It was snowy and icy the morning of January 5th. I thought it was appropriate to ruck to the site (safety first) and see how showed up. Fortunately, the main roads were indeed much safer than my backgrounds and we had a total of 7 Pax melt the ice with a fast moving exercise. YHC stated that the easy thing would be to stay in the parking garage but we would not be doing that this morning. No, glory awaited us out in the elements!

Warm-up

All exercises in cadence because that is harder:

• SSHs (20)
• Arm Circles (10) then reverse
• Overhead Clappers (10)
• Squats (10)
• Calf Raises (10)

The Thang

The Pax moseyed over to the bridge connecting the Weaver St Market and the town’s best Mexican restaurant. However, we were not here for margaritas, chips, and salsa. We were here for glory-or at least to try to stay warm in the frigid temperatures.

Down the Bridge

• Side plank walks: the Pax lined up down the bridge in perfect plank position and then in cadence we walked to the left and then when that burned we plank walked to the right- we were starting to get warm
• We then lunge walked down the bridge which sounds easy but we stopped in the squat position for 5 ring of fires in between lunges and we added a new exercise to each ring of fire until we arrived at the following sequence:
  • Burpee (1)
  • Overhead Air Raise (5)
  • Calf raises (5x) and Front arm clappers during calf raises (5x)

Back up the Bridge

It was time to give the legs a break so YHC decided to crab walk back up the bridge to the starting point. Naturally we needed to take some Ring of Fire breaks. The original idea was to remove one exercise at each ring of fire just as we had added one on the way down the bridge. But the Pax was having none of that and we kept the full exercises at each Ring of Fire break:

• Burpee (1)
• Overhead Air Raise (5)
• Calf raises (5x) and Front arm clappers during calf raises (5x)

Mary

We circled up back in the parking lot for some core exercises. It was time to share my rucksack. The Pax with the ruck would complete a 5 cadence count. Everyone else would follow his lead and complete the exercise without the ruck. Once completed the Pax with the ruck would pass it to the next man who then lead the 5 cadence count. It was great and we completed the following exercises around the circle:

• Russian Hammers
• Flutter Kicks
• J-Los (no ruck for this one)

COT

We celebrated the conclusion of an epic wintery workout by vision casting for Hillsborough in 2018. We see a 3rd site launching this year targeting Wednesday and also t-shirt designs for our AOs. We prayed for one another including Hightower’s father, YHC sister, and safety for all returning home.

Moleskin (my additional observations)

It takes a special commitment to arrive 0530 in single degree temperatures and put out full effort. It was one of the most energetic and positive workouts I’d been part of and a pleasure to lead. Next week on January 12th we have Pusher’s VQ. Let’s keep the momentum going in 2018!

-Nickelback