speaker-0: Why are middle-aged men the loneliest people in America? Not seniors, not teenagers, but men in their 40s and 50s. Nearly half of them say they feel lonely. And one in five say they have zero close friends. That's right, zero. Hi there, I'm Dr. Rock, a lifestyle medicine physician and host of The Health Feast, the podcast where health stops feeling like a chore. and starts feeling like a joyful and abundant f**k. Now a couple years ago, I was one of these men. My wife was diagnosed with breast cancer and I realized I had almost no close friends nearby. Then I found F3, a completely free men's movement and it changed my life. So today I'm sitting down with Frank Schwartz, AKA Dark Helmet, the CEO of F3 Nation. Dark helmet went from over 250 pounds and what he calls curating the museum of himself to now leading a movement that's reached over 100,000 men worldwide. So today you're gonna walk away with an understanding why so many men silently struggle with loneliness and what actually works to fix it. And to do this, Frank and I dig into why the quote unquote lone wolf mindset is destroying men's health, then he breaks down the three F's of F3, fitness, fellowship, and faith, and why the order matters. He gets real about what he'd say to a man who feels stuck right now, and you'll hear about a completely free resource that any man can start using this week. So, whether you're man feeling this yourself, where you have a man in your life that is. This conversation will change how you see what's going on and what's possible. So let's do the show. So ARP, you know, the Association of American Retired People, they recently surveyed 3,000 adults. And what they found might surprise a lot of people, although it probably won't surprise you that the loneliest age group in America

speaker-1: you

speaker-0: right now isn't our elders, it's actually people in their 40s and 50s. And nearly half of adults in that age group say they feel lonely. And among men, it's even worse. Nearly one in five middle-aged men say they have zero close friends.

speaker-1: will admit to having zero clue.

speaker-0: So the numbers actually probably...

speaker-1: That's my guess.

speaker-0: Dark helmet, why do you think so many men are feeling isolated right now?

speaker-1: It's a good question. First of all, let me just say thanks for having me on. I appreciate that. And secondly, I think to answer the question best I can. I don't know where guys fall on on on certain things, right? In F3, the third F is faith. And so and for us, that is a truly a an open belief to submission to a higher power, whatever you believe that to be. Some people. believe in a God. Some people believe in, you know, whatever might be like whatever faith or religion they might hold to ⁓ as as dread often says, you know, some guys, ⁓ you know, are Bob Dylan spiritualists and think the answer might be blowing in the wind. Right. know Bob Dylan song. We don't really care. We don't make a position on that because we really want to make sure that we're open to all men. Right. And we want to make sure that we understand that we're here to meet a man. on his journey wherever he is on that journey. Right. We're not going to tell him what to do. We're going to hopefully provide him a framework that makes him a better whatever it is he says he is. Right. And so I think that a lot of times when when men or women I'm really going to speak mostly to men partially because even though I have three daughters and a wife I don't really feel like I know a lot about women. You'd think I'd be better at that but I'm not. But also mostly because of the work that I'm doing here at F3 and in other places, right? It's just that that that seems to be the group that I feel most connected to and most led to try and serve and help. So I see it a lot with men. Actually, the statistics bear it out, too, right? When you start looking at like suicide rates and things like that, it's clear that men are the ones taking the hit here more so than women for whatever reason. So I think that the reason behind that, though, to kind of really get to the point of the question, right? I think the reason behind that is that we live in a world that has disregarded faith, that has told us as men that our job is to be sort of this lone wolf, ⁓ bad mother, can handle everything on his own, sort of this hustle culture, like I'm gonna be the CEO of my life and I stay up until two and I get up at four and I work out eight times a day and I run six successful nine figure businesses. And just like all this stuff, arguably none of it's true, but even if some of it was true. It's not even really healthy advice. Right. And so I think that we just we've got a society that has leaned maybe a little too far toward one side of individualism and some of those kinds of things. Now, I'm not a big collectivist guy or anything like that. But I do think that that in our desire for liberty, right, in our desire to be the masters of our own our own purpose and our own destiny and things like that. think that our society has a tendency to want to push us too far that way. And so we forget that it's not just that we need others. It's that that's actually the way it's designed. That was the purpose in the first place was for us to be able to come in a community with one another, help one another to lift one another, to bear each other's burdens. I mean, that's, that's the deal. And so I mentioned faith at the beginning, because as a person of the Christian faith, right, that that's, that's where I, what I understand, right. is that my job is to bear one another's burdens, to lift others when they feel down, to try and be helpful and to be an asset. And that's, think, our message kind of resonates a lot with guys is because that's really kind of what we're about, But we find this society and everywhere we turn, it's in our media, it's everywhere. It's really, really hard to avoid it in any way. It's on the podcast, it's on the... You know, it's on TV. It's on the wherever it is, right? It's this this well, you've got to be this or you've got. Yeah, you've got to have this. You've got to accumulate these things. You've got to hit these marks in order to be considered a man in order to be considered a human in order to be considered worthwhile. And unfortunately, that is in my estimation, that is kind of the dark side of things. You know, taking what is kind of true and twisting a little bit to make sure that we stay off our game and we don't actually find happiness. We don't actually find joy. Instead, we just find kind of this like. this worship of misery, like the more miserable I am, somehow that makes me better. The more crap I have in my garage, know, like somehow that makes me better. And there's always this searching, you know?

speaker-0: When did that happen? Because I feel like ⁓ male identity has shifted over the past few decades. Like if you go back 30, 40 years, was it, I don't think it was exactly like this.

speaker-1: That's a good question. You know, and I wonder sometimes if the guys 30, 40 years ago were asking the same thing, you know, and going like, Oh, where are the men? You're like, what happened? I don't know. I wasn't there then. And I'm not a historian by any means, but, but I will say that, you know, sometimes when you do look back, you go, uh, I think maybe it started as soon as the first, uh, first daycare came. Tell me, as soon as we started outsourcing our responsibilities for parenting. so that our wives could go work, right? Or maybe it started somewhere around the same time that, know, other, who knows what the cultural factors are that, that seem like those would be the things to point to and go, oh, there's the problem, right? Now the problem is the same problem that's been around since, you know, the beginning of creation. The problem really is that we as human beings believe, I think, that somehow there are problems in the world that either we created or that exist that somehow we're supposed to fix on our own when really they're not either they're not fixable or they're certainly not our responsibility to fix them. Right. And we don't turn to the source of where we could find answers and where we could find ways to, to, to, you know, approach some of these things and find better, better results. Right. I think we turn away.

speaker-0: turn away. Interesting. we're sort of culturalized or society makes us feel that way. For listeners who hearing this, about this, what is F3 and where did it come from?

