Backblast: August 27th, 2026
AO: The Armory – Waterville Library – Waterville, OH
PAX:
Photon – Q
Bourbon
Carmen Sandiego
Doubtfire
OSHA
Shepherd
Stark
Ukulele
Vespa
Workout: Worst of BS '25 Day 5 – Thriller
FNG’s: N/A
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: N/A
The “Thang”:
This was a 12-round ladder workout where a new rung was added to the ladder each round, each rung being an exercise out of the plank position. After each round, all PAX ran a four-tier suicide. For the work portion, the PAX lined up side-by-side about 6 feet apart from one another in three lines drawn off by three rows of dots. This spacing was used to ensure every PAX had enough space to perform the Thriller routine without any collisions. On the Qs count the routine started, with YHC calling out cadence throughout its entirety. During the last 4-count of each “rung” in the routine, the Q also called out what the next movement/exercise would be in the progression. This continued until the routine was complete for any given round. Run the suicides and repeat until entire routine was built and run in succession. The culmination of this was a 1:30 minute, in cadence routine performed by all PAX, from the plank position, to the backing Thriller track.
Dance exercise were as follows…and yes, they were included to try and mimic the dance moves MJ actually used in the video.
Rd. Reps
1.) Forward Bear Crawl Slow/fast: 4/8
2.) T-Cross Hand Release Merkin: 4
3.) Zebra Butt Kick (2 is 1): 4
4.) Kick Through (2 is 1): 4
5.) Plank Skier (2 is 1) 4
6.) Plank Jack Shoulder Tap (2 is 1): 4 (waterfall from 3rd row)
7.) Lateral Bear Crawl Right/left: 8/8
8.) Reverse Flying Squirrel 4
9.) Travolta (2 is 1): 4
10.) Peter Parker (2 is 1) 4
11.) Pickle Pounder (2 is 1): 4
12.) Plank Compass: 16
No encore this time around as we only had 45 minutes total to work with. Finished up round 12 just in time.
Ended with:
Count-O-Rama: 9
Name-O-Rama
The Six – Doubtfire
LDP3
Ball of Man
Spreadsheets from the Gloom: When Thriller was originally nominated for hardest beatdown, I actually thought to myself, “There are so many Photon workouts harder than Thriller”. Runnin’ Down A drEMOM, Unlucky 6’s, The Photon 500 to name a few… But this rendition was a perfect reminder of how tough Thriller really is. All twelve rounds plus one bonus run-through crammed into a 45 minute beatdown resulting in an AVERAGE heart rate of 168 over the 37 minutes. It hits that sweet spot of difficulty with fun. The latter rounds are absolutely brutal and push even the heartiest of PAX.
As for presentation, the men killed it out there today, hitting the moves and staying in position. The 3×3 DOT matrix kept things clean and tight. That said, the presentation can still be improved! Each row of dots can be offset from the rows ahead of it to ensure more PAX are visible during the routine without any actual crowding occurring.
All in all, it was a fun reprieve from the suck of the “Worst of” week while maintaining the difficulty and intensity that the week was designed to create. It’ll continue to be a yearly staple in the Swamp, and we may even see another entry into the MJ series before next year.
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