RAY – a hero WOD at Mayhem – F3 Nation: Winston-Salem, NC

RAY – a hero WOD at Mayhem

QIC: Rollback

Date: 4/30/2025

PAX: Subfloor, Tweetybird, Van Gogh, Workbench, Cruiser, Crash, Drama Queen (WD), Rollback (WB, Q)

First F

Warm-o-rama:

SSH, Imperial Storm Trooper, Hillbillies, Abe Vs, Whirlies, Michael Phelps – 12 IC

The Thang

Main session: The RAY (Coupon/Rock required)
- One end of parking lot – 10 modified manmakers*
- Murder bunny to the opposite end.
- Leave the coupon/rock
- Run a lap around the parking lot, finish back at the coupon/rock
- 10 modifed manmakers
- Weighted Squat broad jumps OR Lt. Dan’s Magic legs back to start
  - Stop halfway, leave the weight, back peddle, and repeat without the weight
  - Pick the weight back up when you get back to it, keep going.
- At start, leave the coupon/rock, and run a lap around the parking lot.
- Repeat-o
  - Two full laps completed, plus some extra modified manmakers
- *Modified Manmaker: Start standing with coupon/rock in hand. Drop to a merkin on the coupon/rock. Do a mountain climber. Do another merkin. Jump feet back to block. Thrust coupon/rock to OH press. That’s 1.
  - FYI: A real manmaker is done with a dumbbell or kettlebell, add rows with each hand and subtract mountain climbers
Part deux: Sweet Tea
- Sort of like old-time P90X Superman-Banana.
  - Instead of superman – Abdomen on the ground. Arms out to side like a lowercase T and elevated. Feet together and elevated. Head elevated with back arched.
  - Instead of banana – Low back on the ground. Arms out to side and elevated. Feet together and elevated. Head elevated in a crunch.
- Timer with 15 second intervals. Rolling back and forth.
- 4 min, 30 sec

**See 2nd F for explanation of work out**

Third F

Prayer Requests:

Workbench’s daughter, Brook (sp?) – concussion yesterday. Bad symptoms, up all night.
VG’s M-I-L

Announcements:

“MAY”hem: new tradition. Q’s at Mayhem during the month of May are encouraged to make the work-outs crazy/different and challenging. A chance to test out a work-out you might’ve been nervous to try.
- Cruiser is up first on 5/7
- Zima, Spicoli, and Rollback also on the Q.
- Please reach out to take my Q on 5/14 if you have something in mind.
Adobe at Alcatraz

Second F

NMM:

Pay your taxes before your (future/current) kids-in-law force you to pay them after 2 decades.
Manmakers are hard – kind of like real-life man-making.
No one really liked the Lt Dan’s, but it was still favored over weighted-squat broad jumps
Several chose not to murder bunnies (not to DO…), they preferred to crawl like bears and shove heavy things.
All-in-all, it was a great morning, with great men.
Ball of man was sweaty.

The “why” behind the “what”:

There are a lot of men that we encounter in our lives. Some of them we call friends. A few, we call good/best friends. Fewer still, we call life changers…heroes. Ray is one of those men for me…

In late 2017, through a series of very poor choices, a general lackadaisical attitude about life, and a lot of self-love and pride, I found myself in the lowest point of my life. My marriage was on the brink of collapse. My identity was in crisis. I didn’t know who I was, and I had dragged my family down into my own personal hell.

My wife, the amazing woman that she is, stuck with me (and we are celebrating 16 years of marriage in a few weeks!). My life needed change – radically. I chose to walk the path of faith that I always claimed, but never actually lived up to. I got off the throne of my own heart and made the effort to put God there. He called me to something different, and He used Ray to help affect that change.

While Ray is not a member of F3, he is definitely a HIM among HIMs. He loves his wife, son, and daughter to the utmost. He is kind, generous, and always has a smile on his face. He walks his faith out genuinely at work and in his community – serving with his time, talents, and assets.

He helped to start me on “the straight and narrow”, helping to show me what it looks like to be a Godly man. It’s my hope that I will live a life like his, that points back to God, and that my kids will come to know me as a HIM of HIMs. While it’s not the story I would’ve written for myself, I’m thankful for Ray’s part in my life, and I’m thankful for the men of F3 who have pushed me along the straight-and-narrow as well.

Men of F3 – we should strive to be HIMs (like Ray) for the community around us. Reach out to those you aren’t as far along life’s path – share pour into them. Show them that life is more than work, and stress, and exhaustion, and money. Show them what fatherly love is, brotherly love, son(ly) love. Show them that you can both pour into others AND be poured into. Show them what community looks like, what health looks like, what genuine faith looks like – so they can do it for their community, and on and on and on.

WOD exercise choices:

Manmakers – I needed to be made into a real man, not a wannabe man
Murder bunnies – to symbolize dragging my sorry butt along the path when I needed it
Squat-broad jumps – symbolize making struggled leaps forward
Stopping and back peddling – symbolize failures and stumbles and “Steps backward”
Lt. Dan’s – symbolize the legwork I was told would be needed on my part
Laying down the weights and running:
- Hebrews 12:1-2. “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross…”
- My sin, my failures – wrath absorbed
Sweet Tea – Every time we had breakfast at Liberty Restaurant in Lewisville, Ray had Sweet Tea. I thought it a fitting tribute.

-Rollback

RAY – a hero WOD at Mayhem