Backblast: January 4th, 2025
AO: The Fortress – Grace Church – Perrysburg, OH
PAX:
Photon – Q
Badger
Binford
Coconut
Deliverance
Golden Gate
Gold Star
Guardian
Oil Change
Spaulding
Tarnished
Van Wilder
Workout: New Challenger Approaching
FNG’s:
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
9 Count Motivator
9 Count De-Motivator
Moseyed over to Fort Imagination
The “Thang”:
This one was not at all inspired by the Best of Black Swamp 2024 data, right? Or the final results of said poll, right? Well what good is data if you don’t do something with it?
This was meant to be awful. The most awful, actually. It was constructed entirely around the swamp’s least favorite exercises and MOTs with a diabolical twist at the end.
PAX performed 3 sets of abbreviated 11’s, each set with one of the top 3 least favorite exercises of 2024, one new exercise out of the crab position, and one MOT.
Round 1: 9’s – Pull-Ups, 20 meter run (due to snow), Aussie Makhtar N'Diayes
Round 2: 10’s – Thrusters, 12 meter Murder Bunny, Crab Jacks (2 is 1)
Round 3: 8’s – Absolutions, 12 meter Crab Walk, Aussie Groiners
Third round was truncated in order to leave time for the finale: the unvailing of the new “worst” exercise. The Crabsolution. The Crabsolution is essentially an Aussie absolution entirely out of the crab walk position. It is awful, and terrible, and painful all at the same time. PAX did 10 in cadence.
Ended with:
Count-O-Rama: 12
Name-O-Rama
The Six – Guardian
LDP3
Ball of Man
Spreadsheets from the Gloom: 12F wind-chill with a layer of ice and snow to make things extra crappy. Another diabolical creation from the Photon vault, this beatdown really was truly terrible. Leveraging the data from the “Best of” poll was not the initial intent of the idea, but the data was so overwhelming that it seemed wrong to not do something with it. And what is it they say about embracing the suck? What better way to do that than to combine the two least favorite exercises into one horrendous monstrosity so difficult that half of the pax couldn’t even perform 5 reps? The crabsolution is the answer. It’s awful. If you don’t have core, you don’t have a chance. If you don’t have shoulder mobility, you won’t be able to do a single Aussie Makhtar N'Diayes. It’s the Prince of Pain. The Sultan of Suck. The King of Crap. It’s the worst exercise by a long shot. And it’ll be spreading through the swamp all of 2025.
Of course YHC had to come up with a bad playlist to accompany all the crabby PAX through their test of terrible.
“Battle Without Honor Or Humanity” – HOTEI
“Bad” – Michael Jackson
“Bad To The Bone” – George Thorogood & The Destroyers
“Crab” – Weezer
“Bad Day” – Daniel Powter
“2 Bad” – Michael Jackson
“Rock Lobster” – The B-52’s
“Everything Sucks” – Reel Big Fish
“Sing For Absolution” – Muse
“Worst Is On Its Way” – Korn
“New Kid In Town” – Eagles
At the end of the day, guys showed up and showed out, even with an inkling of what was to come. And it’s always a pleasure to lead a group of HIMs like that.