Th first below-freezing beatdown of the season and did attendance dip at the Gip? No sir, Ronnie would’ve been proud, 12 men posted in this morning’s 27º gloom. And yes, yes, we might as well just point it out: Shooter was indeed gloveless. Not to belabor the point, but according to the man himself, he just simply doesn’t feel the cold (regardless of actual science, Hammer). This legend keeps growing and Shooter could lose a pinky one of these days. And I’m not sure what the loss of that little finger might do to one’s accuracy during bow season, just sayin’.
Anyhow, the usual pre-thangers came in from their mile mosey and we kicked things off with: Seal jacks, imperial walkers, high knees, windmills, ssh, 10 merkins OYO, and some butt kicks.
Then it was off to the front of the Justice Center for some quick partner work. P1 takes off across the courtyard and up the stairs to perform jump squats x10, while P2 planks in front of a bench, ascends one hand at a time into an inclined plank on the bench, does an irken, and then back down to a standard plank on the cold, cold concrete. Swaparoo, rinse and repeat.
Finally, up to the top of the garage for the main event: music trivia. A list of exercises was presented to the PAX, YHC would hit shuffle on a playlist, and the rules were that we would all perform said exercise until the PAX could list both the title and the artist of the song. Then on to the next exercise and next song.
YHC, not knowing what was to come, got a bit nervous (I mean, what if that one 8 minute song happen to hit on burpees?) so I foolishly provided a safety net: if someone could list either the title or the artist, then we could stop the song halfway through.
So, the list of exercises:
Squats
Burpees
Flutter Kicks
Mountain Climbers
Lunges
Merkins
Putins
And YHC believes this is (approximately) the order of the songs played:
Hush – Deep Purple
Once in a Lifetime – Talking Heads
One on One – Hall & Oates
Can’t Stop – Red Hot Chili Peppers
Kickstart My Heart – Mötley Crüe
Hey Bulldog – The Beatles
Long Black Veil – Dave Matthews Band
So What’Cha Want – Beastie Boys
Working for The Weekend – Loverboy
Hunger Strike – Temple of the Dog
Take It on The Run – REO Speedwagon
Ten Years Gone – Led Zeppelin
Cum on Feel the Noise – Quiet Riot
Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl) – Looking Glass
Now this seems like a fairly diverse list, right? It runs the gamut from the 60’s to the 00’s, hits on a few different genres. And yet, little did any of us know the breadth of musical knowledge that our own (M.C.) Hammer possesses. Hush didn’t even make it to that first chord – Hammer heard that howl at the start – and he immediately blurted out the answer. YHC knew then that he might be in trouble, and indeed, on he went, knocking at least half of them out within the first 6 seconds of the song. He took mercy on the Q once or twice and let the PAX fend for themselves, which of course didn’t turn out too well for them. So while it wasn’t much of a beatdown, per se, it was at least enjoyable to watch Hammer’s prowess in action. Much to my amusement, it all ended with the men doing Putins to Brandy (despite Hammer knowing it was sung by Looking Glass – really???).
We did a quick set of suicides with one partner doing the sprints and one doing Peter Parkers, then moseyed back to the flag to squeeze in some Mary. 100’s, crunchy frogs, and some big boys. COT with (g)Ringo praying us out. (And no, Ringo did not correctly guess the Beatles tune!). Thank you men for trying something new with me this morning, next time we’ll hit some deeper cuts and get at least a few burpees in!
