Southland Fitness Group Bonds Men Together: 'We Don't Have Book Club'

NEW LENOX, IL — Like other men of a certain age, Joe Kasprzyk always considered himself an athlete who never lost his thirst for competition and bragging rights among buddies that never seem to lose their luster.

So, when Kasprzyk heard about a unique boot camp or CrossFit-type fitness craze called F3 that has hooked gym rats and Dadbods alike, he knew immediately he had to try it. He only knew what he had been told by a friend of his before he attended that first early-morning outdoor workout, but there was something about the concept of what was being described to him that grabbed his attention.

F3 (Fitness, Fellowship And Faith) isn’t for the weak of heart, its disciples will admit. First, there’s the starting time. F3 workouts that take place around the country and —for the past year throughout Chicago’s south suburbs — begin at 5:15 a.m. The 45-minute workouts are demanding and are left to the discretion of whoever happens to be leading the session that particular day, which can, at times, become competitively cruel on occasion.

The F3 community is for men only —an aspect of the group that its participants say has brought some skepticism questioning just how inclusive a workout that doesn’t permit women to join can actually be. But once inside an F3 community that its members describe as life-changing, the fitness regimen becomes a welcoming community of dudes that not only celebrate a common competitiveness but that end up making each other better in the long run.

“It’s so impactful for so many people,” said Kasprzyk, a Palos Park resident who founded F3 Southside, the regional chapter of the free fitness organization that has groups meeting around the world in March of 2022.

“But I always wondered, ‘Where’s the hook?’ They’re going to try to drag me to church or sell Girl Scout cookies, sell Avon, or whatever.”

But it never happened. Instead, the free 45-minute workout that knows no weather bounds meets seven days a week at several locations including Orland Park, Homer Glen, New Lenox, and Frankfort. In addition to the daily workouts, two backpacking hike groups meet on Thursdays and Sundays, offering another element of the physical fitness adventure to those who want more.

After beginning last spring, F3 Southside has grown and now can have upwards of 800 posts per month (an F3 term representing the number of men who show up for workouts, all of which draw an average of 10-25 willing participants. F3 members brave snow, sleet, extreme heat, and whatever else Mother Nature throws their way (not to mention the early-morning wake-up call) — all in the name of a demanding physical workout that seems to hook newcomers every single time.

New Lenox resident Brian Smith, who is now counted among F3 Southside’s leadership team, has his own testimonial. For months, he was placed in what the F3 brotherhood refers to as an “emotional headlock” — a series of hard sales pitches that F3 regulars make to draw new converts, more commonly known in F3 parlance as an ‘FNG’ (Friendly New Guy) — for more than a year.

Smith finally relented and showed up at his first F3 workout. Like all newbies, he was given a new name. Smith, who works as an Inspector General for the U.S. Post Office, quickly became known as Newman (an homage to the “Seinfeld” character and fellow postal worker) — a name by which he is referred to this day in the same way that Kasprzyk – who formerly did volunteer magic shows for kids at local hospitals became known as “Houdini.”

The naming ceremony is just one part of the class, Smith says. While he immediately became hooked on the hardcore fitness sessions that can include burpees, bear crawls, carrying or running cinder blocks for distance and other tasks ordered by the group’s leader that day, it was the support he found that kept him coming back for more.

F3’s main selling point is the cost – or lack thereof. The only investment that most members make is a pair of gloves to help save their hands during the workouts, which can at times be grueling, and a $2.70 cinder block. The workouts are always peer-led, which changes from day to day, making each morning’s session different than the day before.

“You don’t know what’s going to happen every day,” Smith said. “You just show up.”

He added: “You will never get this kind of a workout at a gym — you won’t ever push yourself as hard as you will with this. You won’t go to a gym and do (F3 tasks) by yourself but you will do it when you have a man next to you pushing you.”

But what F3 members quickly discover is that the group becomes much more than a workout. Each session ends with a coffee time and a few minutes of that morning’s leader speaking to the group on a topic of his choosing in a portion of the morning known as the Circle of Trust. Those times can often become emotional, Kasprzyk says, but it is in those moments when the circle tightens and men who may consider themselves different than those around them find that they have more in common than they expected.

Groups end up gathering for other social events and volunteer together to support local charities like the South Suburban Crisis Center and Sleep In Heavenly Peace through service projects. That’s where the faith aspect of F3’s mission really becomes part of the glue that holds the men together in life-changing ways.

While F3 participants often experience major physical changes because of the demanding nature of the workouts, the bigger transformation takes place on a deeper and more personal level, which is always celebrated by the group’s membership.