speaker-1: Yeah, good questions. ⁓ So F3, I often say is a ⁓ men's leadership movement disguised as a workout group, right? So it's we get you to we fool you with fitness, a free workout, and we catch you that way. And that's how I'm just kidding. Right. That's how we sneakily take none of your money because it's free. ⁓ No, it's ⁓ so F3 started. And actually, it's funny because just yesterday was the 15th anniversary. Right. I don't when this will play, January 1 of 2011, that's when this whole thing started. And it was started as a kind of an offshoot of another workout group, an outdoor workout group that was already happening. a ⁓ guy who was like, wasn't really interested in scaling it. And so the two founders were like, I think there's something here that guys need. And so we think we should do this on a greater level. they didn't have any idea how big it would or wouldn't get, but just more of just like a. More guys need this, so we should not just keep this to just this one small group of, 20 guys or whatever it was. And so it's the three F stand for fitness, fellowship and faith. We define fitness partially as physical fitness, but also as what we kind of more broadly refer to sometimes as getting right and right, meaning ⁓ upright in a position where you can accelerate. Your boat's not tipped over, right? Your car's not crashed in a ditch, right? You're you're on the road. You're in the, you know. Your sale is up. You're ready to go, right? That's that's the idea. So we think that fitness is is physical fitness, certainly, but also mental fitness, relational fitness, spiritual fitness, all those kinds of things. So it's getting yourself to a place where now you are grounded and you are ready to go into lead and to go into show others how to live a better life, too. Right. So we have we have that that fitness piece. And again, like I said, we kind of draw you in with this free workout. And then Then the fellowship piece is, well, once you're there with a bunch of people, you start making friends. You start realizing, oh, I, um, I like these people, you know, like there's something more to this and that loneliness, that individualness that I have to handle this all by myself kind of melts away to a large degree. I'd be a liar, right? If I said that I still don't feel that way a lot, well, it's like, Nope, it's me against the world. I'll figure it out. Right. And it's funny because I'll tell you the story, rock. It just happened just this morning. I was feeling that way a little bit this morning after a workout. was like, man, you know, me against the world and feel sorry for myself or whatever. And out of nowhere guy, my, uh, that I, you know, what we call a shield lock in F3, right. Just calls me out of nowhere. And he was like, Hey man, I didn't like the tone of your text. And I was like, right. Cause all he asked was did you work out this morning? Cause you went to a different workout to work out this morning. And I was like, yeah, I did. But he somehow he, he drew something. was, went back and looked and I was like, I'm reading this, man. There's no tone in there.

speaker-0: He

speaker-1: He goes, well, I felt like there was right. So something spoke to him and said something right. So he calls me. And so we get a chance to talk and I get to unload my, you know, my baby feelings or whatever. And then we move on. Everything is fine. Right. So you get that fellowship, that closeness, that proximity, that that where men can come in contact with each other and we can we can share difficult ideas and we can sweat once next to each other. A good friend of mine said, you know, and I don't know where he got this because I don't it sounds like something that He stole from somewhere. So I'm to say that he said it, but he would probably say, no, it's not me, but whatever. I'm going say he said it. So this guy's Jason Kalipa. He's a F3 Magnum. He runs a thing called the train hard men's club. And he said, women connect better face to face. Men connect better shoulder to shoulder. And we have a world designed to try and make it so that we can connect the way that women connect. And so we, that's part of why I feel men feel pretty lonely too, is cause there's not a lot of shoulder to shoulder interaction. You know? So we find ourselves in that situation. So you get a guy shoulder to shoulder, you start really connecting with him, you start really making actual friends, like people who you go, all right, it's two o'clock in the morning, who do I call? Something's gone horribly wrong. And there's a list of maybe three or four guys that I'm pretty sure, right? I wouldn't have to tell them what it is. All I'd have to do is be like, I'm dropping a pin. I don't even have to be home. I'm dropping a pin. I need you now. And they would just jump in their car. Hopefully they'd get dressed first, but. You know, whatever they might not, right? Because that's just what would happen because that's the relationship that we have now. So that's the fellowship. And ultimately what that leads to is once you've gotten yourself in a fit place, right, your mind works, your heart's working, you're feeling good and your discipline is increasing and all those kinds of things. Once you're kind of there and once you kind of come in proximity with other men and other people and you go, OK, I got it. I'm feeling friended, I'm feeling fit. Then you start looking and asking these tough questions of Okay, now what? What am I supposed to do with this? And you recognize that the only reason you got fit in the first place and the only reason that you started really getting these friends in the first place is so that you can then go out and bless the lives of other people. And that's the faith. That's the faith, right? We really don't care whether you do that through the structure of a church of some kind or whatever it is, The truth, the big T truth at the bottom of it all, of all the structure and all the whatever else that might come with it is you're here to serve your fellow man. ⁓ them to become better. You're here to help them in every aspect of their life. You're here to support them when they need it. You're here to take care of those issues they might be having, right? And to forget about yourself and go to work. Now, if I would forget about myself, right, it'd be real easy for me to sit back like I was this morning and kind of go, but we're taking care of me, right? What about me? Right. And here we are. What happened? Buddy called this morning. I get to be on a podcast finally. Thank you for your patience and getting this here, right? It's a couple of reschedules, right? Yeah. But here I am. get to sit with a buddy, right? I don't know. I've never met you face to face, Wendy, but we're buddies. But look at this. Yeah. What's it's on your. And what's on your chest? It means I know what's in your heart. when I know what's in your heart, you're a man I can trust. Right. So that's whatever framework you use. F3 is not your church. But if F3 is the framework you use to help your church be better, help your walk with other men be better. Great.

speaker-0: but we're

speaker-1: But that's the ultimate purpose and that's the faith. That's really what we mean when we say faith is that submission.

speaker-0: love that there's an intentionality to the order of those three F's. There's like this arc that you described that first you have to be fit and not just fit in your body, but fit in your mind, fit in your relations. I love that you, pointed that out. don't often think about that. think about the first F fitness and I think, ⁓ yeah, we're all working out. But it's really much more than that. It's the mental resilience that you develop because you're doing hard things. I mean, I was. running in the rain at six yesterday morning on New Year's Day.

speaker-1: Yeah. You're sitting here and you're like, what am I doing? Why am I doing?

speaker-0: But why but I but at the same time I was like I can't miss this like, you know

speaker-1: Yeah, right. It's funny. Dread talks about right this this sort of succession of behavior and I I agree it goes from I can't do it to I can do it to I can't not do it.

speaker-0: ⁓ That's totally it.

