MABA: Red Turtle and the terrifying, nauseating, liberating joy of being open and transparent
Also: What in the hell is an Aslan burpee?
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Context-free Text of the Week that I received about MABA: “She found me in our closet doing burpees.”
Meet Jeremy “Red Turtle” Ward, the weasel shaker for F3 St. Charles, a MABA original and ever-accelerating HIM.
Burpees: Pro or con?
Absolutely pro. A lot of the other contributors have already hit on the things I like about a burpee from a physical aspect. I want to talk about my favorite mental component. Burpees demand my attention and keep me rooted in the moment. Every time I do one it is like beginning a whole new exercise set. When I am focused on a burpee I try to break down each movement in my mind. I wrote a little piece to give you an idea of what I mean….
Burpee Thoughts…
Stand
Fall
Rise
*CLAP*
ONE
Squat low in stance
From strength flow to balance
Hands rooted hard into the cold, slick pavement
Feet spring back skittering on dark gravel
DOWN gravity slings the heavy mass
UP strain sapling arms growing oaken
Fibrous flesh tearing with the effort
Feet snap to hands reloading the spring
From deep in the core uncoils tight tension
Upward launching
Take flight
*CLAP*
TWO
Is it hard to exercise with your heart on your sleeve all the damn time? Nobody I’ve ever been in the gloom with bares his soul like you. Have you always been that open? What are the challenges of living wide open like that?
One at a time:
Is it hard to exercise with your heart on your sleeve all the damn time?
Yes, it was hard to be open at first, and it is still hard now. It is part of my Daily Red Pill to be honest with those I love. Being that way during a beatdown is just my way of getting an early start on the day.
Nobody I’ve ever been in the gloom with bares his soul like you. Have you always been that open?
I want the Circle Of Trust at the end of each workout to mean something for us, so I have to open up if I really mean it. I have not always been this way. I think the last time I was truly open and honest was back in high school. I had a series of tough situations play out right as I graduated that sent me into a tailspin for a couple of years. Most of my life since then has been spent crafting a very specific kind of image as a way of managing myself and the impact of the fallout on my life.
I spent a lot of energy and went to great lengths to pretend that my wounds didn’t hurt while simultaneously trying to make sure no one ever hurts me in that particular way again.
For me this meant keeping every person in my life at very specific distances. Even those who were closest got a thin layer of bullshit smeared over the top of everything. For years I blamed it all on the way I was raised, the decisions I made at a young age, and a general sense of ennui and disillusionment that I clutched onto like a life raft.
F3 flipped that raft over.
While fitness was the magnet that drew me in, the glue for me was the group of men whose respect and friendship I immediately desired. After I joined, I went straight into my normal mode of watching for the behavior I needed to emulate to “Belong.” I found out extremely quickly that showing up and being vulnerable and radically honest were the triggers.
Men started asking me about personal subjects and talking about their own challenges. A specific moment for me was when a very highly respected man in the group shared more deeply about a time in his life when he struggled with personal pain than I had ever heard anyone share face to face.
It shocked me to my core.
First, because he was so blunt about it, and second, I was overwhelmed with how much less alone I felt in that moment than I had in a long time. He stood strong, confident, vulnerable, and loved. Here was a man who battled with that rawness that I know well, that ragged pain that hides in the gloomiest corners of our souls. More than that I saw that same reflection of shared discomfort and loneliness lifted in the men around me.
That feeling of having my loneliness made less led me to the conclusion that the awkward and difficult task of being honest was all that stood between me and a hope of not being alone and in pain by myself anymore. This led to me deciding to try out this radical idea of being “open.”
As anticipated, it was terrifying and nauseating, but ultimately the truth was liberating. I was immediately hooked. The more open I was with other men the more open they were with me. It was like someone had handed me a magical key that could fill my life with something other than my own ego. I could have people in my life who genuinely knew me and love me even after they knew the truth of me. This was my revelation. I saw it in the men that shared their pain with me as well. They knew that I still loved them after they told me the truth of themselves.
That is why I keep at it. Both for myself, so that others know me and can love all of me, and for that man who feels unseen and alone, so that he can know that those men standing with him in the gloom are not afraid of his hidden truths and that he doesn’t have to live a desolate life. That the cure to feeling alone is to let other people see who we really are.
What are the challenges of living wide open like that?
