F3 Greenwood

REDFriday turns TWO!

 

It’s not often that we have an opportunity to celebrate several things all at once. REDFriday was one of those opportunities as we celebrated the two-year anniversary of the week’s toughest workout, Hulk’s first full week at the helm and, as always, one of America’s greatest heroes – Ryan Job.

Ryan Job was a SEAL and worked with directly with the Legend himself, Chris Kyle. Ryan was injured during the Battle of Ramadi in Iraq in 2006. He and Kyle were on top of a building and a bullet hit Ryan’s gun, sending shrapnel into his face and blinding him permanently.

Not the type of man to let a little thing like blindness hold him down, Ryan got married, climbed Mount Ranier, and trained for a triathlon. He died in 2009 as the result of complications from facial reconstruction surgery. He exact details have never been disclosed, but the hospital paid $4 million to Ryan’s family to settle a lawsuit.

The type of indomitable spirit – the Sisu spirit (look it up!) – that Ryan displayed in his life is exactly what we seek to build at REDFriday and every other workout in Greenwood and across the world. We find dark places that seem impenetrable by light, yet we must find a way to fight through those places. Inevitably, we either push through or collapse and that is determined solely by our mental toughness which I determined solely by how well we feed the courage wolf. More on that later.

Here’s the WOD:

Ryan Job

3RFT

  • 20 burpees
  • 15 pullups
  • 60 BonnieBlairs (#CrowdPleaser)
  • 25 merkins
  • 1000m run

Times:

  • Sour – 34:33
  • BabyBlu – 37:47
  • Juggernaut – 39:59
  • Inspector – 41:40
  • Hulk – 41:52
  • Trojan – 41:58
  • TootsieRoll – 43:46
  • SecondChance – 45:48

 

Count, name pray

NMS

  • It was agreed by all at the conclusion that this WOD doesn’t look on paper like it will suck nearly as much as it actually does. The BonnieBlairs make for a fun segment of the work and there is no recovering on the run. Max heart rate for a long time on this one. Aye.
  • Hulk reached out to YHC about giving the info on the hero being honored before we start the work as a way to encourage all of us to dig a little deeper when it starts to really suck. This was highly effective as it drove Sour and Blu to a crazy red-line pace and pushed 2C into a new place mentally (which we observed as he ran down the hill at the end with his shirt wrapped and tied around his head. No judgment here, brother.).
  • The 20X mentality was discussed and on full display. Aye.
  • Heard after we finished the first round of burpees: “Man, that third run’s gonna suck.” “Wait till you do the BonnieBlairs. The first run is gonna suck.” #Prophecy
  • If Hulk can’t quit coughing up hairballs in workouts then we are going to have to make him stop bathing like a cat.
  • Preparation breeds confidence. No one understands preparation quite like a man named “Trojan.” Aye.
  • We talked about Ryan Job and how his life was a testament to what can be achieved when a man feeds his courage wolf. In the Navy, they taught YHC that every man has two wolves inside of him – the courage wolf and the fear wolf. Everything we do is feeding one of those wolves. Things like negativity, doubt, and self-serving that we dwell upon feeds the fear wolf. Things like positivity, discipline and being a good teammate feed the courage wolf. The fear wolf is the hungriest wolf and is always kicking and screaming to get our attention. So, we feed him and unwittingly thwart ourselves. Nothing feeds the courage wolf quite like taking care of our teammates. This is especially true when we serve the teammates we don’t necessarily like. The more out of ourselves we get, the more we feed that courage wolf.
  • It is truly an honor to watch as men continue to push themselves and find new limits on Friday mornings. Not to say that any other morning or any other workout cannot push a man beyond his limits because they can and will do that. There is just a little something special about REDFriday and, more specifically, REDFriday here in Greenwood. We tried to export it after getting a number of requests, but it was never the same in other places. MeterMaid accompanied YHC on one of these endeavors (as did Rodman) and the consensus was immediate and harsh – it just was not the same. YHC believes this to be a function of the people here. We have had hero workouts at a number of different locations all with the same feeling of intensity and leave-it-all-out-there mentality. Yet we could not replicate that mystique in other place with other people. That is quite a testament to the men here in Greenwood. Aye.