speaker-1: where you are. Wow. I don't want to get up this morning. Yeah. mean, I was having a moment. I don't know if it's appropriate to say and you can you can delete this if you want. But I have something I call because I got three daughters and a wife like I mentioned. So sometimes they say, look, I'm having my menstrual period, you know, so I'm kind of in my feelings today. So, you know, like they give me some give me some grace here. Right. And I love it. So that's where I was yesterday and today. I was being kind of in my little by little moment. Right. So but what happens if I listen to my feelings? Right. I just stay in bed. They betray you. They betray you every time. Every time. That's not what a fit man would do. I'd already committed to some guys to go to this workout. And that's the other beauty of the fellowship. Right. It's not just that I hang out with my buddies and drink coffee or whatever it is guys do. It's that he busts my chops if I'm not there. Right. There's an element of account. And I think that really, when you start really getting, like if you really wanna dive down layers, why are people lonely? Because we have, for years, we've outsourced our own agency and we've put the responsibility for ourselves onto other people. ⁓ The schools will educate my kids. The church will handle teaching my kids about faith and God. you know, the afterschool will take care of their, their playtime. Right. And I just get to go back and I don't have to be involved. And as soon we started moving parents from children, then we start seeing a lot of big problems that have, that have cropped up over the last few years. Right. can keep isolating and keep diving back further. And unfortunately we keep looking at the same things thinking that they're going to help. It's like, well, you know, this didn't help before, but maybe if I do double it, maybe that will help. Yeah. I don't know why you think that would help. We're talking about health here, right? It's the health beast. Right. Right. Like, I feel so sick from eating too much. Oh, maybe I should go eat more. Maybe that will help me feel better. Like what, are you doing? Right. Right. Yeah.

speaker-0: Well, you know, this orally morning ritual, we call it the gloom. ⁓ and then we all have nicknames and I want to get into that. And there's this shared effort, but that really creates a space. That's unique. And, and I found F3 a couple of years ago, actually, my wife had recently been diagnosed with breast cancer. I'm sorry. And she's in remission now and it was caught early and this was a couple of years ago, but thank you. yeah, it was really.

speaker-1: ⁓ man.

speaker-0: A lot, but it was a lot. And I realized actually in that moment that I didn't have many friends. had friends. I had friends across the country, people I had done school with and trained with that I would talk to regularly. But locally, like where I was living, I had like a couple of friends and like, wasn't seeing them very much. And ⁓ I was on social media, of course, cause we're all addicted to it. And there was some post about loneliness in men. And then it was a long thread. Somebody I know, like, um, influencer or somebody. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But then under the, under the thread, like somebody wrote, Oh, F3 has been a game changer. And then like the first, and then, and then like, there was no explanation of it really just a little bit maybe, but I Googled it. And then I was like, what is this? How is that? I was like, there's people, cause I, I love doing a Spartan races since like.

speaker-1: Yeah, like they liked it or whatever. they're like,

speaker-0: And I had, I didn't have people to do them with. Like I would always like try to recruit a friend who really didn't want to do it. And then I show up to this thing and then all these guys are like, ⁓ yeah, we love doing like hard work. It's early in the morning. I'm like, wow, this is intense. Like it was even more intense than I expected. Right. I showed up to the first workout and, and I was like shaking.

speaker-1: you don't love yourself. ⁓ You know, like.

speaker-0: My body was shaking. It was so hard for me. And then one of the guys said, said, yeah, just keep coming. Like that happened to all of us. Like after a month, you just kind of get used to it.

speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. So it's so fun. Yeah. What are they? The thing they always say is, you know, it doesn't get easier. You get stronger.

speaker-0: But what happened, I want to, brought all that up to say like, ⁓ that environment really, like from the very beginning, felt comfortable sharing what was going on in my life. ⁓ Not just sharing, but like there was this genuine concern and outpouring for me, even though they were just meeting me. I felt this love and yeah, I felt this love and, and, and, and acceptance, like just the first time I showed up. And that is so unique. Like, I don't know any other organization for men that exists like that. Not the same way.

speaker-1: Not in the same way, not in the. Yeah, it is a much more raw and kind of open thing. And I think part of it is because we just beat the crap out of you for 45 minutes. Right. You know, it's so like your defenses are down a little bit. Oxygen may not be flowing to the brain quite as you know, whatever. Right. Especially this first few times. You're like. Because I know you're delayed. Right. Exactly. Yeah. I remember the first time I finished one of those 200 mile relay races that you do with guys, I know you've done one.

speaker-0: There he is. You're a little delirious.

speaker-1: before, but like we have one here called the Palmetto 200. You run basically across the entire state of South Carolina. ⁓ wow. And yeah, it's ridiculous. one should do this sort of thing, right? Six guys or nine guys for us. was nine guys. guess some guys do 12, too, but nine guys getting a couple of vans, you you run right and you you swap out over miles. Yes, This 200 and something miles. Yes. And I remember getting to the end of one of those and and I got home and I just and. Wendy, I just cried. I cried and I cried and I cried. Because I was telling somebody about it and I was telling them, I actually ended up, a guy switched legs with me so that I could leave early so I could make it to a daddy daughter dance at my church. And I was telling somebody, were like, oh, we didn't expect you to be here, we thought you were gone this weekend. And I was like, I have the best friends in the whole world, know I I just lost it. Because I was like, he's. because these guys care and they want me to be there. And so they sacrificed for me. I don't know where else you find that. I don't know where else you find that. I mean, I remember coming home after like the, maybe the third workout or so, second or third workout, and telling my wife, I was like, there's something different. Like, I think this is what the men's group at church is supposed to be like. Like we got in that ball of mania, like you laid your hand on another guy and you. and you shared what was on your, there was just something magic. know, there was just something like very just raw and intense. And again, for me, you know, much like you said, like I was shaking, I was dying. I thought there's no way I'm making it, you know, like I can't believe I'm coming to this. What am I doing? And some of it was to prove to myself that I could, right? I think there's a lot of, when you start out, you're like, you know, I how it is for you. There's a buddy of mine named C-Span who used to tell guys and be like, Hmm, I'm not sure you look like you could do 50 pushups. you come Saturday and find out. And guys would be like, Watch whatever. that's Right. ⁓ yeah. Right. Watch this. I guess we'll see. You care. But but yeah, it's just ⁓ it's that it's that breakdown, it's that the lowering of the barriers, lowering of the guard, you know, because we all carry around. mean, I do. You do. We all do. Right. We would put on our best face in certain places and stuff. And there's just it is not valued in our

speaker-0: That's a one.

speaker-1: world for us to be ⁓ truly transparent and truly open.

speaker-0: seen as weak. Yeah. Yeah. That vulnerability is a good trait. Yeah.

speaker-1: Yeah, and so, know to have a space where men can be Where it is safe. Hmm Relatively. I mean you're gonna endure a little mocking maybe but if you can't handle that I don't to do I can't help you know, you're gonna have to learn to get a little tough, right? But where you can kind of that's part of There it really is. Yeah, it really is right but you get to kind of work this life deal out and kind of figure it out with like-minded guys and that's

speaker-0: mental fitness.

speaker-1: I mean, that's why there's 100,000 of us across the world doing it. I I ⁓ can't stop.

