The Art of Manliness - #324： How Fitness, Fellowship, and Faith Are the Cure for Sad Clown Syndrome

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast well if you're

00:00:18.520 like many modern men you might have a pretty good life got a decent job a family a home

00:00:23.420 maybe a few hobbies you do during your free time yet despite having the appearance of a good life

00:00:27.680 you feel empty inside like you're missing something well my guest today would argue that

00:00:32.200 what you've got is a case of sad clown syndrome and to get over it you need to get together with

00:00:36.760 some other men and do some burpees their names are dave redding and tim whitmire and they're the

00:00:41.080 leaders of a grassroots movement bringing men together for free workouts called f3 which stands

00:00:46.240 for fitness fellowship and faith and according to them they've seen tens of thousands of men not only

00:00:50.840 get physically in shape by attending f3 workouts but re-energize themselves mentally and spiritually

00:00:56.340 today on the show dave and tim share the origins of the f3 movement and how they realized it was

00:01:01.300 solving the problem of sad clown syndrome in the lives of american men they then to tell what the

00:01:06.080 symptoms of sad clown syndrome are and how exactly f3 acts as a remedy we then discuss why male friends

00:01:11.280 are so important in a man's life and why the typical guys that men usually call friends well aren't really

00:01:16.300 friends we end our conversation by discussing that last f and f3 faith and why it's more about having a 0.89

00:01:22.400 purpose beyond yourself and less about religion after the show's over check out the show notes at

00:01:26.900 aom.is slash f3 where you find links to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic

00:01:31.600 all right tim whitmire dave redding welcome to the show glad to be here happy to be here well i've had

00:01:42.960 lots of requests to have you two on the show you were the leaders of a of an amorphous like what's that

00:01:49.220 monster that you cut off its head and it keeps growing another head what's that thing called

00:01:53.440 hydra hydra a hydra organization called f3 before we get into what f3 is can you talk a little bit

00:02:01.020 about your backgrounds sure uh this is tim and uh i was uh born and raised in california grew up mostly

00:02:07.620 in the san francisco bay area came back east for college uh graduated from harvard in 1992 with a

00:02:13.500 degree in political science went to work as a journalist uh spent most of 13 years with the

00:02:18.720 associated press as a reporter in rhode island new york uh lexington kentucky and then moved to

00:02:24.380 charlotte in 2000 left journalism in in 06 and spent most of the last 10 years working for various

00:02:30.920 financial services firms here in the uh second largest banking center uh in the country mostly in

00:02:36.440 kind of marketing and business development uh positions so that was my background this is dave i grew

00:02:42.060 up in connecticut uh but the army sent me south after i graduated college and uh i've never really

00:02:49.180 been back i ended up at fort bragg in special forces the last few years of my career and uh went

00:02:55.140 to law school at wake forest here in north carolina because i really like the state and uh at law school

00:03:01.480 i met my wife who was from north carolina so as it often happens uh yankee comes south goes to college

00:03:08.180 meets a girl from north carolina never leaves again we've got a lot of guys in that category so i've

00:03:12.400 been practicing law here in charlotte for the last 20 years yes and i should i should say i also i'm

00:03:18.940 married a southerner she's from richmond but her mother is from north carolina and we've got uh we've

00:03:24.340 got two sons and a daughter so all right well i hear it's gorgeous in north carolina i've been i haven't

00:03:29.020 been out there yet it's one of my to-do list though little little steamy this time of year but uh but

00:03:34.140 yes it's nice so you guys started this organization called f3 before so what does f3 stand for what do

00:03:40.880 you guys do at f3 so f3 is is a men's workout group at its at its most basic uh we have a stated

00:03:47.760 purpose the reinvigoration of male community leadership that's why we do it but all that

00:03:52.720 was kind of downstream from its uh origins it really just started out as a workout group for men to get

00:03:59.140 together and work out outdoors outside of a gym and not pay a personal trainer to do it so it's

00:04:04.460 called f3 because that's a description of what it's turned out to be and the first f stands for

00:04:09.420 fitness that's the magnet of f3 that's what brings men into our fitness groups the second f is fellowship

00:04:15.800 and that's the glue that's what results from working out together under tough conditions and the third f

00:04:21.740 stands for faith and that's not any particular denomination or worldview it just means you've become

00:04:28.240 aware that there's something outside of yourself that really matters there's a big world out there

00:04:32.800 and uh you've stopped thinking about yourself and you're you're addressing it and what you might do

00:04:36.440 about it put those three things together you got it free you have a book called free to lead and

00:04:41.040 i love how you describe these the organic evolution of this thing and as you said this didn't start you

00:04:46.980 guys didn't start off with like you have this grand mission to like reinvigorate male leadership in the

00:04:52.480 community it was basically i want to get a good workout so i mean what was that what it was just

00:04:58.080 like tim dave like you both felt like you're in a position in your life or like man my fitness is

00:05:02.760 really hit hit you know you know it's terrible uh i need to improve in this area yeah so so this is

00:05:09.820 tim i i and you know dave and i met at this workout that preceded the creation of f3 and at the time

00:05:15.420 i started going to that that group which met at a park here in charlotte and you know 7 a.m.

00:05:20.680 on saturday morning for outdoor boot camp style workout i was i had uh i had rode as an undergraduate

00:05:27.380 in college at about 190 pounds and i was running about 250 when i started going out to that workout

00:05:33.160 in 2008 and uh and so for me it was really this thing of i'm gonna i'm gonna go out and i'm gonna

00:05:39.860 start working out with these guys and i'm gonna get my butt kicked out there and i'm gonna want to 0.90

00:05:45.060 get in shape to kind of keep up with these guys and that involved getting more serious about what i was

00:05:50.440 eating and also about doing some other exercises doing some body weight exercises not just running

00:05:55.360 all the time which is actually a pretty inefficient way to uh to burn calories um so that was really

00:06:01.640 my impetus to go out there and keep going out there and in the course of doing that was you know dave

00:06:07.100 came out as well and he and i got to know each other and started talking about what else was bringing

00:06:10.900 us out there besides just the fitness part of it and sort of getting this deeper understanding but

00:06:16.240 dave kind of had his own reasons for being out there as well yeah i mean when i was in the army

00:06:20.800 uh i was always in very good shape uh but law school disabused me of the notion that that was the result

00:06:27.460 of any self-discipline that i had the unit requirements army requirements to be in shape and

00:06:32.800 being a leader uh it was incumbent upon me to do so but that was all external uh i gained a lot of weight

00:06:38.700 in law school and then after that had a really hard time keeping it off i could i found that i could i

00:06:46.260 could lose 40 pounds and gain 40 pounds pretty quickly and i did it a lot then the 10 years in

00:06:51.440 between graduating law school and then getting involved in this predecessor to f3 i might have

00:06:56.720 gained and lost that 40 pounds five or six times uh so really what i was in search for when i uh was

00:07:02.700 invited to this workout was a way to maintain some kind of consistent fitness and what i found was

00:07:09.200 that having the accountability of other men there who when you inevitably when you're in good shape

00:07:14.780 you know it's a it's a pendulum or parabola or whatever you get in good shape and then you kind

00:07:19.380 of start falling out of shape a little bit right there is when you need another man to say to you look

00:07:23.040 you look like you gained some weight back or you're slowing how come you haven't been out here and what i

00:07:27.900 have three is just just that suggestion by another guy because we're quick to jump on each other

00:07:32.020 uh when we haven't uh when a guy's kind of sliding was all i really needed and ever since we started

00:07:37.680 f3 i haven't had that up and down problem anymore i've been able to maintain my weight so for me

00:07:42.920 that was the reason i started and it's been a big reason why i keep doing it right but uh like as you

