The end of the year is great for three reasons.
The first is the treats. The tray of lasagna that your Italian neighbor Margie serves during her holiday party. Those Christmas tree-looking cookies with the red sugar sprinkles on them. The pecan tassies that I will literally make only once a year cause they are kind of a pain in the ass but are my Dad’s absolute favorite.
Not only are they delicious, they are guaranteed to expand your waistline which, selfishly, is pretty good for January business around here.
The second is the energy. You may love the holidays, you might struggle with the holidays. But there is no denying that there is a palpable shift in the air this time of year and when something is different it is also exciting.
Last are the lists. Whether it’s your Spotify Wrapped or the New York Times “12 Things That Will Definitely Kill Us in 12 Months,” you can’t deny that these lists are remarkably readable and will make you optimistic or terrified for the year ahead.
Since my list included lists (how meta!) I’m going to keep up the theme by presenting to you what I consider to be the greatest moments in the history of our gyms.
“But Daaaaaaannnnn, I don’t go to your gym. Why would this matter to me????”
That’s a fair question. Approximately 90% of you who receive this do not attend our gym. And I realize some insider stories about people you don’t know sounds boring and you’d be much better off streaming Taylor Swift’s “1989” for the 11 billionth time on your Monday morning commute.
But even if you don’t know who I am talking about here, I promise there is a point that I will get to at the end of this post.
(How social media of me to pull the “stick around to the end” there. Maybe you can teach an old dog.)
Fair warning. If you’re a loyal and long-time reader you will notice that I have told these stories before. But if my Dad has taught me anything it’s that the older you get the greater the license you have to repeat yourself.
Number 3: Irene
Kyle and I knew Irene from our old gym where she trained with a colleague of ours.
Irene was a big person. About 6 feet tall and struggled with her weight. Her height and size led to a bunch of orthopedic issues and movement limitations. Therefore her approach to her fitness always relied on regressions designed to improve these issues.
Not only did they not work, they left Irene feeling more like a patient and not much like an athlete.
When that facility closed, Irene approached us about joining The Fort and we had an honest conversation early on.
I told her that we’d love to have her and that I thought we could help her but this wasn’t a rehab facility. We were going to start slow, meet her where she was but with the goal of breaking her out of this cycle of being a victim of her own body.
And that’s what we did.
In the beginning her training looked much the same. Squatting to a box instead of working on full range of motion. Altering positions in order to alleviate discomfort.
Progressing anything was a negotiation.
Until one workout which ended with a 50 calorie Assault Bike effort for time.
I was there. I saw it. To this day, I still can’t explain what happened next.. I don’t know if it was the training environment. I don’t know if the set up of the bike alleviated her pain. I don’t know if she just got fed up with her trajectory.
All I know is I didn’t say or do anything. But when the countdown hit 3-2-1 and it was time to start pedaling, the bike immediately started to roar.
Wind filled the room. Irene’s face contorted. Her legs and arms pumped with remarkable speed.
And it didn’t stop. Less than 2 minutes later the bike beeped and the 50 calories were complete.
It was a time that no female has surpassed in our gym to this day.
Irene was never the same. The box was gone on squatting days. Full range of motion was the goal for every movement.
She gained status in the gym. That day she was dubbed Queen Irene. And whether on the bike, the rower or the ski erg, no one was beating her.
Without question training is about making physical progress, but it is most powerful when it changes the way you feel about yourself. When it promotes courage, builds self esteem and gives you belief when you couldn’t find it before.
Number 2: Lauren
When we started the gym we knew quite a bit about training and nearly nothing else.
Every step - opening a bank account, incorporating as an LLC, onboarding a CRM, paying taxes and about a million other things were all new to us.
We sure as shit didn’t have any type of strategy for marketing and attracting new clients. We figured if we had a good product, people would find us.
Now, this turns out to be generally not true. But in the case of Lauren Nowierski we got very lucky.
Previously, Kyle and I had been personal trainers at a gym on the same block that coincidentally was the same as our first Fort location. And we were fortunate that many of those personal training clients came along with us.
But we had no idea how we were going to get new clients.
Until, one day, I get an email from Lauren looking for personal training. I’m still not sure how she got my email address but when I told her I was doing this small group model now she agreed to stop by and take a look.
I met her enthusiastically but was mostly embarrassed by the fact that we were located in a half built, hard to find basement gym that required a tour through winding corridors and a service entrance lined with trash cans.
After explaining the training ideology, showing her the bumper plates and fumbling my way through my first ever sales pitch, Lauren did something incredible.
“OK, I’ll give it a try,” she said.
She took out her credit card, signed up for a month and became the first “stranger” who signed up for the gym.
And she stayed for a long time. Right until the pandemic started and she decided that she was going to tour the country in a van with her husband and settle in Oregon.
Lauren gave me much more than the authorization to charge her card that day (although we really needed the cash!). Her belief in me gave me belief in myself. Which was something I really needed in those early days and still one of the greatest gifts I’ve ever received.
#1 - Alec
Alec was a great friend of Kyle’s and essentially an adopted son for me. I was his first ever strength coach when he was 17 years old. Had I known he was as broke as he was I would have charged him even less for training.
Alec helped us build the gym. I still remember him scraping glue off the floor on Christmas Eve after we had, yet again, laid the gym floor down incorrectly.
When Alec asked to join our staff as a trainer, I was hesitant. As crazy as it sounds, I never thought that anyone would run the sessions but Kyle and I. But after not seeing daylight for about 8 months, working 7 days per week and having a toddler at home, I figured he was worth a shot.
One day, the Monday after Mother’s Day to be precise, our client Jaime came in for her usual 11AM session really distraught. She confided in me that the day before, her two teenage children didn’t acknowledge that it was Mother’s Day. No flowers, no special breakfast, not even a card.
I was sitting at the front table as Alec took Jaime through her session and even by the end of it I could tell that the training session barely budged her mood. I was so wrapped up in consoling her that I didn’t notice Alec sneak out of the gym.
Moments later as Jaime put on her bag to leave, Alec busted through the door breathlessly. A Mother’s Day card in his outstretched hand.
We’ve seen a lot of cool feats of strength and endurance in our gyms. We’ve competed together. We’ve rolled around the floor breathlessly after workouts. We’ve had great laughs and tough times when the world’s problems were on everyone’s minds and they needed a release.
But Alec’s act here is, for me, the greatest moment in the history of our gym. You cannot teach selflessness like that as much as I’d love to take even a piece of the credit for it.
What all these stories have in common, I believe, is that they reveal how transformative the gym can be. And I realize this sounds biased and a bit grandiose. But I don’t think it makes it any less true.
Communities where people are doing hard things and have each other’s backs are the ones worth joining. And more than a loss of body fat or the lifting of PR weight they will find a way to change you for the better.
And if you’re making any lists for the year ahead, that kind of change should sit right at the top.