speaker-0: So I want to just briefly talk about naming and naming and ritual and identity. know, think that's such a dark helmet, which is, you know, you, your name came cause you're a big space balls fan. take

speaker-1: I have this idiot nickname on the screen here. Yeah No, just because my last name is Schwartz. Like that was the... I literally said, my name is Frank Schwartz and they were like, like the Schwartz be with you? And that was it, it was over. I didn't say anything else. Okay, got it, got it.

speaker-0: So what is it about naming and ritual and identity that allows something deeper to happen?

speaker-1: that Yeah, ⁓ how deep do you want to go?

speaker-0: I mean this is something I'm kind of obsessed with, I don't think my listeners... But it's... But you never know! So let's...

speaker-1: Perfect. ⁓ Let's talk about it. it light. I'll it lighter for the listeners. but there's something. ⁓ So for us, it's a little bit tribal. Right. I mean, like if you if you served in the military, which which Dave did. Right. Our Dave Redding did. Or if you played on sports teams, you know, or were in, you know, heck, even like Boy Scouts or any of that kind of stuff. When guys get together and start interacting with one another. One of the ways that we show that you're one of us, is we pick on you. We kind of poke at you. And part of it is we're testing. We want to see like, ⁓ how sensitive is this guy? Can he handle it? What's he really made of, right? I remember there's a guy when, ⁓ this goes back to Boy Scouts, right? And he, were like 12, 13 years old, growing up together. He moved away, I moved away. ⁓ came back and now we live close to each other again, right? Out of nowhere. And I still call him the brown footed mooney moocher, right? Because that's what I called him when he was 13, because he was walking around Boy Scout camp with no shoes on, so had brown feet and he would steal moon pies. Like that was, like, yeah, the mooney moocher, like, who knows why we call it, like, that's the most idiot thing in the whole world. And it stuck for 30 years, you know, 40 years, whatever it is, right? And there's just something about that with men. And so,

speaker-0: future.

speaker-1: I don't know if it was intended from the get-go to give guys nicknames or if that's just something that sort of evolved, you know, early on, but, giving that nickname and now it's a whole, there's a whole ritual to it. Right. Right. It's almost like ceremony. Right. You know, get to the end of the workout and now we will bestow you, know, your idiot nickname. Right. And, ⁓ and generally we try and say it ought to be at least marginally insulting, right? You it should be a little bit, you know, like, okay, well, know, you don't want to name a guy Hercules. That's not very, you know, like, come on. And I find it lazy when it's like, oh, where'd you go to school? And they're like, you know, and then you tell them and they all will name you after the rival mascot. Like that.

speaker-0: My brother-in-law,

speaker-1: There you go. Yeah, of course. Right. And you're like, come on, man, like try harder. Um, I don't really love it when a guy's named after his profession. Cause what if he changes his profession later? You know? And so I tend to think that it ought to be something unique to that man. There ought to be something about that guy, his personality, something that comes out in that first workout could be his name, could be a physical trait or something could be like you, or it was like, man, this guy talks a lot.

speaker-0: Yeah, I talk a lot. was talking a lot. I wouldn't shut up and I'm from Chicago. So windy.

speaker-1: Yeah, and they're like, Wendy sounds good. Yeah. You know? And so there's an element of that where it's like, it's just something where it's like, okay, he's kind of picking on me, but it's in love. You know, it's good natured. Yeah. You know, nobody's like, oh, we're going to name you, you know, something horrible. You don't like any butt juice or something. I don't know. Although some guy might like that. I don't know. Whatever. Right. But, but yeah, you get a nickname and I think some of that is to, to indicate to the others in the group that you're part of the group. Right. And I also would say for me, Part of it is that idea that the name your mama gave you, right, in the hospital when you were born, that's the name she had for you. That's the name that you got when you, you know, when you were a kid. They didn't know you, they had no idea who you were, they just knew you were a baby in their arms and they had to give you a name or they wouldn't let you have a hospital. That's kind of the deal. That name you can change legally if you want.

speaker-0: came into this world.

speaker-1: Right. could go and file tomorrow and be somebody else, I guess, if I really wanted to. Right. I can change that. If you think for a second, I can enter any F3 in the world and change my name. See, look at this. You see how he's laughing folks. There's not a chance. Not a chance. so that name is the name you had before we knew who you. You get a new name now and this name is theoretically, I think, ought to be designed around who you're going to be or maybe even who you get to be. And so you, sort of start this new phase of life of, uh, and this is why people think we're a cult, but we're a nice cult. It's okay. No, I'm just kidding. If we're a cult, we're the worst, worst cult ever. um, But you get this way. I know, right. ⁓ no. What do we do? No one collects any money around here. What's going on? You guys have really failed in this cult business, but no one's sleeping with each other's wives. What is going on? All of your you're very bad at this. Yeah. But that's the idea, right? Is it is that now you are hopefully you're you're starting you're turning a new chapter. Whoever you were in the past, whatever you understood, whatever was happening to you,

speaker-0: people get healthier and

speaker-1: All that stuff that you got picked on when you were a kid, that, you know, however your parents treated you, all that stuff's over now. All that stuff's in the past. We'll help you work it out, right? We'll help you work through, you because sometimes there's stuff you gotta work through, right? We'll help you work through that. That's fine. But we're gonna work it out through burpees, right? We're gonna work it out through real honest, sometimes painful conversation at the end of a workout. That's how we're gonna work it Because that guy that you were is, it's over. You don't have to be that guy anymore. You get to be this new man, this new creature.

speaker-0: helmet that happened to you, right? You went from 250 pounds and I think you've written and talked about how you were just overwhelmed in your life and, now look at where we are now. You, you, you've created an organization that leads over a hundred thousand men. So what, changed for you internally in that process?

speaker-1: ⁓ good mentoring, right? Our founder, ⁓ you know, Dave Redding, ⁓ was a good mentor, ⁓ to kind of help me work through some of the things and see my life in a little bit different way. But you need that guy who's about, you know, 10, 12 years older than you, which is where he is for me, ⁓ to kind of walk you through some of that. So some of it's that there just became a realization after reading, freed to lead, and, ⁓ and thinking through some of the concepts introduced in there and then also just being around other It's like I just realized when I was like, I don't have to apologize for being a man. I don't need permission to do the right things. I can just choose. I get to take control of this deal now. Because I think up to that point, somewhere, this is, I guess I just finished 11 years of F3, call it 10 years ago or whatever, right, for math sake. I'm 40. Right. Or thereabouts. And I'm, you know, I'm looking at life going, everything I've done to this point was either because I thought it was something I was supposed to do. It was to accumulate something. It was to impress other people. It was, you know, I've got to make a mark. I've got to be important. I've got to, you know, show it like I had to do all these things. Oh, it must be significant. You know, this is a very important thing to me. You know, I ran a business and I was trying to grow it and you know, how much money I made was very important to me. what kind of car I was driving, the clothes that I wore, all those kinds of things were very, important. ⁓ And I think a lot of that was because I was still trying to work out like, am I worth anything? You know, do I even matter? Right? And so I think I was trying to put on the trappings of looking like I mattered. And somewhere in there realizing that I matter no matter what. matter by how I serve other people. I matter by how I love other men and help them with their problems. You know, ⁓ that's what I guess I found along the way. Like I was a man of faith. went to church. did all the, you know, I checked a lot of boxes, Rock, like, you know, come on, baby, you know, right? I was a good guy by the

speaker-0: But it was a construct, is what I'm hearing.