00:07:47.900 said f3 wasn't f3 when you first started it was just a bunch of guys getting together the workout as

00:07:53.820 you said it was sort of a shoot off of another workout group that was going on at what point did you

00:07:59.940 guys realize that this f3 workout was bigger than what you thought it was originally yeah so so we

00:08:09.300 so the origin of what we came to call f3 came in the fact that the the group that we were meeting with

00:08:15.920 the guy who was leading it guy named jeff guillible decided that it had grown too big and it's the irony

00:08:22.000 is that the the point at which it had grown too big and in his mind was 25 guys which is just sort of a

00:08:27.780 i mean it's kind of crazy considering how big it's become since then but so he shut it down to

00:08:33.160 new guys and this was in the summer of 2010 and dave and i had become friends by then and we're

00:08:38.060 sort of talking about what this had done in our lives and kind of looked at each other and said

00:08:42.520 well this is crazy we we want to get it in front of more guys so let's go start another location you

00:08:47.380 know we got too many guys at freedom park let's go to this middle school a couple miles away and we we

00:08:54.160 had we both had been in town for about 10 years at that point so we all we had relatively long list

00:08:58.880 of guys we knew we put together this email about as i recall about 100 guys and we sent a series of

00:09:04.560 emails throughout december of 2010 saying hey you might have heard about this workout group at freedom

00:09:10.360 park well we're going to launch another location we'd love you to come out it'll be new year's morning

00:09:15.000 you know come come work off your hanger you know start the new year right all the sort of

00:09:19.160 resolutionary stuff that people do and we figured we'd get two or three guys out there

00:09:24.060 on new year's morning and build it in much the same way that the workout at freedom park had built which

00:09:28.780 was sort of by ones and twos and about 10 minutes into the workout after guys started sweating it

00:09:34.000 smelled like a distillery out there and and the crazy thing was those guys instead of it being like

00:09:39.960 the ymca you know where you can't get a locker the first week in january and it's it's a it's a desert

00:09:45.520 again by the end of february these guys kept coming out and kept coming back and wanted to do

00:09:50.020 more they want to work out during the week they wanted to to do crazy races and spartan races and

00:09:56.340 mud runs and stuff and it just snowballed from there and it got to the point very early that spring where

00:10:02.780 we realized okay well this one location isn't enough we're going to plant a couple other locations

00:10:07.980 on saturday morning to take the the pressure off of um this one location that now has four year

00:10:13.740 guys and part with that challenge came we need guys to lead that because we're not the only we

00:10:19.780 can't be the only ones who are capable of leading this so so and again this this workout's free right

00:10:25.700 right pay for it yeah okay and you you mentioned it's it's a boot camp style workout i mean

00:10:31.160 what does it if someone were to go to an f3 workout this saturday what would they say well it will

00:10:37.500 really depend where they go we say boot camp really is kind of the placeholder for what it is

00:10:42.500 because f3 doesn't prescribe or prescribe any particular form of exercise it really depends

00:10:48.320 on the local leader it's very decentralized so we have groups that cycle groups that run together

00:10:54.160 but the typical boot camp workout is going to be a mixture of running and body weight resistance

00:11:01.220 exercises and maybe using uh whatever is available in the local area to assist that so if there's say a

00:11:08.940 playground you know we'll use the swing set to do pull-ups on for instance but for the most part we

00:11:14.340 don't add any gear to that like uh except for maybe kettlebells we'll carry rocks for instance or

00:11:21.100 cinder blocks or something that's kind of organic to the area and the whole idea there is to keep those

00:11:25.220 barriers to entry down so you know like what we call the eh or the emotional headlock is what we put on

00:11:31.740 a guy to recruit them and you know you say to the guy why don't you come out work out this

00:11:35.820 saturday of course he says first question what's it cost we say nothing second question is you know

00:11:40.960 what do i have to bring and we say nothing you know and that makes it much easier to get a guy to come

00:11:46.060 out because they didn't have to worry about buying the gear or having any kind of gear also it depends

00:11:50.860 on where you are so it started here in charlotte what we call charlotte metro and got six years ago so

00:11:57.960 guys have been doing it here for quite a while if you come to a weekday workout here which is 45 minutes

00:12:03.280 long uh weekday boot camp workout you might run four miles in those 45 minutes and still do a bunch

00:12:09.860 of push-ups yeah interspersed with a lot squats and burpees right so the the running itself will be at

00:12:15.760 a very high pace for brief periods time you might run a quarter mile you might run a mile uh it just

00:12:21.920 depends on whatever the leader comes up with we do a lot of running up hills you know or in tough terrain

00:12:26.400 to kind of toughen ourselves up but i you know if people ask me what are the components of a workout

00:12:31.340 what should it look like i say do what do what you discover what you think works but try to to have

00:12:37.600 three s's and two t's and the three s's are strength speed and stamina and the two t's are toughness

00:12:44.220 physical and toughness mental in other words do something to accelerate the men's strength you know

00:12:49.500 challenge them there do something to try to make them a little faster do something to try to give them

00:12:54.320 uh more than they can handle for a distance you know so they can build that stamina and that'll give you 0.54

00:12:59.360 physical toughness you're rolling around in the rain you know in the mud or whatever that makes

00:13:02.700 you physically tough and then that that mental aspect of it i mean we meet in the dark we don't

00:13:07.900 have a lot of uh safety things that we do we start exactly on time and if you're not there you get left

00:13:14.120 behind we don't carry water bottles we don't take breaks and all that uh goes into i think i heard

00:13:20.040 one of your earlier podcasts uh brett with the stoicism guy and one of the things he said was

00:13:25.720 that uh doing things that make you uncomfortable are good for the soul i'm paraphrasing what he said

00:13:31.260 but you know he said uh you know don't wear don't wear enough clothes for the weather in other words

00:13:37.140 be a little cold you know expand out your comfort zone and i i heard that i was like wow that's that's

00:13:42.740 f3 you know in a nutshell you know because we we just don't bow to anything that would make you

00:13:48.620 comfortable he even said something we say which is personal comfort should not be your watchword

00:13:53.540 you know if you set yourself aside take on a little pain you know we're a bunch of doctors

00:13:58.580 and lawyers and accountants and whatever we are right so this might be the only physically

00:14:02.420 difficult thing you're going to do that day but that's a huge part of it so if you if you go to

00:14:07.920 a workout you can be pretty sure that you're going to be challenged physically and mentally a little

00:14:12.380 bit pushed past where you want to go the leaders are going to be looking for the mean you know they're

00:14:17.280 they're not looking to kill anybody but they want to challenge the guys that are on and that's part of

00:14:21.620 the leadership is figuring that out how to do that well and then i would just add the other piece of

00:14:25.680 it is nobody's nobody's going to get left behind and that's one of the things we really hammer with

00:14:30.300 our um with our leaders is lead the workout in a way that you're not going to drop anybody so

00:14:36.200 you know a lot of dave was talking about you know there's there's going to be some running

00:14:40.700 but the metaphor i use is kind of pearls on a string right so you're never going to run

00:14:45.680 more than an eighth or a quarter of a mile at a time and nobody's going to get left too far behind

00:14:51.240 at that point when you're done with that running segment everybody's going to plank up you're going

00:14:56.160 to wait for what we call the six which is the last man in line to get there and then we're going to do

00:15:01.160 some sort of set piece um of body weight exercises maybe we'll just put guys in a circle and count cadence

00:15:06.940 and do exercises that's called a circle of pain maybe we'll do something like pick a hill go to the top

00:15:12.720 do one burpee run back down go to the top again do two burpees do that to seven and you call it a

00:15:17.220 jacob's ladder and so those set pieces are the pearls and the the string is the running through

