Heroes Hall of Fame

Below you will find the most EPIC and Awesomely hardcore heroes of our time.  This is by no one's standards but mine and I am not putting them in order or making one sound cooler than the other.  I just want to point out people that you may have not heard of before that I thought were doing something great for others.  If you have a favorite that hasn't made the hall of fame shoot me a message I would love to hear about this person and maybe post about them.  (Please note that to qualify as a "Hero"  this person needs to be someone who does something truly extreme for a completely selfless reason.)

1. JESUS CHRIST!!!

   Honestly how can I not start with our Lord and Savior.  If it wasn't for Jesus doing what He did and taking our sins to the cross then we would all be destine for a pretty bad eternity.  He is my GOD and man am I thankful for that!  To look at the "physical" side of what He did, its unbelievable how many miles He hiked to spread the gospel from city to city all out of love.  Plus he did it on these flimsy hard sandals, not the comfy ones like my Flojo's.  Then the biggest thing is what He went through the day He went to the cross.  The beating, the loss of blood and sweat, how far he carried the cross, being nailed to it.  Then enduring GOD's wrath to top it all.  I know I couldn't do it!  That is why He is our Savior.......that and He is a perfect GOD where as we are not.  I am inspired by Christ, and He is no doubt my #1 Hero.


2.TEAM HOYT

I wish I would have thought to post this on Fathers Day because it really fits the holiday.  Our next hero or heroes I should say is Team Hoyt (click name for official site).  These guys are my personal favorite!  Here are the highlights.  In 1962 Rick was born to Dick and Judy Hoyt, due to some complications he was diagnosed as a spastic quadriplegic with cerebral palsy.  Instead of letting him live in a hospital his parents decide to take him home and make sure he lived life to the fullest, which is already a hard task.  Soon they could tell that he was a very intelligent and capable young man and fought for him to be able to go to school (which later results in him getting a degree from Boston University in special education).
     In the spring of 1977 Rick hears about a 5 mile benefit run for a Lacrosse player who was paralyzed and tells his dad that he wants to run it.  Dick was not the running type but out of love for his son he agrees to do it anyway.  Rick said that night that running made him feel like he wasn't handicapped.  Little did they know that this would start them on a crazy and inspirational ministry.  Now they travel all over the U.S running races and raising awareness for the Hoyt Foundation.  Putting their count to 1042 races in total as of February!  To include 6 Ironman Triathlons, 7 half Ironmans, and 68 Marathons (27 Boston Marathons).  I don't know about you but I can say from experience that running a Marathon is PAINFUL!!!!  I know I couldn't even do an Ironman.  This guy is 3 times my age and does all of these races while pushing his 110lbs son.  When swimming on the Triathlons he pulls him in a boat!  With that said I am willing to admit that he way more hard core than me.haha  When asked Dick said that his motivation is his son and every time he feels like stopping he just looks in the chair in front of him and keeps going.  If I could even be half the dad that he is I would feel pretty accomplished.haha  Which is why Team Hoyt is no doubt a hero.  So check out their organization and testimony and ask yourself how you could better emulate their Father-Son relationship?



3. David & Shirley Callahan (Faithful Heart Foundation)

For the life of me I couldn't find their
picture so we will just use their logo...

Here is a couple that knows what it means to let everything of this world go for Gods glory. David and Shirley were retired in South Carolina and set up to live the "American dream". They had a check coming to them, house, car, and no reason to have to work again or really worry about anything. But they knew that wasn't what God wanted them to do. So what did they do? Get a bigger house on the beach? Get a dog? Or maybe join a country club and relax the rest of their lives?.......no, no, and NO! Instead they sold and gave away EVERYTHING they had and moved to Thailand to open an orphanage. They are now independent missionaries funded by their local church and a few people who just want to help. Talk about a HUGE leap of faith! I can't imagine what that took, thinking about it kinda freaks me out...... But they knew that was where God wanted them and because of that they trusted Him to take care of all of the unknowns. Now they have grown to multiple houses or branches if you will for these kids. This is inspiring for me in a big way. I feel so lame when I think about what I wonder and sometimes wimp out on. "Well God, times are tight right now so can I just cover the tithes on the next pay check?" or "Hey God I know this kinda doesn't feel like what you want me to be doing right now, and I should probably drive myself and my wife on over to the Harbor for church. But I am REALLY tired so maybe I can just go twice next week?" or when I go "Yea God I know this guy at work just brought up some stuff and I could probably help him, and witness to him or at least take him to church. But what If he says no, and thinks I am a weird Christian???"

Here is our missions group visiting one of the hill tribes. (I am the guy in the
bottom with the dog and a kid playing with my beard.lol)

I had the awesome opportunity to go with my church back in 2009 to visit this orphanage along with the Im Jai House, and go to the hill tribe as well which is another focus of their ministry at Faithful Heart Foundation. It was crazy seeing how much they were doing for these kids! They were teaching them more than the average American kid would learn. Not only being educated but they were being taught a lot of great agricultural skills as well. Like how to grow rice, and mushrooms, also how to raise chickens and other animals. It was an amazing experience and to be honest if I wasn't with this amazing woman who is now my wife I might have just thrown away my passport and stayed there. My pastor who was there might have advised against me going UA from the Marines though.haha Attached below is the link to the blog they wrote about our awesome visit, check it out.
http://faithfulheartministry.com/callahan-corner/2009/03/village-visit-mar-30-2009

These people would never claim the title hero and obviously that just shows where their hearts are. But I will call them hero's and I know to every single one of those kids they are hero's. So check them out on my organizations page if you get the chance, they are pretty awesome. If you feel led to, donate. What is $20 to us anyway? thanks for reading and God Bless.

