by Ryan Freebing

F3 stands for Fitness, Fellowship and Faith and traces its roots to a free, participant-led boot camp workout held on Saturday mornings. The leaders of F3 launched their first Saturday workout on January 1st, 2011 on the campus of A.G. Middle School in Charlotte, North Carolina. F3 Nashville started on September 13, 2014, and it has been growing steadily ever since.

The mission of F3 is to plant, grow, and serve small workout groups for the invigoration of male community leadership.

Their workouts are free of charge and open to all men, eighteen years and older. All of the workouts are held outdoors, rain or shine, hot or cold, and the men who participate also lead the workout in a rotating fashion, with no training or certification necessary. This allows each of them to be placed in a leadership role, instructing, teaching and holding themselves accountable to their peers.

While the classic F3 workout requires no equipment other than workout clothes, gravity and the great outdoors, their growth has allowed regional leaders to introduce specialized workouts, including bike rides, gear-focused workouts that include kettlebells and other heavy metal, track workouts for runners and trail runs.

The workouts take place at publicly accessible venues, including parks, school campuses, churches and even in parking lots. All of the workouts end with a Circle of Trust.

In the Circle of Trust (CoT), “every guy gives his birth name, his F3 nickname and his age. Even if you’re brand-new, we’ll slap you with an F3 nickname so we can remember who you are the next time you come,” says F3 Nashville leader Joe Fogarty.

“All you have to do is show up. It really is free. It’s open to all men and all shapes and sizes, and you don’t have to be in shape necessarily. Yes, we do meet early, but don’t let your excuses remove you from opportunity,” Joe says. To find out more and join a workout visit at https://f3nashville.com.