00:15:23.820 the whole thing we're going to keep you moving throughout the entire 45 minutes or an hour and

00:15:28.920 that's your basic f3 workout is pearls on a string and i know i'm at a good workout when during the

00:15:34.760 running i'm like i can't wait to stop and do some push-ups and we're doing push-ups as i can't

00:15:39.320 wait to start running again you know then you know you're getting a good workout

00:15:42.480 all right so this thing started growing organically you sent out that email you had 34 guys show up

00:15:46.840 and people kept coming back to the point where you had to actually split up and start another

00:15:51.360 group somewhere else at this point did you guys still have your mission for f3 like was it was

00:15:57.080 it f3 yet like when did f3 become f3 at what point in this this boot camp did it transition to what

00:16:03.300 it is today i think it was about it was about two months after we started talking about splitting

00:16:09.980 the first location was when we came up with the name because it was one of the guys who had helped

00:16:14.780 us plant it originally who said to dave and it was a friend of both of ours hey you know what this

00:16:19.960 really is is it's fitness and it's fellowship and it's faith because we had started doing as part of

00:16:25.280 our we we do we call it at the end of the workout we have what we call the circle of trust and we all

00:16:30.440 sit around in a circle and everybody says their name uh and their age and then they they say their f3

00:16:35.680 nickname because we're super tribal about all this stuff and everybody gets given a nickname so that

00:16:40.080 you're part of the tribe um and then we usually have announcements of some sort and then we do a

00:16:45.920 prayer at the end or or a shout out and it can really be you know around here and in the bible

00:16:50.200 bell that usually is a prayer but in seattle sometimes it's just some sort of you know more

00:16:54.720 secular words of wisdom or whatever but that that is and that's the only sort of faith-based piece of

00:17:00.420 the workout but those were the three f's was he said you guys got the fitness and the guys keep

00:17:05.460 coming back because of the fellowship and and you got this faith piece so it's it's f3 and we're like

00:17:10.080 hey that's really good we're gonna use that and we had a guy a designer friend of mine do a logo for us

00:17:16.060 that was a kind of a military stencil font with the f a little uh a little three that was kind of the

00:17:22.220 in the uh the cubed position next to the f put a circle around it and uh put it on some stickers

00:17:28.940 and started out to guys and they started popping up on cars all over charlotte and then the next

00:17:33.740 thing you know you're driving down the highway going to the beach or something and you see another

00:17:36.820 f3 sticker and uh and you realize oh wow this thing's really kind of taken off so so uh i'm

00:17:42.940 curious like when did the the circle of trust start like was that something you started off with right

00:17:46.240 away with the first workout or was that something that kind of grew organically you thought hey let's

00:17:50.000 try this thing no it's kind of funny as many things happen with us it already with an idea of

00:17:54.540 practicality initially i was leading most of the workouts and at the end

00:17:57.980 we didn't have any formal real system we just kind of ended it and uh we write back blast which

00:18:04.760 is just a a short narrative of the workout afterwards we want to list everyone who was

00:18:09.040 there and i was trying to do that out of memory and i was having a great time doing that one day

00:18:14.920 tim and i were running with another guy and he says you know what you really ought to do is sit

00:18:19.960 around in a circle and uh count off and say each other's names we get a chance to to get that done

00:18:25.080 and the funny part of this is of course i was looking for a way a mechanism to capture everyone's

00:18:30.900 name so the idea appealed to me tim on the other hand immediately rejected it and said that's kumbaya

00:18:38.220 bunch of junk we're not going to do that now the funny ironic part about that if you know us

00:18:42.600 is i'm more to the right edge and he's more to the left edge so 0.94

00:18:45.600 you'd have expected me to be the one to say you know that's just some millennial sentimentality

00:18:50.700 engage in but you know we talked about it some more and we decided to try it and we the first

00:18:56.840 time we tried it it was a huge hit i mean the guys loved it so we say you know we we first we count

00:19:02.500 off so we make sure we know how many guys were there then we say what we call your hospital name

00:19:06.640 and that's what your parents named you before they knew what you were going to be then your f3 name 0.60

00:19:10.020 so we get that down and in your age because it's it's incredibly interesting to know how old guys

00:19:16.500 are and what that that age range is and then after that one guy volunteers and as tim said he can pray

00:19:22.480 to to anything he wants all we really want to inculcate a feeling of thankfulness for the

00:19:28.740 opportunity to have spent that 45 minutes together and to become better men and the prayer just branches

00:19:34.020 out from there i've been to a lot of different places in f3 and uh i haven't been out west where i

00:19:39.360 guess it's they're going to be a little more you know gaia based or something but uh i'll bet there

00:19:44.120 they kind of say the same things you know just this demonstration of thankfulness for being men

00:19:50.600 together and getting this opportunity to carve out 45 minutes to make each other stronger that that's

00:19:55.740 really the heart of it and then we walk out from there sometimes we'll you know pray for things

00:19:58.840 specifically but for the most part that's that's really what it is it's just that it's just that

00:20:03.060 demonstration and it's uh hugely popular and i'll i'll uh poke fun at myself because i was the one who

00:20:08.240 thought it was the worst idea i ever heard and now it's i mean it's one of the five core principles

00:20:13.380 there's only sort of five rules to an f3 workout and one of them is you have to end with a circle

00:20:18.320 of trust and and i'm like a lot of other guys in that if i go to another workout and it just sort

00:20:24.760 of ends with guys just kind of walking away from each other up see you later like it just doesn't feel

00:20:29.500 right like that it becomes the the ritual of it becomes this immensely meaningful thing as a way of

00:20:35.400 sort of ending our time together so that's awesome and what but what i love about it is that how

00:20:39.660 organic it was like you weren't thinking like this is something that will bring us together was like

00:20:44.320 this solves a practical problem but coincidentally it's it it became a ritual that's the way we do

00:20:49.940 almost everything yeah i mean we you know you alluded to uh we have a lot of different words for

00:20:54.560 everything and that we've tried to cap capture those in our lexicon on our website and really all those

00:21:00.840 things we've heard a lot of them come from the military but a lot of them come from movies and

00:21:05.800 other things in our culture we share and that's what i think it is it's an expression of the f3

00:21:11.200 culture the uniqueness of f3 culture doesn't mean that it's it's not influenced by things outside of

00:21:17.380 f3 in fact it all comes from things outside of f3 but when we see or hear a good idea uh and good

00:21:23.340 meaning it advances the ball it's missional we're very quick to try to to spread that and capitalize

00:21:29.160 on it and by the same token we've had some ideas we've huddled up and had some ideas that on paper

00:21:34.680 on the whiteboard look great we've tried them they don't catch on you just throw those away

00:21:39.240 you know and we just keep moving if it works we're going to keep doing it if it doesn't we're quick

00:21:43.500 to abandon it and brett i would i would say one aspect one thing that really shapes that is the fact

00:21:48.700 that it's it is free and it's volunteer led and it's not a revenue-based organization basically the

00:21:55.040 only revenue we generate are we we we sell f3 gear go in the the store that's on our website you can

00:22:01.460 buy an f3 shirt guys do custom shirts for different locations um we put a 10 tax on the gear sales

00:22:08.760 anything that's got the logo on it that's the only revenue we generate and we use that to fund um to

00:22:13.840 fund spreading f3 to new cities but because we run that way um we have to be almost i don't know just

00:22:22.600 have a killer instinct about like if something's not working we're gonna drop it if somebody's not

00:22:28.040 working in a position as head of expansion we're probably going to move on pretty quickly from that

00:22:33.000 and if something works we're gonna just grab it and and hold on to it and it makes you uh um it makes

