Is that really necessary?

Preamble:

YHC is just a few weeks away from having his @$$ handed to him at Grow Ruck 31. In an effort to prepare himself for the abject misery that is coming, he decided to bring along all the PAX at firehouse to embrace the suck too. YHC heard lots of “compliments” throughout the beatdown. I appreciated each and every one of them. Gents, we do hard and sometimes seemingly pointless things, or things that could be done differently in a more comfortable way. We do them not because they suck (that might be part of it) but because the suck makes us harder, stronger, faster and more difficult to kill. Thank you all for embracing the unnecessariness of today’s beatdown.

Warm-O-Rama:

Moseyed to the spot ™

SSH, Weed Pickers, Sun Gods, Moon Gods (These are great btw and I expect to make them a regular thing) and Good mornings.

Moseyed back to the top of the hill.

The Thang:

We did this in Dora fashion. One PAX put on the ruck AND a sandbag and proceeded around the upper loop. While the other pax did the first exercise for the prescibed rep count and caught up – traded off the ruck and sandbag and the PAX that had been under the ruck and sandbag did the set of the exercise – sort of catch me of you can style (After a bit of confusion about this – YHC apparently did a crap job initially explaining the assignment- we were off)

Pax 1 – 30 lb Ruck w/ 30-60 lb Sandbag
Pax 2 – performs the exercise and sprints to catchup to Pax 1 to take Ruck & Sandbag
Set 1 – 25 Merkins
Set 2 – 12 Burpees
Set 3 – 25 Deep Squats
Set 4 – 20 Merkins
Set 5 – 10 Burpees
Set 6 – 20 Deep Squats

Most of the PAX got through set 5 or 6  before we shifted gears

Pax 1 – 30 lb Ruck w/ 30-60 lb Sandbag
Pax 2 – performs the exercise until Pax 1 returns. Switch Pax 2 takes Ruck & Sandbag
Set 1 – Low Plank
Set 2 – Leg Raises
Set 3 – Flutter Kicks
Repeato – Till time called (Mercifully 6:15 came right on time) 

COT:

Baskins shared an MOC about not tying our identity to what we do – but to who we are as a person – our character. He mentioned the book – Chop Wood Carry Water (I have the book on kindle and it is coming up soon in my reading list) Sounds like a worthy read.

Announcements – Darth Visor memorial coming up

Prayers.

Coffeteria – good conversation. Discussion of why discomfort is important.

Naked-Man Moleskin:

To be completely transparent I know I need to train harder than I often do. Pushing ourselves day after day, week after week – embracing the misery that often comes with showing up in the gloom, is a long game. We don’t get to arrive at a place where it suddenly becomes easy or comfortable…If it does then we need to change something up to make it more difficult – sometimes in ways that seem unnecessary – My M wonders all the time why I subject myself to a punishing beatdown…The bottom line is – Stay hard, or get soft…there is no middle ground.