PAX: Popeye, Safety Valve, Enron, Roxbury, Honesuckle

AO: The Lion’s Den, 01-22-2026

By: America’s Best

After Yankee Jeaux unleashed a beatdown entirely dictated by the sounds of a kid’s toy car, it got me thinking: What if we did this… but with something not ridiculous?
Like… music.
You know.
Like regular people.

What if the beatdown was built around really short songs, and the goal was simply to finish an exercise set before the song ended?

That meant I needed short songs. Preferably ones that were at least halfway normal. I’d like to think that’s exactly what I found—though “halfway normal” might be generous.

Once the playlist was set, it became obvious some songs were fast and some were slow. So we alternated. Fast songs meant ESOS (Every Song On the Song) reps. Slow songs were for “rest”—which of course meant Al Gore, plank, or something equally dishonest to call rest.

To spice things up, I brought out a giant Maglite (aka a mace ball weight). While the PAX cranked through ESOS, one man at a time disappeared into the darkness with the weight and performed an assigned exercise. The rest of the PAX guessed how many reps he did. The difference between the guess and reality determined whether we paid in Merkins or Burpees. Because accountability.

The alternating exercise sets looked like this:

Set 1
• 3 Burpees
• 10 Air Squats
• 20 Mountain Climbers
• 6 BBS
• 10 Merkins
• 15 Curls

Set 2
• 3 Derkins (N, dailies)
• 10 Apollo Ohnos
• 20 Curls
• 10 Bonnie Blairs
• 10 WWII Sit-Ups

I think Popeye summed it up best afterward when he said… something that probably shouldn’t be repeated out of context. Or at all.

SYITG,

AB