F3: Empowering Men Through Fitness and Community

It's not a cult. But it's not not a cult.

Post Summary

• F3 is an organization of men who gather to exercise together early each morning.

• It started with a group of guys at a middle school football field in 2011 and has swelled to nearly 100k people in 5169 locations today.

• I spoke to the organization’s current head, Frank Schwartz, to hear about the movement and what we can learn from it.

Housekeeping

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Audio/podcast version

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The post

A few years ago, I learned of a group called F3.

At face value, F3 appeared to be a bunch of dudes exercising together in a parking lot.

But here’s the thing: there were a lot of dudes in a lot of parking lots.

F3 has nearly 100,000 active Members and 5,000+ weekly workouts spread across the U.S. and five continents.

The group is popular despite various indignities:

• The workouts start around 5am.

• The workouts are held exclusively outdoors—rain, shine, heat, or cold.

• The workouts are challenging. Think boot camp-style.

How, I wondered, are these guys getting so many people to do hard workouts so early in the morning and in imperfect conditions?

The answer, I learned, is that F3 is only kind of about fitness. There was something much bigger going on.

I dialed F3’s current leader, Frank Schwartz, to hear WTF is going on at F3 …

Michael: What is F3?

Frank: If you’ll let me get semantic and weird about it, the mission of F3 is to plant, to grow, and to serve small workout groups for men in order to invigorate male community leadership.

The thing that’s a bit underneath the surface is that we want to wake guys up to live better and find their purpose. We do that through more than 5,000 group workouts a week, always held outside in the morning, no matter the weather.

M: Who can join F3?

F: Anyone.

M: Anyone?

F: Well, mostly anyone. We’re for men.

Guys in F3 will sometimes ask, “Well, what about this guy or what about that guy?” And my response is, “Well, we opened it to you, jackass. So chances are good we'll open it to just about anybody.”

Then they’ll ask, “Well, what about transgender men?” I say, “Well if you want to check, go ahead.” But that’s not what we're about—if a dude shows up and says, “I'm a dude,” we say, “Cool. Are you willing to do burpees? Great. Come with us.” That’s it—full stop.

M: How much do I have to pay to join?

F: F3 is always free of charge, no matter what, there's never a cost to attend a workout, for any reason, period. Just show up.

Now, we'll sell you a shirt. We ain't too proud to do that, right? We’ve got to fund this thing somehow. And, of course, members are free to donate, too.

But the workouts are free, period, full stop. They are open to all men, no matter who you are, no matter where you are.

M: Why’s it called F3?

F: It stands for Fitness, Fellowship, and Faith.

We want men to know they have a purpose.

If they’re not physically capable, it’s harder to fulfill that purpose. If they’re not in good relational rhythms with the people in their lives and don’t have strong bonds, they can't fulfill that purpose. If they think they’re the center of the universe and aren’t right with their faith—whatever that faith may be—they can’t fulfill that purpose.

M: Why is fitness the first F?

F: When some guys think of fitness, they think of being a CrossFit champion or something.

Nah, man, you just have to be functionally fit. You have to be physically useful so you can serve others.

You cannot be as physically useful if you’re out of shape and sedentary. You can’t have as much of a useful impact on your community and others. Having an impact, leading, and helping others is what we’re after, and fitness is part of that.

M: That second F, fellowship, feels important right now.

F: The New York Times and all these other outlets and scientists say, “There seems to be an epidemic of male loneliness.” They point out that there aren’t as many male relationships and spaces as there used to be. And their solution is … no solution. Nothing? Okay, you got nothing. Great.

Well, we have something.

When they hit their 30s, many guys start to lose their fitness and physical health. That’s obvious.

But they also lose their social health. Many guys haven’t had friends they see regularly for 15 or 20 years since college. The people we call our friends are “my wife’s friend’s husband who I occasionally see at dinners” or “the dad of that kid on my kid’s soccer team who screams from the sidelines.” But you only talk to these guys at the dinner or soccer game, right?

At F3, our guys see each other every morning. We suffer together with a workout, and we build real friendships. The lengths guys go to help each other are incredible.

M: What kind of person joins?

F: F3 basically looks at a man and says, we don't care whether you're black or white or Indian or what you are. We don't care.

I’ll give you an example. On Saturday mornings at nine o'clock in the heart of Charlotte, North Carolina, we have a workout at the men's live-in rehab facility.

A bunch of guys from all over the community come to that workout. You’ll have bankers, business owners, billionaires—and that’s not an exaggeration—working out with the guys in the facility.

They will work out next to one another. No one will say a word about backgrounds—and no one will know any difference or care one bit.

That's real community, right? That’s what people are starving for.

F3 is in six different continents.

M: What’s up with the faith thing? Is F3 denominational?

F: No.

For us, faith really just begins with the recognition that you're not the king of the world, that you're not the most important thing in the universe.

For some Members, that idea leads them to God, and they go, “Okay, I know I'm not the thing that started all this. So there must be something else outside of me. And for me that thing outside me is God.”

For example, I'm a Latter-day Saint. For other guys, it might be Buddha or it might be any number of Hindu gods. For some guys, as one of our founders says, “You might be a guy who's a Bob Dylan spiritualist and thinks the answer is blowing in the wind,” you know?

Or it might be … who knows, who cares? That's the beauty.

M: Do you have atheists in F3?

F: 100%. Absolutely.

