The Gauntlet (Rivercrest Park)

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1. Backblast: April 8th, 2024

   AO: The Gauntlet – Rivercrest Park – Perrysburg, OH

   PAX:
   Photon – Q
   Binford
   Bourbon
   Capitol (FNG)
   Coconut
   Drip
   Huckleberry
   Phat Thor
   Tarnished
   Van Gogh

   Workout: Burpeeclipse

   FNG’s: Capitol

   Mission and Principles:
   F3: Fitness, Fellowship, Faith
   Mission: To plant, grow and serve small workout groups for men for the invigoration of male community leadership.
   The core principles of F3 are that it is always:
   1. Free of charge
   2. Open to all men
   3. Held outdoors, rain or shine, heat or cold
   4. Led by men who participate in the workout in a rotating fashion, with no training or certification necessary. You versus you. Modify or stop an exercise if you need to. The most important thing is that nobody gets hurt.
   5. Ends with a Circle of Trust
   Credo: Leave no man behind but leave no man where you find him

   Warm-up: In cadence

   SSH (2 is 1): 13
   Windmills: 10

   Mosey over to the hill with rucksacks.

   The “Thang”:

   Burpeeclipse

   Goal was to complete 150 total burpees over an undetermined number of rounds in a choose-your-own-adventure type beatdown.
   Each round consisted of 10 burpee reps followed by two hill sprints before continuing on to the next round.

   The Rules

   1.) Each set of burpees had to ECLIPSE the previous rounds’ set in terms of difficulty (except upon reaching the bottom of the difficulty ladder and cycling back up to the beginning).
   2.) Can skip UP one burpee level at any time and can reduce the following sprint total by 1
   3.) Can revert DOWN one burpee level at any time but must add one additional sprint each instance, with successive instances being cumulative. 1st reversion down is 2 standard sprints plus ONE additional sprint. 2nd reversion down is 2 standard sprints plus TWO additional sprints. 3rd reversion down is two standard sprints plus THREE additional sprints.
   4.) One time throughout the BD, all sprints required for a given round can be substituted for one lap around the soccer field (1/4 mile).
   5.) Each completion of a set of 10 Dirty Man Makers counts as 20 total reps towards the 150 total.

   The Burpees

   1.) Flying Squirrel (No Merkin)
   2.) Burpee
   3.) One-legged Burpee
   4.) Clurpee (Clap merkin instead of standard merkin)
   5.) Yurpee (Clap merkin plus two tuck jumps)
   6.) Kraken Burpee (3 hand release merkins at bottom)
   7.) Han Release Prisoner Cell Merkin Burpee (3 hand release merkins at bottom separated by peter parker)
   8.) Dirty Man Maker (With a ruck, 3 hand release merkins at bottom & 3 squat thrusters at the top)
   9.) Back to 1.)

   Ended with:
   Count-O-Rama: 10
   Name-O-Rama

   The Six – Binford

   FNG – Capitol: Lived in Washington DC for a period of time.

   LDP3

   Ball of Man

   Spreadsheets from the Gloom: 43, dry, and muddy. Got off to a bit of a slow start due to a wandering FNG approaching the circle from the hill-side parking lot, but we eventually made our way to the wet and muddy hill. YHC took entirely too long to explain the rules of the beatdown before finally getting started.

   Overall, the duration was too long given the rules/structure of the workout as designed. A few pax got to about 100 burpees each before time was called. That said, different PAX did take multiple approaches to achieve their 100 reps, so the rules appeared to be effective in providing multiple different avenues to the end goal. One thing to help with time would be to reduce the number of burpee variations overall. That would mean less thinking and less time spent looking at the board. Removing the Dirty Man Makers from the list would help with overall time as they are incredibly slow, but the alternative avenue they allow by counting as 20 reps provides is nice. Another option to help with time could be to reduce the number of hill sprints between rounds to 1. However, reducing the number of sprints might encourage certain “routes” over others in terms of strategy as it would disincentivize skipping rounds by eliminating the “rest” period from performing burpees. Other option would be to reduce the number of burpees required for completion. In the end, reducing the number of burpee variations and the number of total reps required might make the challenge achievable during a standard 45 minute beatdown.

   As always, playlist was curated from YHC personal collection.

   “Staring At The Sun” – The Offspring
   “When The Lights Go Out” – 5ive
   “Shadow Of The Sun” – Audioslave
   “Blinded By The Light” – Manfred Mann’s Earth Band
   “The Dark Of The Sun” – Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
   “Black Hole Sun” –Soundgarden
   “Behind The Sun” – Red Hot Chili Peppers

   It was a pleasure to lead. You’ll be seeing a better version of this in the future.

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