It was another frigid morning, this time at The Stage, so Enron wore socks and only Paradox’s eyes were showing through a jungle of F3 logos. YHC was also donning new, post-Christmas Mudgear gear as five total PAX gathered in the icy gloom. YHC arrived two minutes late due to the consequences of poor eating choices the day before combined with ice on the windshield, but the PAX were gracious and coupons were unloaded.
Warmup–the usuals with some added Peter Parkers to get the outer knees firing and some requested grass grabbers, clap included. There were some typical efforts at insurrection, some Q-testing, but threats of penalty burpees seemed to calm the kiddos down well enough. Bumper mosey rounded us out and we gathered to meet the new kid on the block:
Oontz is YHC’s new bluetooth speaker, and his efforts at filling the rectangular hole with a triangular prism were tested with an obscure Irish song, a deep cut from the Chieftains Christmas album, The Bells of Dublin. The song, “St. Stephen’s Day Murders”, sung by Elvis Costello, is about the tradition in Ireland of celebrating Christmas with family through the day after Christmas, St. Stephen’s Day, which has its own family rituals, songs, etc. It’s a comedic (hopefully) song about getting tired of having family over, eating and drinking constantly for days, and then deciding to poison them all (in typical dark, Irish fashion). The refrain ends “And it’s nice for the kids, cuz you finally get rid of them, in the St. Stephen’s Day murders.”
Oontz performed well enough for his size, so YHC will keep him around until the kids inevitably destroy him. For this song the PAX started with side straddle hops and slowly got lower as the song went on–for every “St. Stephen”, we dropped a stage due to poisoning or drunkenness or whatever. After the first–Smurf jacks, the second–plank jacks, the third–chilly jacks (elbow plank jacks). The exercises certainly delivered, and the rest that followed during the explanation of St. Stephen’s martyrdom was welcomed.
Thang 2:
A reenactment (of sorts) of St. Stephen’s martyrdom. PAX partnered up for the following:
1. Partner 1: throwing stones = squat and throw the block down field repeatedly to the sidewalk and rifle cary back. Partner 2: stones to the head = split duty on 100 skull crushers.
2. Partner 1: lay down cloaks at the feet of Saul (future Paul) = block and bear through the icy grass to the sidewalk and rifle carry back. Partner 2: stones to the body = split duty on 200 chest presses
3. Partner 1: carry body for funeral, pall bearer style = farmer carry both blocks there and back. Partner 2: praise the Lord and ask for forgiveness for your murderers = split duty on 300 air presses.
The block and bears were helped by the icy grass with the block sliding easily, but the blocks and the grass were extremely cold, so the hands were struggling. Lil Cuz shoved his hands up Yankee Joe’s rising shirt mid bear crawl to warm them up, so YJ requested penalty burpees, but YHC refused, telling him they needed to work it out between themselves. Typical sibling conflict.
Thang 3:
St. Stephen is the ultimate example of the fulfillment of Jesus’ teaching about not preparing your defense ahead of time since the Holy Spirit will give you the words to say. So, instead of preparing exercises for the last 10-15 minutes, we let the Holy Spirit lead us through Enron’s newly minted Dice of Doom. His M, Brooke, knowing his appreciation for F3 and for randomly generated beatdowns, had them custom made! She researched and picked out the exercises and everything. (I think that definitely deserves Thibby consideration.) Although both die have exercises on them, YHC could think of a few different ways to randomly generate rep numbers (one of which could just be to add a regular die to the group and multiply the number x5 or 10), but for this morning, we took the fourth letter of the second exercise and used the alphabetic order number of that letter (A is 1, B is 2, etc.). This led to more than enough burpees and enough monkey humpers to make YHC sore till probably Thursday.
COT and YJ prayed us out. It was an awesome gift to be out there sweating in the cold with you fellas!
SYITG,
Goose