In each workout, teamwork is a must as evidenced by the “Leave No Man Behind, But Leave No Man Where You Found Them” mentality in which those who may be struggling to complete tasks are given the opportunity to either modify the exercise to avoid failure or who experience the patience of those around them while they get through the workout at their own pace.

Each workout includes participants as young as 15 and as old as 68 with men showing up for workouts in varying fitness levels. But because sticking together is stressed as part of the F3 community, unity and inclusiveness became the foundation for the experience.

“That’s kind of the beauty of the whole thing,” Smith said. “You’re out there for yourself — you’re trying to stay in shape, you’re trying to lose weight, but then you’re also out there for a guy who needs it. He needs to lose weight because he has health issues. We don’t turn anyone away.

“We welcome everyone. No one is shunned.”

While F3 has a high success rate of converting the FNG’s, the group’s leadership understands the community may not be for everyone. Smith and Kasprzyk acknowledge there is a certain level of insanity that goes into the workouts, especially when earlier this winter, temperatures with wind chill factored in reached 40 degrees below zero.

Despite conditions many would consider unsafe, the F3 workouts at south suburban locations went on as scheduled – again driven by the group’s members who find their own ways of holding other participants accountable. For example, members who “hard commit” to an early-morning workout and then don’t show up become known as a “fart sack” — an admittedly middle-school term, Smith acknowledges, but a way that F3 members remain committed to the cause.

Early morning workouts are known as “The Gloom” which requires a certain level of commitment. But as men have been known to do, trash-talking and competitive peer pressure can factor in keeping F3 members engaged on a daily basis. The average F3 member typically works out 3-4 days a week, but some members have built up streaks as long as 45 straight days of workouts.

Over time, participants can only be known by their F3 name, which Smith only makes the community stronger as members learn to trust one another and see each other as being equals regardless of their respective walk in life.

F3’s leadership has put out studies that show that middle-aged men struggle with loneliness and don’t tend to have many close friends. But with F3, members find themselves trusting those around them more not only because of the common workouts they endure together but also because of the ways they get to know one another throughout all aspects of the F3 program.

In one case, an F3 Southside member shared the fact that he had hoped to receive winter gear and new shoes for Christmas but didn’t get them due to family financial constraints. Within 20 hours and word of mouth, the F3 Southside group raised $600 within their ranks and presented it to the group member, who remained anonymous, but who became the recipient of the F3 community’s kindness.

“You have this group of guys that will support you and will celebrate with you,” Smith said, adding, “As you go through life, guys are going through hard things. Their parents are dying, and there are a lot of hard things going on, but we’re all there to boost them up.

“That doesn’t go on in the normal world.”

Kasprzyk agrees.

“Guys need this. We don’t have book club — we’re not wired that way,” he said. “Men have these walls. It’s like, ‘You drink beer, I drink beer, why don’t we drink beer (together)?’ Some men just aren’t wired that way and so the fellowship is the glue.”

He added: “Some people don’t believe in positive male masculinity. But when you get a group of good men together for the common good, it’s a powerful thing.”

The workouts are free of politics and free of religious talk regardless of the third “F” representing faith in the F3 title. The community is a judgment-free zone where members are free to be themselves – both physically and emotionally – all of which adds up to the group building a connection that the group’s leadership is unmatched.

There are times when the humor borders on middle-school inappropriate and sometimes the competitive level of physical challenges (such as a one-mile bear crawl) can teeter on crazy as Smith admits, saying “sometimes, we’re a dumb group”, because “if you’re going to ask a guy to come workout at 4 in the morning, it has to be worth it.”

But, despite its men-only membership standards and other sometimes juvenile behavior that tends to happen around dudes of a certain age, the value of the group is unmistakable. For the record, F3 does have a women’s group known as Females In Action, which the local chapter of F3 hopes will catch on in the south suburbs as it has in Naperville.

But for now, F3 remains for men only and continues to grow by leaps and bounds namely, Smith and Kasprzyk say because of the community that has come out of the group that is less than a year old.

“We’re all the same when we go out there,” Smith said. “Some guys have a lot of money; some guys have no money. We have a 20-year-old who works at a weed store and then we have cops. But when we go out there (for workouts), we’re all the same. There’s no difference when we go out there. We’re all the same.”

And for Kasprzyk, that’s the biggest selling point F3 can offer.

“We’re taught by the powers that be that there are people that don’t believe the things that we do whether it be politics, religion whatever it is, and that we should probably just stay in our lane,” he said. “This group is completely the opposite — 95 percent of the things we do in our daily lives, we’re exactly the same.

“We all want to be good men, we all want to be good dads, we want to be good sons and good husbands."