speaker-1: think it was, yeah I think it was largely. I think it was. And if you'd asked me then I'd have been like, no this is really who I am. But I think I was hiding under a lot of for sure. ⁓ And I don't know that you ever get finished with it. I really don't know. I'll tell you I'm not finished yet. There's still more stuff that I through and I think through and I go, man, gotta, there's more work to be done on this project that is Frank Schwartz, Dark Helmet.

speaker-0: that is, that was, that is the shift I hear is that you went from like believing that you were in this sort of fixed state. ⁓ I am this person, let me curate it to now I hear like very much this growth mindset, like this, I'm on this journey and there's no end point.

speaker-1: you said I love that that that let me curate it that's a that's almost exactly it isn't it it's like let me create this museum to show you right that's what you're curious yeah bring exhibits to these so let me bring all these exhibits to the museum to show you so you can come and visit yeah and you'll you'll take a look at all my friends and then you'll know this this is all America's

speaker-0: Yeah. Here's his entrepreneurial side. Here's his faith side. Here's his, he's got it all. It's like a, it's a resume.

speaker-1: Seriously, yeah, I was curating the museum of myself. there ain't no dust in there. There's no dust.

speaker-0: That is, I think what you're describing is for all of us, we have our ego, right? And most of us, think spend our first half of our life building up our ego. Like, I think that's pretty common. And that's what it almost sounds like what you were, and then at some point something happens, you know, ⁓ sometimes people say you have this, shit moment. Maybe that's what you had where. It dissolves that you sort of realized like, wow, this is actually just a museum. This is not.

speaker-1: Yeah, I don't know. I'll say I don't don't know if. There was one event. I mean, it was a series of events, probably to some degree, right? But I think that the way that I've described it too, and I don't know if it's unique just to Western culture. To be fair, I'm not I'm not familiar enough with with other cultures really to say for sure, but. But I do know for sure in kind of our Westernized, modernized sort of culture, it seems like this is the way that it goes a lot, The first half-ish, 40 years or so, I ⁓ think that there's important tasks that must be accomplished in a man's life. He should get himself some kind of education or trade or skill. He's got to figure out how he's going to provide. So he needs to do that. He's got it. And so for me, I went to college and grad school and all that kind of stuff. And then of course, you know, worked in a profession completely unrelated, but that's me. You know, there was common, right? We do that. But, you know, you said, but, but I learned things along the way and I found and kind of carved out a profession. I think that's one of the tasks. One of the other tasks I think of the first half of life as a man typically looks for a mate of some kind, right? Some of that they can spend that time with. It can be, you know, supportive to them that they can support that they can have that deep, intimate, ⁓ emotional relationship with where, you know, you feel that true safety, right? So you try and find that that person if if you choose to then then you come to a point where it's like, well, have kids, right? That you know, and propagate in some way, whether you adopt them or you have them, whatever, right? That's whatever. But you feel some need for family like there typically is this this want for. to create some sort of family. So you hit those things. And in our Westernized culture, that usually means there is some degree of you should accumulate some things because, you I know for myself, when child number two came along, it was like, well, we don't have the bedrooms for all these people. Now we can shove them all in one place, right? I guess we could have done that, right? You know, we could still with three girls at a wife and whatever, could still be living in a three bedroom house, I suppose, could have worked maybe, who knows, right? But, would have been tough, right? So we upgrade, right? ⁓ two kids, that means you probably need a little bit bigger car, because it's tough to get two car seats in and out of the back, right? So you got to upgrade that, right? So these things make logical sense. There's no bad in any of it, right? But you're sort of in this task deal. Once you've accomplished these tasks and you've set that foundation, I think what happens is, And some guys go, oh, that was so bad. can't believe how. And I think I looked at myself that way too, where I was like, Oh, look at all this stuff. was accumulating and it was so bad of me to do that. No, I think that's, that's the task. That's what you're supposed to do. Now, could I have done it differently in a little bit better mindset? Yes. So is that why I'm out here preaching and saying like, don't worry about it. Do the tasks. You're supposed to be doing the tasks. Do them well. Don't do them how I did it. Right. But do them well, but do the tasks because at some point around your 40th birthday, you know, somewhere in that, you know, 35 to 45 range, right? You're gonna find yourself sitting at the end of your bed in your nice new house that you've lived in now for a year and a half, right? And you got your two kids. You just got promoted at work, right? So you've advanced in your career as well, or you started a business or whatever it is. And you're like, things on paper, everything looks great. And then you're gonna sit down at the end of your bed, and you're gonna hold your, know, holding one sock in one hand, kind of staring out the window and, BOOM

speaker-0: Yes, I said. Now what?

speaker-1: That's all there is? Yeah, now what? What do I do now? Because no one ever told you what the rest of it was. So what happens? And so we think to ourselves, just like I said before, right? Sit down, you eat the buffet and you're like, man, I feel terrible for eating so much. I should probably eat more and see if that makes me feel better. Right? You're like, so some guys then dedicate themselves to a live of consumerism. I'll just get more things. I'll get bigger things. I'll get faster things. I'll get, you know, I'll get water things as well as land things. Some guys are like, maybe I'll get air things. You know, like your motor transportation space.

speaker-0: space things. Right?

speaker-1: That's what the billionaires did. Right. They're like, fly our buddies up into space. Yeah. I mean, and you go, that's awesome. And I think if you have the means to do that and that's something that appeals to you, I'm not here to judge you, man. I'm just telling you what I fear is what you that you stopped at that 40 mark asking yourself, what am I supposed to do now? And you never really dove into what your what your mission. was, right? You've mastered accumulation. You've mastered how to run a business. You've mastered, you know, whatever it might be. And you don't have to be ran a business, right? Maybe you advanced in your career and you, you know, and you've done really, really well for yourself and that kind of thing. And so you've got three houses and, you know, two boats and, ⁓ and you vacation. And that's good. If you have the means to do that and you're intentional about it, do it. I think that's awesome. Right. I also think that if you're doing it to run away from your mission, Then you find yourself, you find yourself in trouble. So you got kind of this completion half of life. And then I think you have to get to this creation ⁓ of life. some guys try to fill that creation half of life by creating more stuff or creating a business or creating something. Right. But the end result that only ever is worldly gain. you don't dedicate that second half, that creation half of life and do it in participation with whatever it is that you believe is bigger than you, then you will always be looking to fill that hole in your heart with something that will never ever ever satisfy you. You'll hungry forever.