The biggest challenge is learning to be OK with the cost. Each time I open up there is a moment that feels like that first time again. It challenges me to face my fear of being cast out, it exposes my pain in a way that makes me feel vulnerable, but most of all it demands my comfort.
You read deeply and widely. If you could invite one author, alive or dead, to do MABA alongside you, who would it be and why?
It would have to be C.S. Lewis. I have always appreciated his take on faith and life. He is one of the few authors I have always felt understood by and been able to read throughout all the stages of my life. Also, I think he would have loved F3 and Emotionally Headlocked his friends. I can only imagine the mumblechatter between him and Tolkien. Also we might get Burpee variations like Faunees and The Aslan Burpee….
After seeing the changes in his life, Red Turtle’s wife Kate (FIA name: Bindi) helped start FIA in St. Charles County, Missouri. She wrote this—with the headline “Beware of MABA side effects, they could change your husband’s life”—posted it on their Slack, and graciously allowed me to reprint it:
It’s been just over a year since my husband started working out with a group of guys he was invited to join. At first I thought it was a little nutty… working out in freezing cold weather, dragging around landscaping blocks in the darkness of the morning and getting nicknames. It wasn’t until a few weeks later that I realized my husband was in a better mood, was meeting for coffee with some really solid guys, having discussions that were causing disruption in our home, albeit positive. I felt a sense of prioritization come over his life that was really inspiring and also a sense of fierce focus and leadership that emboldened him.
I liked what I saw.
Then came the burpees. Jan. 1 hit and so did 100 burpees a day in my house. Sometimes they happened in spurts before breakfast or coffee, sometimes right before bed if the day got away, but those dang burpees, man. I’m not competitive or anything… (jk) so I decided to join in. And those stupid burpees started changing me too.
I felt really strong for the first time in a while and I was really proud of my efforts and my newly toned arms and tushie that seemed to pop back into its rightful place, happy side effects. I think the thing that changed the most from the burpees and ultimately his participation in his workout group was this growing sense of hope in my partner and formation of genuine community. As a result, we started redefining our core values together.
Why are you doing MABA? Send your why, or your inspiration, or the PAX who keeps you going to Matt Crossman (F3 Ralph) at mcrossman98@gmail.com.
Burpees in strange places
Do burpees in weird places, send me proof, and if it’s deemed the weirdest by our esteemed panel of judges, I’ll buy you a MABA shirt. So far we have PAX doing burpees at work and a tattoo parlor and another who convinced strangers to join him for them at a taco joint. I have a bunch of videos of shorties doing burpees and even one dog doing them.
Deadline for submission is January 20. I have two burpee scenarios I’d like to see: From the altar/front of the church during a service, and in a hospital/doctor’s office while wearing a gown as a patient when you’re there to have work done.
Big cold, big participation, big GMI
The combination of bitter cold and high MABA enthusiasm has F3 St. Charles putting up big Gloom Misery Index (GMI) numbers. The GMI is degrees below freezing plus PAX present. (It has to be 32 degrees or colder or there is no GMI.) On Monday, the temperature was 10 degrees and we had 13 men present, hence a GMI of 35. That’s the best so far. Lemme know if you beat it. Fargo, N.D. will top that in June.
Quarant-burpees, t-shirts, etc.
We’ve got lots of quarantine burpeeing going on, too, and even some covid-burpeeing. My great good friend Sheldon, the founding Nantan of St. Louis, texted me at 10:24 p.m. on Launch Day: “Been in bed all day feeling terrible with covid. But just got up and did my MABA 100. Thanks for the challenge! Seeing everyone else posting was a real encouragement and I didn’t want to be alone.”
His follow-up text was the Most F3 Thing Ever: “Also, probably my worst time ever.”
He was joking, kind of. Only a HIM laments a slow 100-burpee time when he’s sick with the disease behind a worldwide pandemic.
If you’re nervous about doing 100 burpees per day, toggle down. The point is not the burpees. The point is the relationships you build and strengthen with the people you do them with.
Still not convinced to join MABA? Watch this.
And you’re not going to do a month of burpees and NOT buy a t-shirt, are you? Order your shirt here.
My latest story is about the side benefits of training for endurance events.
And finally …
Spotlight and his brood are doing more burpees than most regions. Between him, his five kids and wife, they have seven people devoted to MABA. His youngest is 7 and knocked out her 100 before 7:30 a.m. on Sunday. She created charts to keep everyone focused.