00:22:39.100 you kind of lethal with your your instincts on that stuff because we don't you know we're all we're all

00:22:43.840 trying to make a living other ways and uh and we don't you know you don't you know you don't have

00:22:47.680 time out of uh messing around yeah f3 as an organization resembles a lizard not a bullfrog

00:22:52.580 i mean we're lean and light we keep moving because we have to gotcha so two months in you

00:22:57.600 said you kind of you figured you're onto something bigger you guys talk about in the book that f3

00:23:01.920 solves a problem that many american men are facing today what is that problem that f3 is the solution 1.00

00:23:08.660 for so we call that sad clown syndrome and we got that name from the sopranos an episode of sopranos

00:23:15.960 that uh well there's an episode where tony is being psychoanalyzed by his psychiatrist and uh

00:23:21.640 trying to explain she actually asks him if there's a tension or a dichotomy between his family life

00:23:27.740 and trying to portray a family man and the fact that he's a gangster and he misunderstands the

00:23:32.120 question and responds you like yeah everybody expects me to play the sad clown you know happy on the

00:23:36.640 outside sad on the inside and uh both tim and i were sopranos fans we both saw that and uh we're talking

00:23:42.340 about it one day and thought it really aptly described the plight of american man in this age

00:23:49.520 which is you you're you're in high school and your dad says you know study hard why so you can get a

00:23:56.440 good college you're in college study hard why so you can get a good job why get a good job you can

00:24:02.040 have a family especially wise everything leads to another thing but there's no ultimate purpose on that

00:24:07.860 you know there's no answer to any of that and uh you know i think i was in my mid 40s when we started

00:24:14.080 this early on that a lot of guys were around that age range in fact i think the mode age was 43 that

00:24:20.780 was the most common age when we were in those circles of trust what we realized was it was really

00:24:25.180 drawing in a lot of guys who had gone kind of the first 20 years of their career knew what they were

00:24:30.200 doing they weren't really asking their dad for that much advice in fact your dad might have been

00:24:34.380 getting a little bit long in the tooth was asking him for some advice when they're walking in the

00:24:38.760 break room at work and everybody got quiet they realized they were talking about him for the first

00:24:42.460 time heck i'm the i'm the man now and yet felt ill-equipped to deal with that you know something

00:24:49.140 was missing right what this lack of kind of purpose i'm doing these things i'm making money i'm

00:24:54.420 stroking checks somebody asked me to do something i feel like it's the right thing i go to it i go to

00:24:58.360 church you know i volunteered with the boy scouts whatever but if somebody asked me to define why

00:25:05.280 i can't do it and sadness this lack of connection to things eternal you feel obliged to bury it you

00:25:14.240 know you don't want to reflect it on the outside it would be harmful to the people who love and

00:25:17.880 depend upon it's still there and it's not going away and maybe you know tim and i are pretty clear

00:25:23.140 about saying we're not psychiatrists or philosophers or sociologists but we are american men with

00:25:28.020 families with jobs and we can see it and this this problem this syndrome leads to other unwanted

00:25:34.600 behaviors drinking too much gambling being risky behavior things that just are ultimately going to

00:25:40.240 harm your family harm yourself so we tried to play to make f3 this solution to that problem and it turned

00:25:47.320 out that it already was well and i would amend that to say we actually we realized f3 was a solution to

00:25:52.340 that problem after the fact yeah that was sort of you know he as it turned out before and i before he

00:25:59.260 and i even knew each other it turned out we've been going to church together for seven or eight years

00:26:02.860 um and never knew each other but we're part of it was a big escapable church in north carolina

00:26:08.420 neither of us coincidentally goes there anymore but it was this kind of place where guys would show up

00:26:14.280 everybody would put on their hermes ties and their suit on sunday and go sit in the pews and see

00:26:19.060 and be seen and you you kind of you know slapping other guys back if you saw them in the hall

00:26:23.080 but a lot of guys were just checking the box being there um and and we were among them i mean that's

00:26:28.480 the other thing is we are perfectly happy to admit that yes we were sad clowns as well sure before this

00:26:33.640 this thing happened to us which was the the predecessor workout and before we sort of found this

00:26:38.560 purpose around f3 so it becomes this thing of like looking around and realizing wow turns out

00:26:44.080 i was lonelier than i thought i was i thought i had a bunch of friends but they weren't actually

00:26:48.960 really that good of friends they were just sort of acquaintances now i've got this workout and it's

00:26:55.180 keeping me in consistent shape so i'm not bouncing up and down on the scales anymore i'm going between

00:27:01.100 fat pants and skinny pants um and i've got this consistent group of friends that i see four mornings

00:27:07.060 a week because i'm getting up at 5 30 in the morning and we sweat together and then and we share a bond

00:27:12.860 from that and that in turn has sort of freed me to sort of stop looking at my own navel and wonder

00:27:19.340 why i'm so unhappy and blame my wife for the fact that i'm unhappy and look around and say okay well

00:27:25.440 there's a big world here what can i do to make a difference in it i'm in shape i'm friended i got a

00:27:30.600 lot of energy let me go do something and and that the other thing that i'll say about f3 is we're not

00:27:36.620 going to tell you what to do with that either um we just want you to do something with it i don't i don't

00:27:40.700 care if you use that energy to serve the homeless i don't care if you want to get on a plane and go

00:27:45.420 to peru and and build mission churches i don't care if you want to go plant trees and and do the

00:27:51.300 al gore thing i mean it just it does not matter we just want you to have energy around something

00:27:55.560 the church thing is a funny thing was i actually met tim's wife long before i met him we were on a

00:27:59.980 commission together one day she says you know you you should meet my husband you'd really like him i

00:28:04.240 said tell me about him he said and he was a he's a journalist he was a journalist and i thought and

00:28:08.260 i said of course i said oh he sounds great yeah but inside i'm thinking i hate i'm gonna hate that 0.71

00:28:12.700 guy i went to boston college i went across the river so i have a natural antipathy to to harvard guys and

00:28:18.020 i'm a warrior you know why would i want to talk to a uh a guy in the media you know and i and i didn't

00:28:24.140 even know or meet tim in in in the church until long after we started working out together he was

00:28:30.040 teaching sunday school to one of my daughters and i walk in to pick her up and i just i'm just like

00:28:35.540 shaking hands you know superficial and he tim looks at me he says dread because he hadn't seen me in the

00:28:40.600 daylight you know i was like oh obt what are you doing here he's well i go to church here so he says

00:28:45.440 we went to church together for seven i say we went to church apart for seven years i mean it just left to

00:28:51.960 our own devices in some of these institutions that are designed for a higher purpose like church men are 1.00

00:28:58.880 just not selecting and uh that that one vignette i think illustrates that disconnect uh in a very

00:29:06.040 clear way so what f3 does let me just kind of summarize you guys attack sad clown syndrome from

00:29:11.740 three points the fitness part i guess a lot of guys who have sad clown syndrome they're like you got

00:29:16.300 like you david like the the pogo 40 like gaining weight losing weight over and over again and that 0.99

00:29:22.420 results in just i don't know you just feel like crap no energy um so the fitness the workout part

00:29:27.840 is there to help that the fellowship part i think it's interesting because you say that a lot there's

00:29:33.680 a lot of institutions that bring men together but not really what do you think it is about working out

00:29:38.760 with other men that turns you know turns acquaintances into like really strong relationships

00:29:45.840 mutual suffering i mean yeah sure pain i mean you know why why do dave and i get in a van with four

00:29:52.400 other guys every september and go run 210 miles for 36 hours straight you know it's just mutual suffering

00:29:59.840 i mean the army has this figured out i mean when uh when you go to basic training you know the first

00:30:05.700 part of it is always physical training and just the shared pain and i didn't realize it until after the

