How we built The Fort

When it came to getting in shape, you only had a few choices.

You could slog it out in the gym by yourself and hope that your form and exercise choices and program were good enough to get you where you wanted to go (and hopefully get you there in one piece).

You could hire a personal trainer and hope that her expertise and the accountability would yield results before it became too cost-prohibitive to continue shelling out hundreds of dollars per week.

You could attend large group fitness classes that were filled with enthusiasm but no real structure or individual attention or progression. It was fun while it was happening, but you never felt like you were getting anywhere.

Here’s the good news. Training works.

When done correctly, training can have remarkably powerful effects. It can make you substantially stronger. It can increase your work capacity and cardiovascular capabilities. It can improve your health and performance. It can help you look the way you want to look. It can build courage and confidence and belief in yourself.

But just walking into a gym or signing up for a group fitness class or buying a pack of personal training sessions isn’t enough. You need a specific program that meets you at your current capabilities and progresses from week to week and month to month. You need coaches who are invested in your technique and your journey but aren’t so expensive that you can’t build any consistency. You need a community of like-minded people all training and succeeding together, but not a room filled with dozens of people where you can get lost in the corner.

The reason we know those things don’t work is that we used to do them ourselves.

We loved going to group fitness classes. We grew up exploring the gym and bouncing from machine to machine and program to program. And we made our living providing one-on-one personal training at one of the premier gyms in the country.

But, ultimately, we stopped training ourselves that way. Instead we would get together with a small group of three or four friends, write out a progressive and meaningful program and all commit to getting after it. Coaching and encouraging and pushing each other. The experience was electric. The results were incomparable.

So we turned our back on huge hourly rates and antiquated methods and set out to bring what worked to the world. We started The Fort.

We take this seriously. We do what works.

The first big change we made was to split the difference between larger group fitness classes and one-on-one personal training: small training groups of up to four people at a time, led by an expert coach. As much attention as personal training, more fun, and more affordable.

Every program at The Fort is designed to help you move better, get stronger, increase your work capacity and improve your body composition, and we are remarkably diligent (some would say nerdy) about making sure it delivers, whatever your starting point. We meet you where you are, we track the numbers that matter, and we’ve built in layers of accountability because, unlike almost every other gym, we want you to show up.

This is a special place. We want you to be part of it.