a few bells, then the pax would follow Swanson into the deck to the first ramp.

There he began with an ABSOLUTELY ACCEPTABLE 10 SSHs, Hillbillies and some arm circles/girl fights.

Then he launched right into teaching this seasoned pax some new KB moves none of us had ever seen before!  From what YHC can recall and from the pic of his weinke Samson sent me, here’s what we did:

Deadstop Clean.  This was like a squat to pick up the bell, stand, 1-arm press x3, then bell down.  5 OYO each arm.

BHN Good Morning.  This was a bow for a “good morning” followed by a squat, all with the KB behind your neck, hanging on the upper back.  Careful with these…

Next he’d have us Zampirini up the ramp to the next level then circle up.

Believe Figure 8s were next.  In cadence, and that was impressive.  Bell up at the chest, then down, around and back up.  Swanson beat the pax into doing 10 of these.  Burner!

“Squat Curl” was next.  Yeah – like it sounds but the curl was while down low.

YHC believes we then took a lap to the top of the deck and back down the steps.  Or was it up the steps and down the ramp?  Hmmmm.

Back at the bells, Swanson would then have the pax move to the rails and do “One Legged Mowers”.  Hold onto the wall/rail with left hand, right leg down, bend over then lawn mowers x 10.  Then turn around and do it again, all with opposite arms/legs.

With 2 mins to go, Swanson declared there was time for another lap.  YHC disagrees with that theory, but the lap was a good call.

Probably about 5:54 the pax would all be back at the bells and YHC would take over.

Farmer carry your KB as you “trot” up the deck.  Stop at the end of each ramp as you do the u-turn and drop for 5 merkins.  Do that til you reach the very top.  The pax (and YHC) was winded!

Now the pax would gather around YHC’s big, long, thick, black…  rope.  Irish Pub Rock was on the speaker and tabata was set for 30 seconds on, 10 seconds off.  Die Hard would start on the rope while I called each exercise.  At the horn (after 30 seconds), pax on the rope goes back to his KB and the pas to his left takes the rope, YHC announces the next exercise.  The change has to take place in 10 seconds or less cuz that horn is comin’!  Exercises with KBs were:

Curls x 3 sets

Skull Crushers x 3 sets

OH Presses (don’t recall if we did 1, 2 or 3 sets of these…)

Squats

Dead Lift

Calf Raises

Lawn Mower Right Hand

Lawn Mower Left Hand

Bent Over Row (the BRO, the Manzier)

Then it was 6:08 and time for 7 minutes of Mary.  So this is MWAR (Mary With A Rope)

Same format, keep going around the circle.  Exercises:

Jacknife LBCs

Sit-up to Press

Pretzel LBC

Box Cutter

LBC

Glute Bridge HOLD

Low Flutter

J-Lo (cadence called happily by Amen)

Shoulder-Touch Merkin (YHC hoped Snake Eyes might be present.  He wasn’t but we honored him anyway)

Back to the top of the MWAR list and would repeat Jacknife LBCs, Sit up to Press, Pretzel Crunch then YHC thinks we skipped to the Glute Bridge Hold.

Recover-Recover

The St Patti’s Moleskine:

Lot’s of fun this AM and shout-out to Samson who came to Cauldron with a plan and executed it despite having never posted for this AO before.  Not one complaint from him, and he even went back to YHC’s truck for a heavier KB after a couple exercises.

T-Claps to Scrappy for organizing the QvQ Madness and timing it with college bball conf tourneys – this is a fun time of year.

Everyone is looking forward to the Christina Latini 8K or 2 mile in the morning.  PLEASE go to the website or reach out to Olive to donate.  I am told the goal was set at $10K for funds raised and as of yesterday it was still below $4K.  Registering to run helps but most of that goes to the race management org, not to Operation Sweet Tooth.  So let’s surprise Olive with a huge increase tomorrow!!!!!

See you all there.  Aye.