00:30:12.040 fact but getting beat down by that drill sergeant and having a you know a common common nemesis

00:30:17.320 who's forcing you into joint suffering together is the quickest wall breaker there could possibly be

00:30:25.260 and it just forces you into fellowship like any sports team or anything like that just doing that

00:30:30.160 together uh sharing that pain does it and it really happens so quickly particularly with the way f3 is

00:30:36.640 designed a guy comes out for his first he's shy doesn't know anybody or just you know he's just a

00:30:42.720 little bit these guys all seem to know each other but the culture that we have is very accepting very

00:30:47.880 quickly but like we like to say we aren't we're not going to leave you behind but nor will we accept

00:30:53.700 you where you are we will encourage you to do better and uh you know of course because we're men and

00:31:00.000 there's no no reason not to we give each other a hard time yeah you know we get out in those workouts

00:31:04.760 we're we're direct with each other and we got we laugh like crazy a lot of funny stuff happens

00:31:10.300 funniest thing that can happen in a workout is a new guy can come out and what we call splash more

00:31:15.200 low that means just throw up and i know that doesn't sound funny and if you're listening to it

00:31:19.300 you're like why would that be funny it's because it's happened to us all it's it's like a rite of

00:31:23.900 passage and when that happens you know you've splashed more low and man you're one of us now because

00:31:29.600 you what you've done is you've subjected yourself to a level of physical training that you could not do

00:31:37.920 for yourself i mean no one will go out by themselves and run themselves into into nausea

00:31:43.080 that requires chasing after another guy and if you're willing to do that and you're willing to

00:31:48.640 subject yourself to that then you're our kind of guy you know i mean you're you you have thrown

00:31:53.320 yourself and you've done the the nested plunge right and we have just found that that forms those

00:31:58.900 instantaneous bonds from which other a deeper relationship can then develop yeah it's interesting

00:32:04.260 you say that you guys give each other a hard time i just got done talking to a psychologist

00:32:07.880 therapist who specializes in like boys and males and he said that uh you know a lot of time men get

00:32:13.600 a bad rap for like not being nurturing men are actually very nurturing they just do it aggressively

00:32:18.240 it looks very very fun the way females do it i mean i right you know i'll take issue with with 1.00

00:32:23.060 that idea i think what we're more much more truthful with each other uh you know you can look at the

00:32:27.620 nicknames with each other which are generally not complementary now you know our our parallel woman's group 0.53

00:32:32.340 you know there's a lot of buttercups and sunshines you know but we don't you know we don't do that

00:32:36.840 uh in fact i think you're doing another guy a serious service but service no service oh service a

00:32:44.840 service by being frank and direct with them you know of course that come that's going to come from

00:32:49.140 the military but you know and maybe this is a little bit growing up yankee but you know if you grow

00:32:53.960 up in yankee land and you've got a bigger nose than the next guy your nickname is going to be schnoz

00:32:58.160 and then you know a thing that you might carry around uh on your back as a burden gee whiz does 0.87

00:33:04.880 everybody think i have a big nose well we get cut right to the chase yeah you got a big nose and you

00:33:08.640 know what you're still one of us you're one of us man we love you for that right you know that that's

00:33:14.080 that's kind of what it is it i think it's helpful for men in a male culture to be that way which

00:33:18.920 have always been that way successful male cultures i only think now you know in our current uh cultural

00:33:25.460 state is this idea where men are not supposed to do that you know i agree that at a point too much

00:33:32.600 directness can become bullying and it really is just a matter of intent if you want to belittle

00:33:37.220 another man to make yourself feel better well congratulations you're a bully but if you are

00:33:42.280 being direct with a guy and direct with yourself and and taking it as much as that you'll give it

00:33:46.720 that's not bullying man that's just being men and we have to as leaders in our communities

00:33:52.100 we have to have enough discernment to be able to see one from the other and and every time somebody

00:33:59.140 gives another guy a hard time that that's not necessarily bullying we've got to be able to see

00:34:03.740 that difference and uh f3 i think aids that so you mentioned so you develop these tight-knit

00:34:09.660 relationships within these workouts because of shared suffering you see sad men with sad clown syndrome

00:34:15.520 what kind of friends they settle for usually well i mean we categorize that there's i mean we talk

00:34:22.520 about this in the book a bit i mean first of all there's the legacy friends right so you're your

00:34:26.860 college buddies and you're like oh yeah we're still friends you know we live we live on the other side

00:34:30.660 of the country from each other but you know we talk at least what once or twice a year so that's that's

00:34:35.800 still one of my buddies we were really tight back when i was 21 22 25 years ago so you got those

00:34:42.040 guys and then um we talk about the mandate which is the guy that is married to the woman that your

00:34:48.720 wife is friends with and he's a very convenient partner so that the girls can get together and

00:34:53.900 now we can have a couple date and and the couples can can get together but or you know and a lot of

00:34:59.900 times maybe that's the another dad from your kid's soccer team or something like that and you can stand

00:35:04.160 there on the sidelines and talk about oh hey the panthers won boy cam newton looked really good didn't

00:35:08.520 any kind of thing um that's a pretty superficial friendship that's not a friend that you've chosen

00:35:12.880 for yourself that's a friend who's proximate um and convenient or the wife has picked for you

00:35:17.900 and then you know your third category is your work buddy um and that's guys that you work with um

00:35:23.480 there are problems in that relationship though which is that as we all know nobody nobody works for uh

00:35:28.960 for one company for their entire career anymore so that's going to change at some point probably

00:35:33.220 one of you is going to leave you're also in competition with each other um if not explicit

00:35:37.400 competition and uh and that's not somebody that you necessarily are going to open up to um nor are

00:35:42.900 you necessarily going to open up to uh your mandate um because there's you know a cross-collateralized

00:35:49.160 relationship uh between your wife and that man's wife and uh and you're not going to necessarily want

00:35:54.460 to muck around with that and then by the time you open up to your um to your buddy from college

00:36:00.800 it's probably too late because you have picked up the phone for your once yearly call and you're letting

00:36:05.600 him know that yeah my wife and i got separated a few months ago things things weren't going so well

00:36:10.060 well too bad you didn't pick up the phone and call him uh three months before you and your wife got

00:36:14.080 separated to talk about the thing that was going to cause you to separate from your wife so it really

00:36:19.460 we we find a lot of guys you know sort of gliding by with these very super superficial relationships

00:36:26.380 um and there was a guy named billy baker wrote a really good piece in the in the boston globe this

00:36:39.460 spring that got all the f3 guys really um fired up when they saw it because it was about loneliness 0.68

00:36:44.960 being a huge problem among among adult men this huge undiagnosed problem and and poor billy because

00:36:51.120 uh he got deluged by f3 guys i think every f3 guy emailed him and said you know there's a solution 0.98

00:36:56.360 for that hey by the way you're a sad clown hey you should start f3 in boston hey why don't you 0.97

00:37:00.760 start f3 in boston wait wait you don't want us here in boston you must be a sad clown and by the 0.98

00:37:04.860 way we discourage people we discourage guys to accuse other men of being sad clown it's not good 0.95

00:37:10.760 marketing it's not good marketing right you know when tim was just describing that it reminds me what

00:37:15.040 the narrator says to tyler durden when he describes single serving friends you know i mean so that is

00:37:21.220 really what it is i mean it's it's it's just convenience right you got that you got that far away

00:37:26.340 legacy buddy and you got your old times that you can bask in the glow of you got the the mandate

00:37:31.040 you know but when you get divorced your wife gets the better car and she gets all the friends so he's

00:37:35.560 gonna be gone you know and the work buddy man you go to a new job you don't find a new guy to play

