If You can’t Get Starfish, Get Son of Starfish.

The BackBlast:

It’s always fun to see an old friend post at a work out where you are the Q. But if you can’t have the old friend then have his kid. Even if his kid is so in love with the movie Gladiator that he approaches you before the beatdown,  grabs you by the back of the neck, pushes his forward into yours and says  “Strength and Honor”. I knew that starfish’s son frostbite was a huge fan of almost every Russell Crowe movie but I was not prepared for this greeting. But it was in this light that we began the first diamond head of 2021. And so I embraced the tremendous yet slightly awkward moment and moved on to the standard rather quickly.

Because even when things are awkward you must maintain your standards.

Shortly after that we broke into something that’s rather similar to the Death Star. We had four corners with four exercises at Each corner. The idea was to do 10 reps of each exercise and then go to the center do five burpees , then go to the next station and do the first exercise on the list there.

The exercises were :

1)dying cockroach, double protractor, Louganis ,box cutter  2)   reverse lunge ,single leg deadlift , curtsy squat, upright row 3) Renegade row, thruster row, reverse grip lawn mower, tricep extension 4) clean and press, High swing, squat press, power to the people. Somehow I thought between doing all of those exercises and 5 burpees in between each station that it would take the entire time. One group got done early and all the groups were done with 10 minutes left. First time I’ve ever been q and not had a plan that took the entire time. But because I’ve been doing this for a while we were able to Circle up and finish out with a variety of kettlebell and ab exercises until time is called.

I was looking forward to this q when I got the call that an old friend of mine whom I had not seen in three or four years had taken his life about a month ago. The friend that I talked with apologized that I had not been called earlier but it happens like that sometimes. It appears  that my friend simply could not find the means to keep on living after his daughter had taken her life less spring. For a while yesterday I was overwhelmed with the darkness of the situation. Luckily my habit has me doing a morning Bible devotion that on Sundays I expand for about an hour. I have been reading and studying Matthew chapter 3 and paying attention to what John the Baptist said on the subject of redemption and repentance. And it dawned on me that some people get so far down a dark road that they don’t realize that they’re allowed to make a U-turn ,that God always gives a second chance and third chances and fourth chances and as many chances as it takes for us to repent and reconcile. And it was because of the Bible study I done early yesterday morning that I was able to process what I learned yesterday afternoon. And that allowed me to q this morning. And that Q allowed me to spend time with some great men that are strong and powerful and want to get better.

And I think that’s what the lesson is in all of this. Dark things are going to happen in my life. But if i maintain my habits I will be able to manage these dark moments.

Thanks for being there this morning. It really mattered today.

playlist was the same as Friday– we didn’t get to hear it then so I recycled it.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1V6jBqmC3qESoLJ40fHYEc?si=1PwFnKD6T8ObfT5DFiOmpQ