Assisi and I decided to go for a Q swap today (he took the Q at The Big Dance!). It was with a heavy heart that I didn’t get to work out with him at Vortex, but nonetheless I enjoyed setting foot on some familiar and fond turf in the humid gloom. Hats off to the ruckers and to Shake It, who has gone completely insane and has started doing full Murphs before workouts.
The Vortex is an AO near and dear to my heart. I had some of my first Qs at the site and it is a place where enthusiasm matches intensity. I had to go back to the history books to refresh my memory of the site and read such gems as “The Vortex Olympics,” “The Sweats Inferno,” and “Thunder and Lightning,” but decided instead on a completely new complex of killer exercise combinations.
We warmed up with a lap, your basic starting fare, a jack series and a merkin series. We then jumped into the workout:
First pair: Proper Bear Crawl Boxes and Broad Jumps
Pax waited for my call to move forward, backward, right and left, and then on my Q broad jumped 3 times forward. We took 10 minutes to really work the core. The key here was proper form: butts down, knees close to the ground. Speed is not the name of the game! The moans and grunts said it all!
Second Pair: Lateral High Knees and Burpees
2 cones about 15 yards apart, hit a burpee at one then lateral high knee to the other, 2 burpees, back to the other, 3 burpees, and then back to the other, 4 burpees. Pax were instructed not to go past 4 and instead go back down to 1 and back up to 4. I wanted to keep the integrity of the push from blending the exercises, not make it into a burpee fest.
Third Pair: 100 Yard Sprints and Side Shuffle Hop
Pax sprinted 100 yards, then were instructed to move into side shuffle hop immediately. When all arrived, I led the crew in a 10 cadence count of SSH. No rest at all, we then sprinted again. We did this 5 times. Many guys were flying around, but close to me Kitten and Pink were totally scorching the Vortex turf! This was the portion of the workout starved for oxygen.
Fourth Pair: Jump Lunges and Squats
A brutal combo, we did 4 cadence count of jump lunges followed by 3 air squats for a total cadence count of 7. We did 10 of these, and that was all we wanted!
Fifth Pair: Swerkins and Assorted Core Exercises
A Big Dance favorite finisher, we put 2 guys on the swingset for swerkins and had them belt out 20 while the rest of us rotated through core exercises: WWII, flutters, box cutters, H2H, Hello Dolly, LBCs, Freddie Mercuries.
Moleskine:
- Welcome FNG Excited to Be Here (ETBH)! Needless to say, he is excited to be here.
- Great to see a few 2.0s in attendance today.
- 2nd F this Thursday at Pour House in Durham