James 1:27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

Workout Program Of The Month: Crossfit

So I chose to start with my current favorite program: Crossfit.  This is one of the things I have used for the past several years to prepare for my fights and other events.  The Awesome thing about Crossfit is that you can do this EPIC workout that is tailored towards strength and cardio at the same time, but you only have to spend like 20 minutes doing it.  This is perfect for me, because when you work in a shop you only get so much time for lunch anyway.  But, like any workout program there are pros and cons to this.  Here are some of the ones I noticed:
 

You will learn that tire flipping is my favorite workout...

        Pros

• Quick and efficient 
• You can do half of their workouts virtually anywhere, with almost no equipment.
• It is fairly easy to tweak the provided workout if it is too easy or too hard for you.
• No goofy video to watch or long process to read, just write down whats on the blog and do it.
• They have their own competition every year called The Crossfit Games, which is where the truly insane athletes go.
• You can actually get certified in this and put it on your resume, or even open your own Crossfit gym.

        Cons

• The workout days are NOT in a set order (Monday=Chest, Tuesday=Back, etc.) of any kind, so your workout week might look more like this:  Back, Cardio, Back, Legs, Chest/Legs.....
• NOT always easily used for a group of people (like morning pt), due to the lack of equipment or just the simple fact that no one wants to wait on the slow guy doing 50 burpies.lol

One of my long time workout partners, Jason Gipper.  The dude is a BEAST!

If you are looking for a new program to try out and want something quick but seriously effective I recommend this.  If you are new to working out and don't know a whole lot about building your own schedule or program then I would recommend something maybe a little more structured.  But overall I would have to give Crossfit a pretty high rating on how efficient and practical it is.  Sorry for the lack of pictures, we are in the middle of our PCS to Okinawa so I did not get the chance to take a lot of pics for this post.  My next program post will be better, Promise!  But I can tell you from experience that this program is good to go.

Challenge for the month:The Tire Challenge

This is by far my most favorite challenge/workout to do.  I will admit I am a little biased due to the fact that it was created by myself and 2 of my really good friends.  About 4 years ago while working in the tire shop on MCAS Futemna, I was bored and trying to come up with new ideas for a workout.  I had seen in the past people do tractor tire flips, and all kinds of other just really brute strength based workouts.  So starting with a used C130 tire, we (Jason Gipper, John Underwood, and myself) started collaborating.  Then the tire challenge was born!(sounds so epic I know.lol)  Taking a 275lbs tire we would flip it around a 132 meter course racing the clock dong the following exercises along the way: 30push-ups, 20sprawls, 20pull-ups, 40hammer swings, 50crunches, and finishing it off with picking up and slamming an 80lbs tire to the ground 10 times. 

Gipper hammering down on one of our tires.

Whats friendship without a little trash talk

We did this thing weekly, sometimes even daily and as we did the crowd of curious bystanders grew.  Before long we had people lined up wanting a piece of this insane challenge.  So we had to up the challenge for ourselves and started doing it with gas masks on. 

Try this with the Okinawan heat and humidity in August!

 The idea worked as there were only 5 of us who could complete it with a gas mask on.  But I must say I don't think anyone is man enough to top Wes who used to do it while chain smoking smoking cigarettes.haha

The results we saw out of this workout were amazing!  When you finished your back, bi's, legs, core, EVERYTHING was hurting.  Now that I am back in Okinawa I will be doing this thing constantly.  So if you are on Futemna and want a good challenge to try come by the MALS 36 Hydraulic shop and hit me up.  Or if you are back in the states and have access to a REALLY heavy tire give this thing a try.  You wont be disappointed.

Tough Mudder Georgia

So!  Here we go, the first blog post.  Lucky for me, it gets to be something really hardcore!  On March 12th, my wife and I went to Cedartown, Georgia so that I could run the Tough Mudder for my birthday.  This event truly is TOUGH!  12.4 miles of rocky mountainous (not to mention muddy) terrain, completing 20 obstacles along the way.  This event was definitely a kick in the butt.  In my defense, I will say that it has been over a year since I have ran anything over 5 miles. So I was NOT prepared for this.  By the end of it I had SO many huge cuts in my feet from all of the rocks in my boots. But this was probably the most fun race I have ever done.  So check out the pictures and ask yourself: Do you have what it takes to be a Tough Mudder???

 ^This is my shirt of choice for the race.

 ^All along the trail they had signs like the one above taunting you.  There was another one that said "Stay on the trail or the velociraptors will eat you" Lol.

There were several other obstacles that I took pictures of but none of them really turned out well.  But this is one my AWESOME wife took.  This is the electro-shock therapy portion where you run through charged cords right after swimming across a lake (making you soaking wet and more vulnerable to electricity).  Some of them were a couple thousand volts. It was funny seeing peoples' faces when they hit those! haha

 

Here are the before and after pictures of me, needless to say I was not a very happy camper. 

So like I said it was a really cool (painful) race.  They are sponsor the Wounded Warrior Project and help raise a lot of money each race for it. In 2010, Tough Mudder (US) raised in excess of $600,000 for the Wounded Warrior Project. So, if you get the chance, you should definitely look into the race and donate. Don't forget to check out the Organizations page and I'll be working on my next blog post soon.