Repeats

Neck Rolls, Left Right, Up down
Arm Circles
Tappy Taps
Bear Stretch
Runners Stretch
Pigeon
Frog

Ran the stadium stairs (all of them) once to get the blood pumping
Assembled on the goal line and performed the follow:
20 Over Head Press w/coupon
20 Heals to Heaven
20 bent rows w/coupon
Lunge walk to the 30
20 Merkins
20 Big boys
10 Burpees
Run one full lap around the track
Back to the goal line and repeat as many cycles as time allows. I believe some of the more ambitious of the Pax completed 3 full rounds.

LBC’s
Star Plank hold

We make a bigger impact than we often realize.

I hesitated to share this experience in the COT.  It’s not intended  to be about me having an impact but how easy it is to not realize when we are making an impact.  Several years ago my nephew who I’ve always had really good relationship with entered his Freshman year at St. John’s University on a D-1 athletic scholarship. He was on the rowing team.  Due to his grades he didn’t make it through his first year of school. Little discipline and too much fun is the all to predictable recipe for failure.  He was rudderless and unmotivated, he took some time off to try and figure things out. Fast forward a couple years and he enrolled in the Massachusetts Maritime Academy (not a military academy but a highly disciplined environment, exactly what the young man needed) and decided to try his luck walking onto the rowing team.  A few weeks ago over Thanksgiving he and I had the opportunity to talk face to face for the first time in far to long. I asked him how things were going with school, with rowing etc.  I was pleased her how well things are going for him, he talked a lot about discipline, accountability, teamwork and leadership….I was impressed with the transformation.  Academically he’s doing really well and as a junior he is now captain of the rowing team.  After telling him how proud I am of him and happy to see the changes he made in life he said something that caught me completely off guard. He thanked me and said that it probably wouldn’t have happened without me. I had no idea what he was talking about.  He reminded that, a few years earlier when he was taking time off between flunking out and finding some direction he and I went to Mid-Ohio race track for the vintage motorcycle race weekend. During the weekend I pulled aside and had maybe a 15-20 minute conversation with him. I shared with him that we all screw up from time to time and I’ve made more than my fare share of mistakes.  I didn’t sugar coat it though, I told him he F- up  big time and he needs to own the fact the he’s the one responsible for torpedoing his scholarship. But it’s up to him what he does now, that his future isn’t dictated by the past unless he allows it be.  All that stuff that we know but sometimes ignore.    He told me that he thought about that conversation a lot and how much it meant to him coming from me. I’m sure his parents told him the same thing in one form or another a thousand times but for whatever reason it didn’t resonate. I was oblivious to the impact that conversation had had on him. The point here is to take advantage of the opportunity to share hard truths in a constructive, honest  and compassionate way with with the people you care about. The real conversations that we need to have are often uncomfortable and unwanted at the time.  But it might just be exactly what they needed to hear at the exact time they needed to hear it.