00:37:40.320 golf with i mean that's just the way it goes yeah those friends i think the expression they're not

00:37:44.380 large grain friends yeah they're gonna pass through the sifter out the bottom they won't stick it

00:37:49.540 out when when your life starts shaking apart those kind of friends those single serving friends

00:37:54.160 those small boyfriends yeah they'll just leave you alone right so it sounds like with the the

00:37:59.120 fellowship part of f3 how it's a solution to the sad clown syndrome it's like basically these guys 0.76

00:38:04.540 are there for accountability they'll call you on your bullcrap right yep and then also they're there

00:38:09.520 for encouragement like you know when you're there working out they encourage you to push yourself

00:38:13.460 harder than you thought you were able to do sure sure okay yeah sure well let's talk about this the

00:38:19.600 the the final faith part but let's talk about the problem that you see a lot of men today face

00:38:24.300 in the book you describe a lot of men lack of purpose in life and you call these guys reachers

00:38:30.440 after jack reacher what do you mean by you know men being a jack reacher type guy well i think that

00:38:37.080 because we don't face any existential threat at least today in america and haven't really for a long time

00:38:42.880 and there's no draft and we're let's face it historically no people have ever been more comfortable

00:38:49.580 and safe than we are well that might have been the goal of all these things people have been doing

00:38:54.740 for the last 3 000 years suddenly now it's not very difficult right and i think as it turns out in the

00:39:00.520 heart of men and i i'm not excluded don't know because i'm not one but in the heart of men there is

00:39:05.580 this desire to be heroic to be purposeful to to attain something to have your life mean something

00:39:11.740 and without it man is incomplete and uh the reason why we call them reachers and compare them to jack

00:39:20.000 reacher or really any any of these idiosyncratic heroes you know that you find uh you find in our

00:39:27.020 in our current literature is because substitute we substitute in our in our in our suburban lives

00:39:34.540 we substitute the idea of doing something truly hard and dangerous with this kind of fantasy

00:39:41.580 life that we read about in books about men doing things that are truly hard and dangerous and all

00:39:46.100 these idiosyncratic uh heroes or anti-heroes really all share some very basic characteristics one of

00:39:52.980 the most important of which is they're very rarely married they don't have mortgages they don't have

00:39:57.500 stable jobs where they work for someone else you know they're you know they're independent in some

00:40:02.220 way read jack reacher being the the fictional embodiment of all these things right a former military guy

00:40:08.440 leaves the military because it's you know it's it's it's not pure enough for him he travels the

00:40:13.780 country on foot basically hitchhiking with nothing but a toothbrush not even toothpaste he has nothing

00:40:19.320 in his pockets but a debit card i think we've upgraded that now he might have a driver's license

00:40:24.820 because of uh because of 9-11 before he didn't he walks into a town usually someplace out in the

00:40:31.460 midwest or the south somewhere away from an urban area and that town is in the midst of some

00:40:36.860 conflict very clearly good and evil he stumbles into it in some way accidentally and neither side

00:40:44.180 the good nor the bad can figure out initially what side he's on the bad guys want him because he's so

00:40:49.660 huge and menacing the good guys are a little concerned about him but they're able to do some

00:40:53.400 research and find out that he's a former military policeman and he always chooses the good side by the

00:40:58.740 way along the way he hooks up with some woman who's usually from the the law enforcement side of the

00:41:05.060 house of the fbi agent or something and they have a very hot set relationship let me guess she's

00:41:10.240 beautiful but damaged but beautiful but damaged but you know he also makes it very clear to her

00:41:15.020 from the start that he's basically at the end of this he's leaving because he has to because it would

00:41:21.220 destroy this thing they have for him to stay there i mean that is just male fantasy life 101 and

00:41:27.380 one fantasy pile on top of one fantasy pile on top of another and and to make that uh that really

00:41:33.620 is diverting to men leading these lives that we're leading where being heroic really is what i mean

00:41:38.880 going out in the rain to get another box of diapers and coming back and changing your kid i mean that's

00:41:43.100 that's real heroic right going home at night bringing your paycheck home going home taking care of your

00:41:47.760 family being making your marriage work making your marriage work being a model to your sons is how

00:41:52.700 a man should act being a model to your daughters is whom they should look for in a mate and doing 0.93

00:41:57.800 that pretty much every day with a couple of mistakes you know that's that's a heroic existence

00:42:03.340 but you're really not going to set type of man glorified in today's uh fiction in today's culture

00:42:10.480 so i i have to say here being being the high-toned harvard guy i don't read genre fiction

00:42:15.400 or whatever so i had never never read any jack reacher novels but but i was a big uh 24 fan

00:42:22.280 back uh back in the day right and and and i remember dave describing the whole jack reacher

00:42:27.400 thing to me the first time i was like oh that's basically jack bauer that's why i love jack bauer

00:42:31.660 or we got rid of the wife at the end of the first season and from then on you know it was uh it was

00:42:36.480 free and clear or travis mcgee from an earlier era or philip marlowe was another one yeah philip marlowe

00:42:42.700 that well i mean when you think about breaking think about the whole thing in breaking bad why did people

00:42:47.040 hate skylar so much because she had these strings tied to wall right they wanted to be the free 1.00

00:42:52.740 right free to be the badass that he always wanted to be right so then then you know uh there has

00:42:57.540 always been this kind of in literature to be to be fair to women too they're often inserted as kind 0.99

00:43:04.400 of the killjoy resistance to a guy being like barbara hersey in hoosers yes i mean this guy saved

00:43:10.340 this town saved this kid he's trying to silver uh shoot her up and get him back with his son 0.97

00:43:16.100 and barbara hersey's driving to the next town to get all the dirt on him i mean you know so

00:43:20.500 you know this kind of male fantasy doesn't it doesn't serve us well though in our daily lives

00:43:26.020 because because male heroism is really starts with your wife and then your children and then your

00:43:32.440 friends and then the younger men who into whom you're whoring and pressing on positive habits and 0.82

00:43:37.460 then finally you know finally it is work you know it's the least uh most important thing in your life

00:43:42.740 so when we say reacher that's really our way of saying come on man all that you know focus on the

00:43:49.100 thing right in front of you the thing that god put us on earth to do and that's that's to be a great

00:43:53.220 husband and father and man in community you know what uh you know the the word that match match

00:43:59.360 right yeah yeah be a match you know be that guy and so the virtues that we try to extol in f3

00:44:06.200 are those virtues and instead of these uh idiosyncratic heroic virtues that are that are

00:44:12.420 sometimes over celebrated in the literature right so the the third f then faith you make it very clear

00:44:18.340 in the book it's not pushing a particular denomination or even religion really it's just

00:44:23.720 faith is like a purpose outside of yourself yeah i'll uh yeah so look i mean dave and i are both

00:44:29.800 practicing christians we are both more than happy to talk about our faiths at length with any man who

00:44:34.820 wants to have a conversation about that i would argue we probably have slightly different views on

00:44:40.320 it within the realm of christianity but that's also immaterial to us in the context of f3 what we want

00:44:47.260 is men to come in and and have the energy and the desire to act on whatever their faith is and it many of

00:44:56.140 them are christians and many of them do take that energy into their churches and into their what we call

00:45:00.840 down here in the south their daily faith walk right um but but i we don't really care about that what

00:45:05.920 what we want is to see men acting with purpose to affect the world outside their simple daily survival

00:45:12.660 and that of the the nuclear family that might depend on them right so you take the uh the stoic guy

00:45:17.920 that uh brett that you interviewed you know and he he talked about this what the trilateral mission

00:45:23.760 of man or whatever it was you know but you had to recognize those things over which you had