The local groups take a little bit of the color of wherever they’re located. I live in the Bible Belt, so our members tend to be religious.

But if you went up to our groups in the Pacific Northwest, you would find that most of those guys don't have any real religious feeling. Those guys do recognize that they're not the thing. A member there might reject God, but he’ll admit that he didn’t create all of this and isn’t the king of the world.

Even if his faith is in the group of people around him and that served him, that got him to where he is, so he understands that that's the humility he needs to have, that's fine.

You can still be a virtuous leader with no religion as it were, right? But you cannot if you think you’re the king of everything.

M: Wait, are you guys a cult?

F: We always jokingly say, “We're not a cult. But we're not not a cult.”

If we’re a cult, we're not a very good cult. As far as cults go, we're pretty lousy. We don't sleep with each other's wives. We don't accept any money. Our Kool-Aid makes you healthier.

M: But you do have the circle of trust thing …

F: That we do. Our fifth core principle is that every workout ends in a circle of trust.

That’s when we gather up in a tight circle and share our burdens, wins, and what’s challenging us as men. We call the circle “a ball of man.” We get all glopped up on each other.

People share everything from my kid committed suicide, to I fell off the wagon, to my parents are aging, to … you name it. All kinds of problems get brought into that circle.

Our thinking is “a burden shared is half a burden and a joy shared is twice the joy.”

And if you believe in a God, then the circle is a great place to petition him, right? If you believe in the men around you, it's a great place for one of those guys to help you pick up what you just laid down and share that burden with you.

There’s something electric, something magical about it. We have all just gone through this horrifying, awful workout together, and that suffering that bonded us. Now we bring it around to this intimate part where it's like, it's okay to just be you, man. There's nothing wrong with it.

M: You also give each other nicknames …

F: Michael, I can’t wait to get you to a workout and give you a nickname.

Everyone gets a nickname after their first F3 workout. Mine’s Dark Helmet.

Our founder was in the Special Forces, where nicknames are very common. He started giving out nicknames to everyone, and it just sort of spread and became a thing.

There’s a bit of tribalism to it. Initially, it was just a way to bring people into the group and mock each other, but now we realize it’s an essential part of identity and bonding.

M: When was F3 founded?

F: You’ve probably heard people say the way you start a movement is to have some weird dude dancing on a hill like a crazy person. And everyone's just looking at him weird—until the second guy gets up and starts dancing and everybody else joins, too. And that's kind of what happened.

New Year’s Day 2011 in Charlotte. Two guys, Dave Redding and Tim Whitmire, had been part of a small group of guys working out together and got a ton of benefits from it.

They wanted to take it to other guys, so they emailed a bunch of guys they knew. This was before social media.

Something like 30 or 40 guys showed up early to a middle school football field on New Year’s Day. Dave said the place smelled like bourbon.

They kept doing regular workouts. Dave figured people would drop off. But it grew.

Finally, the group became too big. Dave was in the military, so his military brain kicked in and he decentralized command and told guys to start their own groups across town. And it just grew from there.

Dave calls himself the dancing idiot all the time.

M: What gear do you use to work out?

F: Sandbags, cinderblocks, rucks, bodyweight, etc.

M: Do F3 guys hang out with each other outside of the workouts?

F: Totally. And help each other.

During the floods in North Carolina, for example, we were mobilizing men into the area.

Some guys drove from freaking, I think from St. Louis, Missouri to North Carolina with trailers full of gear and stuff and food and whatever else. They posted up and started mucking out houses and helping each other.

We also have big events where the entire family is invited.

M: Do you ever get flak for being for men only?

F: When the New York Times wrote about F3 a few years ago, all these internet commenters thought something subversive was happening. I guess it’s odd to see men gather today.

A few people were like, “You guys are an offshoot of the Proud Boys.”

My response was, “Come find out.” We’re open to all men, even if you’re a Proud Boy. Because how am I ever going to change a person’s life for the better if I shut him out and yell at him all day? That’s what society does now, and we’re not about that.

Regarding the all men thing, we’ve found that it’s beneficial for men to have a space with other men where they can share about their life as openly as possible and without judgment.

M: How’d you find F3?

F: I used to weigh 250 pounds. Right now, I'm 195.

I’d gone to the doctor, and she said I had sleep apnea, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, all that kind of stuff. My doctor basically told me I was a stroke waiting to happen. And I was like, “Well, that is not encouraging.”

A guy in my office had started losing weight. He looked good. So I said, “Hey man, what are you doing?”

He said, “I’ve been doing this F3 thing.” Then he told me what he did for a workout that morning, and I was like, “Well, I’m not doing that. That sounds terrible.”

But I kept hearing about F3 and I decided to just show up. What’s the worst that could happen? I showed up on some Saturday morning in November and it was like 10 degrees outside. I had on like eight layers and gray sweats—I looked like Rocky. It was so bad. Guys who were there still mock me.

The workout was literally the hardest thing I had done physically since wrestling in high school. But I survived. It took me a while to recover. Everything was so sore.

But I went back the next Saturday. And the next one.

That was 11.14.14. I still remember that day. I left thinking, “This is what our small groups at church are supposed to be like. This is what this is what it’s supposed to be to be a man.”

M: How do readers of Two Percent find F3?

F: Well, I think they just did. Link out to our website, will ya?

M: Sure.

https://f3nation.com/

Have fun, don’t die, and consider joining those dancing idiots.

-Michael