Wicker Park Impromptu shelter beatdown (60 Minutes) – 05/16/26

Location: Wicker Park
4 Pax: –  Trader Joe / Optimus / OCB / Nuthouse (Q)

The mission of F3 is to plant, grow, and serve small workout groups to invigorate male community leadership. Founded in 2011, F3 focuses on three pillars—Fitness, Fellowship, and Faith—to help men improve themselves physically, socially, and through community service.  We leave no man behind, and no man where he started. 

5 Core Principles 

1) Free of charge

2) Open to all men

3) Held outdoors(rain or shine)

4) Peer-led (rotating leadership)

5) End with a Circle of Trust (COT).

Warm-Up: —

• Side Straddle Hops (SSH): 20x IC (In Cadence).
• Imperial Walkers: 15x IC.
• Windmills: 10x IC.
• Arm Circle complex
• Perfect Squat 15x IC

The Thang: — Hold me close Tony Danza –

With your ruck sack on the entire time when it was not being used – static hold while your partner reps out the exercise…

Static hold PAX A / Exercise PAX B

Wall sit on the shelter support / 10 merkins (100 Reps each Pax)

Static Squat hold / 10 squat (100 Reps each Pax)

Static Lunge hold swap legs each round / 10 lunge 5 each leg (100 Reps each Pax)

Static Curl hold / curl 10 (100 Reps each Pax)

Static Overhead Press hold (OHP) / OHP 10  (50 Reps each Pax)

Static Bench hold / bench 10(50 Reps each Pax)

Mary: —

• Good Mornings – 10x slow IC
• Rag Doll 30 count

Moleskin – The Obstacle is the way –

I used to have a kind of dread that set in when my perfectly mapped-out day got completely hijacked by a crisis, a curveball, or unplanned tasks. But recently, these interruptions are often where the real breakthrough—the actual “blessing”—is hidden. Today I planned to put myself (and the Pax that joined) through some intense cardio, because an area I struggle with is getting into Zone 4-5 cardio. I will be honest – I was not interested in that today – enter the Sky Q (For me, God) Rain, and, like, rain that looked pretty gnarly on radar, so I didn’t want the group to get stuck on the other side of Wicker Park in a storm. So I pivoted to an imperfect plan: a completely shelter-based, dry-as-bone ruck as a coupon-beatdown that smoked us and gave us a chance to mumble-chat and get in some 2nd F. I will admit the first round had a hiccup that added 2 minutes of solid wall sit with a ruck on and added like 50 reps to OCB’s Merkin count – but we adjusted, and I have a new favorite ‘rainy day beat down plan’ which is a blessing because the gloom is hard enough without getting soaked and having a go to back up that actually does the thang – is a good thing! I made ‘Play-Doh’* today, which is something I’d tell teams to do with code they had written, but the company decided to pivot, find a place to use that code – what that meant was do something with your effort, even if it wasn’t the effort’s original planned end —

* Play-Doh Pivot –

• In the 1930s, Kutol Products was a struggling soap company that manufactured a soft, clay-like substance designed specifically to clean soot off wallpaper in coal-heated homes. By the 1950s, people transitioned to natural gas heating, and the company’s planned market evaporated overnight. Suddenly, the company had to deal with the messy, unplanned chaos of a failing business. However, a teacher named Kay Zufall noticed that children loved molding the wallpaper cleaner into art shapes. She convinced the company to remove the detergent, add a bit of color, and rename it. That messy pivot turned a dying cleaning product into Play-Doh.

Thanks for letting me lead gang – OCB thank you for coffee – Site Q style! Good job today – see you at Troy Tuesday when we are all sore from today’s lift-a-thon! -SYITG Nut House –