speaker-0: It's tough. That's right. It's ⁓ Those are hedonic pleasures. Like when I buy something, I know like it was just Christmas, right? And I got some gifts and it's great. I love getting stuff. Who doesn't Who doesn't love getting stuff, right? But it's not filling that deeper hole, that bigger purpose that I'm hearing you talk about. And now you are the CEO of the organization. How long have you been CEO?

speaker-1: So I've been doing this role for, I just finished my second year of doing that. But for the last seven or so before that I've been doing other national roles.

speaker-0: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. So you've been involved in leadership in the organization for several years. I've heard you write, I've seen you write that leadership itself can be very lonely. So I'd love for you to talk more about that and just more broadly about the role of F3 promoting men to become leaders.

speaker-1: ⁓ So first question was, is leadership lonely? Yes, sometimes it is. And the irony of, you know, we're in this this midst of a fight against male loneliness, you the irony of that is not lost on me to hear I sit and say, here, right. ⁓ I would say that ⁓ it's lonely for for men who lead. I think that's an often is a result. ⁓ because sometimes you have to make very difficult or unpopular decisions about things. have to hold a standard that guys are uncomfortable. you have to sometimes you have to get you have to stop doing things that guys really loved doing and then even we're good right but it makes you unpopular sometimes and it's difficult.

speaker-0: You're not gonna please you're not gonna please everyone right in fact you're gonna make some people unhappy. Yes, that's the there are

speaker-1: are plenty of people, much to my chagrin, because I will admit that my gesture, the thing that kind of really holds me back sometimes is approval, need for approval. I have to be very, very vigilant about that because I can get myself way off in the weeds of somebody if I'm not approved of, right? ⁓ Which is part of why I was curating that beautiful museum, because everyone will love this, it's beautiful, ⁓ There's something here for everyone. But so I have to be careful. But. ⁓ But. You find yourself, I think a lot of times as a man, you you do have to do sometimes difficult things that are dirty, sometimes not like, you know, dishonest or something like that. But like if you're really going to lead, you're going to have to get in the mud. You're to have to live people out of mud. You're going to have to get down in there. You have to get, you know, you have to do things that are hard. And not everybody will understand them and not everyone wants to understand them because they really would prefer to just maintain their comfort, you know, comfortable life.

speaker-0: They're in their own world. They're looking at their own needs and their own priorities and they're sort of saying, why would you change something that's working for me?

speaker-1: Or I don't agree with your stance on this. You know, I have a belief about something that I think and it may not even have anything to do with the organization, right? But by virtue of the fact that I sit in the seat that I sit in, a guy feels free to look and say, well, you know, I don't agree with that until they'll take shots, you know, I'll you how stupid you are and what a bad leader you are and all that kind of stuff. I get it. I get it. Especially in F3, I think sometimes I feel like, you know, we live in a world, Wendy, where So many of our institutions, our leaders, or the people we thought were supposed to be leaders, they failed us. They failed us. And so uniquely in our organization, I feel sometimes like this thing has meant so much to so many men. And people, wives too, and that kind of kids. in sort of the trickle down effect, right? It's meant so much and I think that guys who don't like what I do now or whatever's leader, I think that they look and they go, please not this one. Everything else has failed in some way, right? The church, the whatever, all these institutions, they feel this way and they are, they're so afraid that we'll fail them as well. And so they come with a lot of heat sometimes, right? So unfortunately, as the leader, you have to sit and you have to take that heat and you have to listen. And that's often alienating, right? Cause you know what I'd rather do? Cause I'd love to yell at that guy and tell him, yeah, I'd love to that guy out. Be like, oh yeah. You know, that's that's not that's not the job, man. Not the job of a leader. Right. The job of leaders is to listen and to hear and to love and to serve. And it's hard. All right. And so you find yourself feeling that. So you have to be very intentional and you have to be very cognizant of it. And you have to make sure you have good, solid relational guardrails around you where a guy notices that text sounded a little funny to him, you know, or where I can go right to, you know, my My stone, right? You know, we talk about the wet stone of a blade sharpened against a stone, right? So my mentor and I can text him instantly and go, okay, I'm having a morning, you know, and he can say, Hey, let me give you some encouragement. Let me help you pull yourself out of the ditch. You know, that kind of thing, right? I have to be very, very careful and very intentional about that. Or I will find myself lonely. And I will believe like Tupac that it's me against the world, you know, like that's, that's a tough place to be. So as a man, We all find ourselves there in some level or other, right? Even in your family, maybe, right? You might make a decision that's not popular with your wife or kids, but you know it's the right decision. And so you're gonna have to, you have to deal with that. Right. But I think as long as you maintain, you know, be communicative, right? And you, you have greater love for the other people than you have for yourself. And you focus on those things that I think you'll find yourself. It's going to be okay, but you do have to be very careful and intentional about. Maintaining your and making sure you don't fall in the loneliness trap, right? Because my mental health would go downhill real quick just Yeah, hit it seems like what?

speaker-0: Yeah. Well, you said, man, you call your mentor. I, I a long mentor of mine who passed away a couple of weeks ago and he was, he was young. was 60. ⁓ Yeah. So, so I just, when you said that and I, I, and I, yeah, it struck a nerve. It struck a chord for me. And I, and I, and I feel so comfortable sharing that with you, of course, because, because you're, You're, yeah, because you get it and you're my brother.

speaker-1: same logo on her chest, Same mission in her heart.

speaker-0: Which is like ⁓ a, a simple, like basic logo. Can you just talk about that? it's so stupid.

speaker-1: Yeah, it was 15 years old and they were like, what should we do? You know, like it's three F's and like it was like, we have kind of this military ethos. Well, just like it was it's like the most simple. In fact, it's so funny. I legitimately over over break here had a conversation with a guy from another region and he was like, I hate our apparel. And I was like, say more, you know, like, you know, these are the things you feel like. Right. Tell me more. Well, our logo is just it's not very attractive and it's not very modern and it's not very this. And I wish it was this way and I wish it was that way. And I go, that's that's interesting. You know, because he had he was wearing a shirt with his regional logo on it. And I was like, what's wrong with what you got on there? And he's like, well, this isn't the F3 logo. This is my regional logo. I'm like, I know I'm not. Yeah, I can see. Right. But like, but what's wrong with that? And he's like, well, you we want to feel connected to the bigger thing. And I'm like, OK, when were the logo, you know, like. This is the deal, right? And it is simple. It is straightforward. is. You know, kind of is what it is. Look, when was the last time the swoosh got changed?

speaker-0: Right. Right. Right. This is iconic. mean, in that way you're saying it's iconic.