00:45:27.620 absolutely no control and don't worry about them don't think about them and you had to look at

00:45:31.440 those things over which you have some control some influence you know put some time and energy into

00:45:35.660 making those right but those things that you can control that you can affect uh and have impact on

00:45:42.560 well that's where you should be put most of your energy and time and that's what we tell guys too

00:45:46.660 don't sit in your house and and watch fox tv and yell at those people on tv they're not hearing you i mean

00:45:52.200 you're never going to meet president trump you know you don't have to speak your mind to him

00:45:56.500 but there's there's men and women and children in your community who you could and should impact and

00:46:02.020 influence towards those things that are virtuous as americans that we hold most dear and for those

00:46:08.340 things you have an obligation of your community as a man to be a leader in those ways and that's what

00:46:13.520 we that's just what we mean about faith you know believing that these things are more important than you

00:46:18.700 and being willing to do something about it put your money where your mouth is you know it's really

00:46:23.760 most people say well you know you this guy doesn't preachers really the problem we have my belief is

00:46:29.360 that it's men who won't preach what they practice guys who are leading these objectively virtuous lives

00:46:35.000 they're doing great things with their family but they won't talk about it they think it's judgmental

00:46:39.900 or they've been beaten you know they've been beaten down into keeping it to themselves and we encourage

00:46:43.880 guys to go spread that out talk about it help other men be the same way i mean if it 0.99

00:46:48.680 works for you it might well be working for for it might well work for another thing another

00:46:52.840 thing that said was he didn't say he had the answer he said he had a answer a purposeful way

00:46:59.160 of living his life and he felt like it was helpful to other people and that's why he wrote the book

00:47:03.360 in fact that guy's a perfect candidate to be a leader in f3 even though i don't i didn't hear him say

00:47:08.100 he's a christian i think he said he was a buddhist stoic but no right but we would embrace that

00:47:13.460 and say man you're you are with us that is exactly what we think so i mean what do you what do you

00:47:19.260 think it is about the the fitness in the fellowship part that energizes men to look beyond themselves

00:47:25.660 because you you guys talk about this in the book that you started doing the workouts on a regular

00:47:28.720 basis then organically you had guys getting together and saying hey we want to do habitat for

00:47:33.660 humanity or hey we want to take up this cause in the community what's going on there what is it about

00:47:39.140 working out together with other men that energizes men to to look beyond themselves they are uh they

00:47:45.140 are in community with each other i mean look i i i studied at harvard under a name robert putnam

00:47:52.300 about five years yeah so about five years after i graduated he wrote you know what has become a

00:47:57.740 seminal book in american sociology called bowling alone that talks about the atomization of american

00:48:03.180 society that in the in the 1950s you know grown men used to gather on a regular basis in bowling leagues

00:48:10.440 and rotary clubs and knights of columbia and veterans of foreign wars halls and something happened in the

00:48:17.220 60s and i mean the crazy thing about the book is it's sort of a murder mystery you know who killed

00:48:21.200 american community and he never really comes up with a satisfying answer he thinks it might have been

00:48:25.720 the television um it might have been the political uh upheavals of the 60s and so forth never get a

00:48:31.520 really satisfying answer but something has happened over the last 50 years that has caused people to

00:48:37.440 retreat from one another and from community in the society so the book at the time it came out i found

00:48:43.280 it tremendously disturbing a lot of what's happened you know kind of politically socially since then

00:48:48.120 has reinforced the concern and the thing that i've i've loved about f3 since we sort of reverse

00:48:54.880 engineered what it was doing was it is this organic solution to the bowling alone problem it creates

00:49:01.280 community um almost everywhere we planted and it doesn't matter if we planted in statesville north carolina

00:49:07.200 or hickory north carolina both relatively small more rural towns in in charlotte um in on in the san francisco

00:49:15.360 bay area it takes root and all of a sudden you've got guys coming together in a way they have them together

00:49:21.200 and willing to work with each other in a way that you haven't been willing to work with each other since since the

00:49:27.280 the 1950s and the 1960s so i it's really it's it's really community sam you you were talking about

00:49:33.600 this with jason mccarthy a few weeks ago we're both sitting here referring to all your past podcasts which

00:49:37.760 is i guess a testament of of loyalty i mean that is go ruck is building instant community during those

00:49:44.240 challenges and we've both done a number of the challenges and that is absolutely one of the points is

00:49:49.120 build an instant community of 30 people right we use challenges in our iron project leadership school

00:49:55.200 we use that pressurization jason you know we're both special forces soldiers although 10 or 15

00:50:00.480 years apart it sounds like but putting men under stress and women as well putting people under stress

00:50:06.800 in leadership position uh and making right against that is just a great way to teach leadership and to

00:50:12.640 and to form a cohesive team and he talked about how you have to spend that first couple of hours

00:50:18.400 you know in that welcome party until people figure out how to work together right how to work instead of

00:50:24.560 stop thinking about me how do i work together and uh i mean we've been doing this in the military

00:50:30.080 for 300 years in in america and and worldwide it's been you know i've listened to your your your roman your

00:50:36.240 greek and roman type it's it's that's how you build build a cohesive team and nothing's really ever

00:50:41.200 changed along those lines it's still the right way to do it so for us putting men together and putting

00:50:47.200 them under pressure and building them into leaders because that's the dirty secret of f3s it looks like a 1.00

00:50:51.280 workout but it's actually a leadership machine that that puts turns them into leaders and in turn

00:50:58.240 builds community builds bonds and and repairs basically repairs the breach um in this country

00:51:04.240 and in a small way i'm not saying we've solved the whole problem obviously it's still a huge problem but

00:51:08.880 i you know if if you put me in front of president trump i wouldn't necessarily fuss at him but i would

00:51:13.760 tell him uh you know mr president i i gotta tell you we've got a small piece of a solution that we started

00:51:19.920 down here in charlotte so if a man walks into f3 for the first time a sad clown that's the archetype

00:51:27.360 what are what's the archetype you guys are going for as a result like what should he look like

00:51:32.480 a month two months after doing an f3 workouts so we call we call that first post the first bell

00:51:41.120 so you know i guess that's a wonderful life kind of reference but so we call it the first battle the

00:51:45.680 second bell is his first leadership experience the leader at f3 is called the cue so you the leader of

00:51:52.320 a workout is the guy who cues it and the first cue is the second bell and that is usually a dumpster

00:52:00.400 fire because it's a guy that has never led anybody in that situation before and he makes some classic

00:52:07.120 errors but the best part of it he gets that he gets that out of the way and once he's done that

00:52:13.280 and gets some feedback from the other guys in the workout of course they're going to say yeah here's

00:52:17.840 everything you did wrong but we loved it do it again and and gets his kind of leadership feet on the ground

00:52:23.040 starts learning these time-honored leadership skills never though these have never really changed

00:52:28.720 starts learning how to influence other men and to motivate them he starts taking that into

00:52:34.240 other aspects of his life and ultimately becomes what we call a high impact man or a him h-i-m

00:52:41.040 and a high impact man is just is a guy who's willing in the various institutions and organizations of his

00:52:46.480 life he is a man who's willing to take responsibility for the outcome he visualizes things that would give

00:52:53.120 advantage to his groups make them accelerate he articulates those visions in a way that other people

00:52:58.880 can understand them he persuades other people to follow him to do the to pursue these outcomes and

00:53:05.680 he exhorts them to fight through the obstacles that are going to appear to any uh to any effort and in

00:53:13.040 that way he becomes that leader that person that makes things happen uh that disruptive force that high

00:53:18.640 impact man ultimately we see it in every group that's been going on you know as long as soon as

00:53:24.880 they get two or three months old it seems like it happens guys starts to work out at a homeless

