TRAINING LEAD-UP
Sunday, March 12:
1.5 mile ruck around the neighborhood in the misting rain with my dad and sister, with 30# in the V3 rucker and Ballistic trainers.
Tuesday, Mar 14:
2x the 3/14/23 GORUCK Shooter dry fire workout, which meant 120 squats with a 30# ruck, followed by HDT IR35-36.1.2 (legs and core) in 45 min.
Thursday, Mar 16:
Yoga for Uncertainty with Adriene, which was good after 2 days of sitting all day at the office.
GORUCK BRAGG TOUGH
I wasn't really feeling it as I drove up to the event. It's interesting how motivation can change sometimes. You do what you have to do anyways, though.
I had withdrawn from the Heavy about a month prior, since my right glute was probably not robust enough to handle an HTB. I'd be a good fresh body for the HTBers, though. Many friends from Joe Baker Fitness were doing the whole thing. Since it's an online training group with people from around the country, it was going to be good to finally meet some of them in person for the first time. They were doing well.
For roll call, as a twist, DS had us plank walk into alphabetical order. For no-shows, Cleve had us do 8-count body builders. We did lunges as well, with the usual zeros and starting over when necessary.
DS took us on a surprise barefoot slick loop around the big loop along the pipeline and powerline. It was a great way to push people out of their comfort zones, while giving the HTBers a nice way to ease back into movement after the break between the H and T. I enjoyed it. I walk around barefoot all the time at home and work out barefoot in my gym, but I don't do it out in the streets. There were some cacti, but fortunately, not too many, on the trail.
Cleve brought out a deck of cards, but for a game of 21 between a player from each of two teams that the class had been split into. Losers had to do some set of exercises (yes's, no's, sun gods). We also did a couple of laps around the SFA compound. Jaala made sure that the losers got good training, and recommended that we get to do as many reps of manmakers as there were people in the class, haha, which meant 39 reps. The winning half of the class did join in for the second half of the reps at least.
We did a workout where we got to play sand... EMOM, we had to do a SB OH toss, 2 plank pull-throughs, and 3 ruck getups. People got into groups to spread out the limited number of SB's. I'd get whatever happened to be free and at an appropriate weight for me.
We did a big loop as a class with coupons. I can feel the glute and its tightness, but it's useable, at least. Cadre LDB was doing the full HTB as a participant, which was awesome.
Dan led us in an upper body workout, which has been his recent focus, since he's been letting his legs recover.
Chuy was one of the Cadres for this event, too, but he was playing a special role. He'd be bringing 8 people into the kitchen building at a time, for some kind of talk. Each group spent maybe 10 minutes with him. There seemed to be sooo many people, though. It would take just about all night to get through the whole class, and while I was waiting for my turn, I wasn't even sure what it was all about. I was looking forward to it, though.
In the meantime, the rest of the class was kept quite busy. Cleve had us all get in a circle, and we passed around sand medballs as music played, and when the music stopped, people who happened to have balls had to go out and do exercises. You wanted a good balance between being the ones stuck with balls vs the ones without, though, since the exercises were leg-based and gave your arms a break from passing around the balls.
We broke out into smaller teams for another activity with Dan. We played Bop-it, with a goal of "beating the game", which meant successfully bopping/twisting/pulling a certain number of times with your team consecutively. If you failed, you had to do a loop with the coupons allocated to your group. Success meant getting to drop some of the coupons. Inevitably, there's a weak link or two or three on the team, so you end up doing multiple loops. We ended up with an "inner circle" of Bop-it people, though, and working together, we were able to beat the game, which earned us a little break.
At some point, the class earns itself a smoke session. Who knows if we really earned it, or if it was always part of the plan, but Dan asked Cleve to Shark Attack us. It is certainly easier to be shark attacked when you've just stepped into the Tough, and not had a Heavy under your belt already, I will say.
We form a line and pass along sandbags that are carabinered together. Some of us do pond loops with the coupons. My turn to go see Chuy finally comes up. I was probably in the second to last group to go. I ran in there really fast, I will say.
The activity with Chuy turned out to be the "Core Values Deck", where you quickly go through a deck of 140 cards, each with a single value-related word. He asked us to use our first instinct to narrow down the deck to 15 cards. From there, we had to go to 5. From there, we had to go to our top 3. Some are similar, so you can group them and just pick one word to represent that group. It's kind of funny when you go through some values that should be important to people, but you discard it because you know that it won't end up in your top 15 because it's not one of your most important values.
Chuy explained that with your final three, you can think of it like a pyramid, with one of them as the foundation, one in the middle, and one on top. My words were Self-discipline, Competence, and Loyalty. I work hard in everything that I do so that I can become competent in everything, and I use those skills to help those that I care about.
After each of the people in the room got our three, a few of us got to share about our cards. Chuy is gifted in how he is able to get right to deep conversations, even with those that he has only just met. He is genuine and he cares about people, which allows him to do that. It's cool when you have overlapping values with people you really respect. It's also surprising to see some peoples' values, if they are completely not on your own radar screen. It's strange to imagine someone with such a different worldview, like one of the people in my particular group had "fun" as their top one. I guess "self discipline" is somewhat the opposite of "fun", although it's good when you find the pursuit of tough goals fun and fulfilling, which is the case with me. A number of people also had "health", which is interesting... I wouldn't have considered that an end into itself.
When I'm back, a beat-down is still happening outside. It soon ends, though, and we switch to a different group activity, where we carry around picnic tables loaded with sandbags.
Some outsider brings us coffee and Starbucks pastries, which is a rare and special treat during an event. I am encouraged by some classmates to eat at least a little bit of it, even if I don't want it, because the Heavy class got smoked for not accepting food that is offered to them, which is a thing that Green Berets are taught to do to build good rapport with their hosts and locals who they are trying to work with.
Even though it's about time for the event to end, Cadre Dan tells us that this is a special 10th anniversary version, where we go back to the tradition of long events that go past 12 hours.
Chuy leads us in a circuit, with 2 rounds of 8 exercises (HRPUs, lunges, med ball shoulder toss, air squats, KB/jerry can swings, low plank, SB clean and press, flutter kicks) with 45s on and 15s break. He likes circuits.
We do a traditional PT test, although the "2 miler" is more like 1.5 miles. Last year, I still had my Smartwool shirt on, and I was burning up. I took my shirt of this time. I want to perform.
No comments:
Post a Comment