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.