Fully Tempered

The BackBlast:

Contrary to popular belief, I had a plan.  It was a beautiful plan.  It had a perfect set of reps moving from Upper Body to Lower Body into core and some cardio.  It was a pure pearls on a string Q.  It was quite possibly the perfect Q.  I’ll save it though.  I’ll put it away in the archive which is my OneNote Notebook of Qs.  A chicken scratch menagerie of google maps screenshots and illegible exercises. I’ll save it for the next time cause I wanted to make a point.

F3 is a blacksmith of men.

It takes the cold, raw steel of our physical inability, our  misaligned priorities, our insignificant careers even our manhood, and forges it into a stronger, more capable and focused implement, ready to work and serve the communities into which it exists.   It will change you at the molecular level.  It will temper your soul making you stronger, less brittle, less prone to stress….the parallels are endless.

…and the hammer first pins you between the anvil at your first Q.

I remember my first Q.  It was at Black Widow.  I reluctantly signed up about a month and a half in advance.  I was prepared.  I had my plan written down and ready to go about a week before my Q.  I was ready to impress the PAX with my knowledge of the Exicon and my ability to call cadence.  I practiced the Cadence in the mirror.  The day before, my brother in law (who facilitated my initial F3 introduction) invited me to a dinner with one of his corporate mentors.  It was going to be a late one, with copious amounts of red meat and wine.  The kind of dinner you wake up from at 3am sweating profusely.  I begrudgingly attended.  The whole dinner I couldn’t stop thinking about how much I didn’t want to be there.  While I thoroughly enjoyed the company, I was so nervous about my first Q that I could hardly appreciate them or the amazing meal with which we imbibed.

I did it….led the workout, led a few grown ass men around some random parking lots and helped them get better….but after it I felt different.  It was nothing memorable for the PAX.  But for me something had changed.  There was a new found confidence that had been there all along but hadn’t poked its head out in a while.

then I signed up again.

and again.

and again.

And I learned that through leading a workout you begin the process of molding yourself into the person you want to be.  Subconsciously or not, you will be forced to learn where you are strong and where you are weak.  You will learn more about yourself as the Q of a workout then in pretty much any other leadership seminar, podcast, book series etc.  You are shaping the raw steel of yourself at the molecular level.  And that’s where the magic happens.

And just like the process of blacksmithing where you have an Anvil or a Rock as the foundation and the hammer working the metal, in F3 you’ve got men on either side of you, stronger men, shoring you up.

Some of those men are the anvils.  The passive supporters.  There for you to hold you up.  Consistent and steady.  The Rock.

and some of those men are the hammers, the shapers, the dynamic men of action.

Each of us can be both the anvil or the hammer depending on the needs of the man to be molded and the situation at hand.  Sometimes you need to be aware of what the situation calls for.  You have to read the metal and know what it needs to be made stronger and more useful.

So I decided to delegate my Q.

Now while that may seem counter to this whole analogy, here is the point:

By calling on the men to lead a somewhat small portion of a workout I felt that it could give them a spark.  The spark that could lead to the fire.   The fire that could lead to the tempering of the men that they want to be.  And so we counted off and numbered the PAX after a quick  COP.

As we ran through the parking lots and back alleys of Cotswold we would stop at various locations and the next man up would call out an exercise.  Now most of the men at widow that morning have had the Q plenty of times but there is something useful about having the confidence to lead when not expected to that can help create that spark within each of us.   It affirms our ability to lead.

My hope is that with some small spark of leadership it helps to fuel the fire that will lead to the production of better men.  Men tempered, made stronger, more useful and more aligned, more focused on becoming the the tools needed to make an impact.

Regardless of your lens of our current political, economic and social situation I believe we can all agree that what we really need right now is Focused Leadership to a vision…a path forward. If you haven’t experienced it in a while, I encourage you to sign up to Q, and share this thing with other men.

The Hammer and the Anvil both make an impact.

Grizz