00:53:29.040 shelter which seems anomalous right why would guys at a homeless shelter want to work out turns out they

00:53:33.520 do or they get together with a group that needs help in any way you know raking leaves cleaning gutters

00:53:40.400 you name it it just becomes that outgrowth he sees a problem a need in his community he has a

00:53:47.200 bunch of guys that he knows he calls him he asks for their help he tells him what he wants to do

00:53:52.560 and they get in behind him and they do it and uh that's the high impact man so brett just and just

00:53:59.440 to explain a little further we come within f3 that's called the reverse flow incubator and it comes out

00:54:04.480 of the fact that we want guys to come to us with ideas and we want f3 to be their platform for extra

00:54:12.080 ideas as opposed to a top-down approach where you know we're not gonna we're not dave and i aren't

00:54:18.480 ever going to sit here or whoever else gets the leadership of f3 is never going to sit here and

00:54:22.400 say you have about the homeless because that happens to be what we care about in fact we share

00:54:28.480 one thing which is that neither of us feel particularly rationally about no we just don't

00:54:32.160 um it just it's not our thing like we get that other people do but our thing has always been

00:54:37.440 actually adult men who need to become leaders um but it's it instead it becomes this thing of

00:54:44.480 you care about the homeless that's great hey we've got this platform of we think about 16 000

00:54:50.400 men out in the across the nation working out together i bet there are a few other people

00:54:54.960 who care about the homeless who are out there and want to band together with you

00:54:58.480 to have an impact on the homeless so you know we say that the best uh a guy with an idea looks like

00:55:03.920 a volunteer you know volunteer to lead it if we were a political party and somebody asked our platform

00:55:09.360 we'd say we don't have one other than seek virtue in your community whatever that happens to be

00:55:15.440 because how could we possibly know i mean we're not there uh so we encourage men and their

00:55:22.240 communities and their organizations to be better leaders to be virtuous leaders in those nations to

00:55:28.080 discern for themselves what needs to be done now we'll help you all day long as long as it's not

00:55:32.800 gonna hurt anybody yeah we'll show up for them oh yeah yeah as long as it's not you know obviously

00:55:38.960 harmful you know i mean there's plenty of things i do that i don't i don't really believe in the

00:55:44.640 underlying cause as being a major problem but you know what i believe in the man who believes in it

00:55:50.400 so he comes to me and he says i want to do this what do you think i said if you believe in it man do

00:55:54.960 it i'll you know i'll help you do it as best as i possibly can but but don't ask me to believe in it

00:56:01.440 i mean i believe in you and i think that's the difference between our organization and say

00:56:06.640 you know other very fine organizations like the ymca or habitat humanity they have you know targets

00:56:14.880 and outcomes and specific things that they want to see happen and they marshal resources and volunteers

00:56:20.800 and money to try to make those happen and we're just the reverse of that we don't have anything that

00:56:26.160 we think should happen other than people men should do things and to the degree we heart who we harness

00:56:32.080 anything to our motto men should do things men should do things right you know that that's the

00:56:36.640 solution to to our problem which is male is dormant male leadership you know we believe that in

00:56:42.400 communities where the men have ceased to lead and we have agreed to disagree uh agreed not to discuss

00:56:49.200 as an organization how it happened it doesn't matter to us how it happened it just happened so here we

00:56:55.520 look out in the landscape and we see men failing to lead like in the church where we were both

00:57:00.960 members and somehow managed not to bump into each other over the course of seven years well the

00:57:06.080 solution to that we believe is reinvigorated leadership and that's that's what we attack and

00:57:11.440 that's what we think f3 does very well the f3 platform is it helps reinvigorate male leadership

00:57:17.920 in a very organic way you all are starting a new outreach from that sort of teaching leadership

00:57:22.560 based on f3 principles talk a little bit more about that yeah so we call that the iron project

00:57:27.680 and that refers to the uh the line in proverbs about uh um sharpening one another as iron sharpens iron

00:57:34.480 and uh that's been sort of a core principle of f3 so i think dave alluded earlier there is a

00:57:40.080 sister organization called fia which stands for females in action that that sprang up alongside f3 about a 0.92

00:57:46.800 year after we started and so dave and i have pulled some folks from some leaders from fia and some

00:57:53.520 leaders from f3 and what we want to do is just basically take the leadership lessons that we've

00:57:58.320 learned in f3 and help other organizations build their own leadership machines i mean so if you think

00:58:05.120 about that sad client who comes in one end of the f3 machine and comes out the other end an energized

00:58:11.600 leader um we feel like there are a lot of organizations that could be doing that that

00:58:16.720 don't do that very well and so we want to come in and help teach them how to build their own leadership

00:58:23.600 development pipeline and empower their own people one of the things we haven't hit on this specifically

00:58:28.880 but one of the really key attributes of f3 and fia is that if you come in this is that second bell

00:58:35.200 dave was talking about earlier you are expected to eventually lead a workout if you're going to come

00:58:39.040 take part in this and it's going to be free we want you to lead as well and and that that vision

00:58:44.640 of shared leadership where it becomes your workout the day that you actually lead it it's not dave's

00:58:50.320 and my workout anymore it's it's it's all of our workout that's that's something that's desperately

00:58:55.120 needed in a lot of different organizations so we try to get in and really show people how to draw on

00:59:01.200 the different uh leadership uh possibilities in their people how to raise them up give them a chance to

00:59:06.480 succeed but also a chance to fail and then after they've failed find another place for them to lead

00:59:11.760 where they're they're better suited so that's that's kind of the vision um and we're uh we're out there

00:59:16.720 we're working with corporations um we're we're going to be trying to work with some college athletic

00:59:21.520 departments um and uh and we're going to be uh we're going to be working with f3 and and fia groups as

00:59:26.880 well um so the website for that is uh www.theironproject.com um and we're also on twitter at

00:59:34.560 at project iron with that been a great conversation guys um let's say there's a guy listening to this to

00:59:39.680 try an f3 workout where can they go to find out where they could www.f3nation so the letter f the

00:59:46.960 number three nation.com um that is our our national website you've got a map on there where you can put

00:59:54.240 your zip code in and find the nearest workout we are currently primarily concentrated in the southeast

01:00:00.640 but we made a big push into the ohio river valley this spring so we're now everywhere from pittsburgh

01:00:06.960 all the way across to indianapolis and the the i guess the southeastern suburbs uh we're going to go

01:00:12.560 to into chicago this fall um we're also down in texas and dallas uh san antonio and houston and

01:00:19.200 austin this fall and we're going into st louis this fall as well next year where we've got an

01:00:24.480 outpost on the west coast in seattle and we're going to be working our way down the west coast

01:00:28.880 and up into the northeast over the next couple of years awesome well tim whitmeyer dave redding

01:00:33.520 thank you so much for your time it's been a pleasure absolutely thank you brett yeah thanks

01:00:36.880 for the opportunity my guests today were dave redding and tim whitmeyer they're the leaders of the

01:00:40.720 f3 workout movement you can find out more information about them and even find a workout near you

01:00:46.320 by going to f3nation.com also check out their new leadership project it's the iron project the

01:00:51.920 ironproject.com and check out our show notes aom.is slash f3 where you can find links to resources

01:00:57.840 where you can delve deeper into this topic

01:01:09.840 well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice

01:01:14.080 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com if you enjoy this

01:01:18.080 show you've got something out of it i'd appreciate if you take one minute to give us review on itunes

01:01:21.840 or stitcher it's all it takes it really does help out a lot as always thank you for your

01:01:25.520 continued support and until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly

The Art of Manliness - July 26, 2017

#324： How Fitness, Fellowship, and Faith Are the Cure for Sad Clown Syndrome

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