speaker-1: You And I get it, you you've been in this organization seven years, you haven't seen this evolve at all. You know, like this is just the same as it always has been. that's, but I also say like, yeah, well it's old to you. You know, we're, you know what we're doing out there right now, Wendy, roughly. And I think it's, it's actually probably increased some, but last time I checked, we've got two new workouts launching every single day and we've got a new region about.

speaker-0: Wow. That fast, girl?

speaker-1: Yes. We have, we have, we've surpassed over 500 regions across the world. We're approaching 6,000 different weekly workouts, right? That. So yeah, it's old to you. Who's been in F3 for seven years, right? But it's brand new to guys and they're just seeing it and they're like, this means something. This is a thing, you know?

speaker-0: Yeah, well, just as you're saying that it's really cool that you can be traveling anywhere and find a workout in the morning and show up. Yeah, typically not not everywhere, but if you're going to like a big metro or like I was in Dallas or Chicago, like no problem. And you show up and they're just like, ⁓ yeah, cool. What's your name? Like, like it's just you're instantly a part of this group of like You know, 10, 15 people that you never met before. Yeah.

speaker-1: It's crazy. They'll call out exercises that you should do and you know what they are.

speaker-0: Yes. Wait, can you talk? So talk about that. We talked about naming of individuals, but all the movements for the most part, except burpees. Except burpees.

speaker-1: You don't fix what's perfect already. You can't improve on perfect.

speaker-0: You don't mess with that. ⁓ Push-ups are called Merkins, which I understand is short for American. Merkin. ⁓ And right instead of Russian twists, we have American hammers.

speaker-1: we what come because they were called Russian twist when I started

speaker-0: Right, right, right. Bonnie Blairs, yeah. So there's so many names. Talk to me about the intentionality of naming and I've heard you, I think, talk about this how names have lost value in our society, how words have lost meaning because we call everything everything.

speaker-1: Yeah, yeah, we it's very true. This is something that is not nearly as big of a concern. I want to say concern, but it's not it was not nearly as big a focus for me as it is for Dredd. Right, so you Dredd, our founder, right? Still very involved and he's an attorney, right? So words are very in the meaning of the words are obviously very critical in his. He's a commercial litigator, right? So. If it means this, it means this. goes this way. Right. So he's very, he's very keen on these things and making sure that we, know ⁓ what we're talking about and how we're talking about it. Also, and I agree with him from his military training, right. ⁓ That having a common language makes things a lot easier. That identifies you as part of the group. means that you understand things that, you know, and I, and I don't have to explain certain kinds of things, right. You know, to you, cause you just know. this language together. So having language, common language is critical to a high performing team. Right. If you think about like even just in your family, Rock, how many kids you got? Three kids, Boys, girls.

speaker-0: at 3K. ⁓ Older girl and two boys

speaker-1: Girl and two boys, right? ⁓ And probably a lovely wife who thinks you're the greatest in the whole wide world. Thank you. I'll ask her that and and I bet I'm right. ⁓ But and so there are probably things that you say in your family even right when it's time to clean up or it's time to head out the door to something right. There's language that you use, right? And they know exactly what happens, you know.

speaker-0: that well

speaker-1: If things aren't met, if we don't do it the right, you whatever it is, right. They know. Right. So a high performing group or team is going to have a common language. And so I think that's part of why we have some of that. Now, as to the evolution of why we call the things that we call the things, right. Why do we call them? Because a lot of it is just what's evolved. Right. Much of it, especially early on, came out of the very strange ⁓ workings and inner machinations of Dred's mind. Right. And that still happens. Like he still evolves and calls stuff like if you go to a workout right now with him on, let's say a Tuesday, what we would call a farmer carry. He's decided to call a cane carry because Cain was the first farmer in the Bible. We're like, man, nobody knows what you're talking about. He's like, well, the guys in here do, you know, the eight guys who show up here, you know, the 12 guys who show up here, 20 guys to show up here every week. Right. Whatever it is. Right. They do. Fair. You know, so it's constantly evolving. ⁓ that sort of sense, but a lot of like the Merkin as an example, you know, yes, that was initially it was the good old fashioned American pushup. Then that got shortened to Americans and then I got mumbled to Merkins, you know, and then it just became one. And now it just is what it is. Right. Right. Right. The side straddle hop. That's not new. That's that's straight out of the military and why they call it that. Who knows? I mean, it's somewhat descriptive, right? Right. You get, you get what it is, right? So there's.

speaker-0: Right, right, That's true.

speaker-1: Right. Yeah. And we're not really I'm we're jumping. We're also moving arms and like, you know, you know, which way are we jumping? Who knows? Right. So, yeah, like it's ⁓ it is interesting. But I think that part of that, too, separates us from the world and separates us from other groups. know, I mean, but other groups, you know, CrossFit has their own. I mean, they whole workouts like if I if I go to the right. Right. Yeah. Whatever the watt is. Right. You know what a watt is. And if I say, hey, ⁓ The one today we're going to do, you know, ⁓ we're going to do five rounds of Cindy. Now for us, Cindy means a center block typically. Right. But for them, that is a, a set of exercises in a certain amount, in a certain order. you're not a CrossFit guy. ⁓ Every high performing team and every kind of trial will, will develop its own language, you know, over time. and I think that's, I think it's useful. I think it's useful.

speaker-0: I don't know what it means for cross-cutting. also heard you, maybe it was you or Dredd, like, you know, we use words nowadays, like we call everything remarkable or everything amazing. Like, and then, so nothing is remarkable. Nothing is amazing. So if we're intentional about these words, the words have more meaning because we're using them very intentionally. We're not, we're not just caught. mean, I know it's a, it's a, it's a descriptor versus like a noun or whatever, but the idea of using words in an intentional way. That, and I love that, that what I'm hearing is like, it's also, it's, it's code. It's code that bonds us and I can show up to a workout in Dallas or Chicago and they can call out Bonnie Blair's or monkey humpers. I know exactly.

speaker-1: You know I'm saying? Yeah.

speaker-0: Unfortunately, I know exactly how to do a much better Right. That's amazing. So so Dark Helmet, if a man is listening today who feels stuck, ⁓ what would you say to him?

speaker-1: Today we're recording this and they'll hear it whenever they'll hear it, But recording this. Early in the year. We're recording this on January 2nd, 2026. That's what that's the date of recording. So whenever you're hearing this, you know that I didn't know you had this problem because it's going to be several weeks in the past, right? So my advice is just know that I know I'm right because I'm telling you what.

speaker-0: They'll probably hear in a few weeks.

