Backblast: August 18th, 2025
AO: The Gauntlet – Rivercrest Park – Perrysburg, OH
PAX:
Photon – Q
Big Spoon
Binford
Coconut
Flipper
Guardian
Huckleberry
Irish Hoss
Nitrous
Stark
Tarnished
Workout: The Power of Two – Photon's 2 Years
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: In cadence
Flying Squirrels: 2
Burpees: 4
2-Pump Burpees: 8
3-Pump Burpees: 4
The “Thang”:
A two-phase beatdown, with each phase consisting of 4 rounds, and each round doubling the number of reps per exercise. Flow was as follows:
Perform 2 pull-ups at the pull-up bars.
Run 25m to cone 1 and perform 2 absolutions.
Run 25m back to the pull-up bars.
Perform 2 pull-ups at the pull-up bars.
Run 25m to cone 2 and perform 2 Bonnie Blairs.
Run 25m back to the pull-up bars.
Perform 2 pull-ups at the pull-up bars.
Run 25m to cone 3 and perform 2 Jumping Spiders (plyometric push-ups).
Run 25m back to the pull-up bars.
Perform 2 pull-ups at the pull-up bars.
Run 25m to cone 4 and perform 2 Star Jumps.
Run 25m back to the pull-up bars.
Perform 2 pull-ups at the pull-up bars.
Repeat this 3 times, doubling the rep count of the exercises at the cones (not the pull-ups) after each round, with round 4 requiring 16 reps of each exercise. Instead of cycling back to cone 1 after finishing cone 4, snake backwards to cone 1 in reverse order. Continue all round transitions in a snake fashion instead of a back-to-beginning fashion.
Once the 4th round was complete and the final 2 pull-ups were completed, that was the end of Phase 1.
For Phase 2, each PAX partnered up with another PAX (in order of finishing Phase 1) and performed the entire circuit again. The only difference was that in addition to the exercise at the cones, PAX were also to perform a number of burpees equivalent to the reps required for a given round. So round one required 2 burpees at every cone in addition to the exercises at the cones. By round four, 16 burpees were required at each cone.
Ended with:
Count-O-Rama: 11
Name-O-Rama
The Six – Coconut
LDP3
Ball of Man
Spreadsheets from the Gloom: Two years, man. Two years. The power of two years in this group should not be taken lightly. Surrounding yourself with positive, high impact men one time can have an impact on you if you really let it. But 700 days of those same men is completely transformational. My physical fitness is up. My spiritual fitness is up. My emotional fitness is up. My patience is through the roof. I’m just a better person overall. We say 1% better a lot. And 1% doesn’t sound like a whole lot one time. But you string together hundreds of 1% betters and before you know it you’re a different person altogether.
That’s what this workout was about. I hate pull-ups. But I don’t hate just 2 pull-ups. So I built in just 2 pull-ups…32 times. And at the end of the beatdown…that’s 64 pull-ups. A little bit, very consistently, is powerful. Same thing with the rep counts. Just 2 reps of each exercises…but the exercises were explosive and hard. 2 reps weren’t so bad. But 4 were a little bit harder. 8 a little bit more. Once you get to 16 reps…those reps are tough. Compounding is powerful. And that’s what it feels like being in this group of men. The habits, the conversations, the benefits…they seep into every aspect of you. They compound day after day, beatdown after beatdown, PAX after PAX. The PAX are a powerful force. When you need a pick-me-up, a PAX is there. And when you need a push, a PAX is there too. One PAX can only do so much. But the power of 2 PAX is on another level. Phase 2 of this beatdown was objectively worse. More fatigue and more reps. But the second you partner up with a second PAX, you really see the power of two.
I didn’t think this playlist was two bad…
“Two Step” – Dave Matthews Band
“Song 2” – Blur
“Two-Timing Touch and Broken Bones” – The Hives
“Two Gunslingers” – Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers
“Two Faced” – Linkin Park
“2 Bad” – Michael Jackson
“Two Princes” – Spin Doctors
“2 + 2 = 5” – Radiohead
Was a pleasure to lead this one this morning, but more of a pleasure just to be able to be a part of something so powerful. F3 Black Swamp has changed my life for the better because of that power, and I hope that I’ve had even a sliver of the impact on your guys’ lives that you have had on mine. I look forward to more relationships, more tough conversations, more brutal beatdowns, and maybe even some more pull-ups. Just not two many.