vQ: Your first Q

Your first Q is called a VQ (lexicon for Virgin Q) and is usually celebrated among the PAX as first real step towards leadership within F3. 

Everyone leads differently, and you are encouraged to bring your own style and workout/exercises to the PAX.

The below is intended to help formulate your thoughts and provide some general framework should you need/want the structure. There are really only 5 core principles to making sure this is an F3 workout.

The workouts have to:

• Be free of charge

• Be open to all men

• Be held outdoors, rain or shine, heat or cold

• Be led by men who participate in the workout in a rotating fashion, with no training or certification necessary

• End with a Circle of Trust (CoT)

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Getting Prepped, General Info

Many of these may seem self-explanatory but can get lost in the moment.

• Go to Slack and get the PAX (lexicon - group that is at the workout) pumped up and what to expect by going to the #AO channel and typing  /preblast   in a new comment and hit submit button. The preblast form will pull up and just fill it out. 

• Start on time. Wear a watch. End on time.

• Be prepared for your lead to be more strenuous physically than you think.  Counting cadence while you exercise can make it harder to breathe. *See Video Below

• Remember you have help. If for any reason you want someone to grab a part of the workout even while you are out there, speak up.

• When you screw up or fail, keep calm and drive on… count louder and push forward. As Dredd says, “When falling, dive!”

• Every man thrashed, no man left behind. To promote “you versus you” but also to keep the PAX together, offer extra credit to the frontrunners via burpees, planks, merkins, etc.

• Don’t take unnecessary risks or do stupid stuff. The Pax is looking for leadership and will follow often before thinking if they’re getting a great workout.

• If your AO (lexicon - area of operation) does a shoutout/word of wisdom at end, think of those  CoT words in advance.

• HAVE FUN. F3 groups are always supportive of new Qs. We love to see new people stepping up.

• Wrap it up by taking a group picture to post on slack on #count-ao-rama and use format that you can see from previous comments but as an example: 15 PAX did a workout at the #AO-TheGreen (adjust the number for total pax as well something that descriped the workout before tagging the AO)

• Lastly, Once back to where you can get access to computer (or you can do on phone), submit a Backblast on the AO's channel. You can do this by typing /backblast and hit submit. Fill out the form ...making sure to tag the PAX that were in attendence so they can get credit for stats and achievements. See the Slack page for more details about that.

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Sample Workout Structure

Think of the workout as small sections of time.

Disclaimer

At the start of your workout, you need to give the disclaimer. (In some regions this is only done when FNGs are there but recommend to do before every Q.) Specifically, this is a free, volunteer, peer-led workout. You are not a professional. You also have no knowledge of any injuries or fitness considerations. It is each person’s responsibility to be safe and modify exercises if you need to. We all do it, most important thing is that you don’t get hurt. For reference, here’s the full doc.

Warmup/CoP

It’s best to start with a CoP, jog, or preferably both to warm up the group. Think of muscles like taffy… when cold, snapping happens easier. When warm, nice and smooth.

Your Workout

Put together your plan. Check out the exercise database (Exicon) for inspiration. Lots of great exercises and new Qs frequently find something new here to bring out.

If you’re a planner, “schedule” more exercises than there is workout time. Time will pass faster than usual, most likely.

Usually you’ll want something that’s a time-eater after a warm-up, search for “routine” in the exercise DB and remember the “pearls on a string” concept. You stop, do something, run to another place, do something else.

6 MoM

Near the conclusion, you will need to head back to the start or where you usually do CoT. Here’s where you’ll have some room to do Core exercises. This can be two minutes to six, usually.

CoT

Count-o-rama, name-o-rama, announcements, and shout-out/words of wisdom. Take Group Picture (Boy Band) for slack.

NEXT STEP - GO BACK TO THE QSIGN UPS AND PICK ANOTHER Q TO LEAD