speaker-1: You know it's the truth because I didn't make it up on the day of right. So a guy hears this and he feels stuck. ⁓ couple of things that I would tell him. I would say first of all brother, ⁓ that stuck feeling you have is a couple of things. One, ⁓ it is a result of pressure a lot of times. When something gets stuck, it's because it's receiving pressure from somewhere, right? Friction. from someone, that's how things get stuck. So there's something emotional or mental or maybe physical. You know, I don't know. Right. But there's something happened in your life that made you believe that you were stuck. Right now. Fortunately, for most of us, I can't say this is the case for every man alive. Right. So there's always going to be exception. But for the for most of us, the stuck feeling is that it's a feeling. You feel stuck. And so I would tell your brother, I'd hold you by the shoulders and look you right in the eye and say, you're not stuck. You just believe you are. You just believe you are. It's like the kid who's in a foot of water says he's drowning and you go, just stand up, man. Just stand up. the thing I would tell him is take me by the hand, right? Whatever, grab my arm, whatever you gotta do and let's stand up together. right? Now that we're standing. Take a look around, right? The water's a little more shallow than you thought, right? The people on the beach that you thought were screaming at you, wishing you harm are actually cheering you and hoping that you'll stand up. That's the truth. But we create these little, I don't even know, man, these little museums, right? These little fake worlds where we believe a certain thing. You're only held back by your belief. So what I would tell you is grab a guy by the arm, stand up in the water, look around, recognize those people on the beach are cheering for you, not yelling at you, right? And then walk out with me. Just walk out with me. If you want to go back to drowning tomorrow, you're a grown man, do whatever you like. I can't stop you, right? But I promise you there's a better way. And I think it starts with making that first step. And I think for me, what else am I going to recommend, Rock? The first step auditory. Yeah. Come to something that is totally free. We'll charge you $0 for the entirety of your association with it. We will never ask you to pay money to come to work out ever.

speaker-0: Except on, except on April 1st when, when our Nantan says it's time for your dues.

speaker-1: We'll ask you Yeah, so that's a joke, right? So you come to something that's totally free asks nothing of you Except to participate right just try that's all we ask of you. It's just try it's always free Every man is welcome. So there's no question as to whether or not you belong here don't belong here You say oh, well, I'm not rich great We have guys in recovery that have been homeless for the last, you know, three years their life they come out, right? Well, but I don't know if I well guess what they work out shoulder to shoulder with a guy who's a billionaire literally I see it in start Right. It's a thing. Nobody cares. So guess what? Get over yourself and come on out. Yeah. We're to go outside. Why? Because that's how we build durability. That's how we build durability. Right. Yeah. You said you ran the rain yesterday.

speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

speaker-1: I remember I remember this so specifically we're on our way. was Thanksgiving morning on our way to a friend's house To go eat dinner. This is pre f3 and and I and some person ran they were running in the neighborhood where we were headed and I was like Easy spaz is Thanksgiving You know like now ask me how many Thanksgiving convergences I've missed in the last 10 years Zero zero, know, so yeah, so

speaker-0: Zero, right?

speaker-1: you come out and you learn something about yourself. And then the other thing is recognize that this thing that you will do after you get up and you come out and get dusted off, you start to recognize there's a mission. There's a mission that you have. There's an overarching mission for all mankind, sure. I think God has something intended for all of us, but you have purpose. promise you, we can help you find it. We can help you find it. That's what I would tell a guy if he was asking, right? On today, January 2nd, 2026. Now a guy's gonna hear this and he's gonna go, one of two things, he's gonna go, that guy's full of Believe me, with love, friend, whoever you may be, much better guys have said much worse about me. So I don't really care what you think, right? And I don't care what you think, not in a dismissive way. I don't care what you think because... What you're saying is something that you're saying because you are hurt because you're hurt. You're, you're desperate. You're frustrated. I have been there. I know how I felt when I was there and I do not wish that for you. I do not.

speaker-0: Wow. Stand up with you. Wow. I love it. I love it. Amazing. And there's a website ⁓ f3 near dot me. Yes. The letter F the number three N E A R dot ⁓ E.

speaker-1: You should be to find one or if that doesn't appeal go to the f3nation.com website and and click start here and you should be able to find a location the information is the same But yeah, so either way the near me actually is now integrated into the website. It's pretty cool So it should theoretically if you allow location services on your browser, right? It should be able to pull out the ones that are right near you So yeah either way, but but go find one near you. The best part is all you have to do is this Show up wherever you are at the appointed time Do not be late, we start on time and we will run away and you will be left in a dark parking lot. I can attest to that because it's happened to me.

speaker-0: This happened to me too, man. And then I'm like, well, they might be here or they might be here.

speaker-1: I'm like, do I hear yelling? know, right? And I've missed whole workouts before it's happened, you know, but you don't do it twice typically. Right. Right. Right. So show up on time, get there and then just tell them that the tell them Wendy sent you. That's all you got to do. Just say, hey, I heard about this on the health feast podcast. Wendy sent me and they will put their arm around it. It'll be like, ⁓ sounds great. I mean,

speaker-0: We love Wendy's. Amazing. And, and I will say this because a lot of people, cause I, I give this stuff, you know, we say in the organization, you give it away, right? And so I, I've brought my, cousins and my friends and my brother-in-law and like, you name it. but there are people I know, friends I know who are like, don't want to do that. I don't want to do that. And, you sort of dig into it and they're like, I don't want to get up that early. I don't really want to exercise that early. And that is a belief that people have that they can't or won't enjoy those things. I used to have that belief. I used to, for years, I used to think, ⁓ I'm a night person and I don't want to get up early. And like, that's not, that's punishment. ⁓ But once you start doing it, I mean, you know, they say like, ⁓ discipline will set you free. You know, so if you, if you get into the routine of going to bed, ⁓ at a decent time and getting up early. And then beyond that, actually, like people think it's punishment, but actually it's the opposite because you are bonding with your brothers. You're releasing all these positive endorphins and cannabinoids and opiates. Like you feel so amazing. It's always like halfway through the workout where I'm like, ⁓ this is why I come. Cause I feel good now. Right. Like when I started, I'm like,

speaker-1: I don't know, just kill me. What have I done? Yeah. Yeah. So, Where do we even find these things? Why am I? ⁓

speaker-0: What am I doing? Why am I holding this block? So I mean, you would probably agree. would just tell people like, get past that. You can do this. so many people. We have a 70 something year old, 70 year old guy who comes to our workouts. We call him Flintstone. Like there's so many people who have either physical or mental disabilities who come to our workouts.

speaker-1: blind guys that come work out. Yeah, we've got guys in wheelchairs that come work. I mean, you know, save

speaker-0: That the only excuse. Yeah, the only excuse is the one you're creating, just like you said, is one you're creating in your head. When you're a limitation.

speaker-1: you're creating in your head. You're right though, Wendy, not everybody is gonna wanna get up at five in the morning and come do this. And not everybody thinks that exercise is a good way to health and that kind of thing. And I would say, you know what? You have to figure this out for you. I would not dare to say that we have the magic one size fits all solution, right? What I do believe is we have a framework. that if you apply it to your own life, you'll find a way to adapt it and get yourself better. I do believe that, right? But I would say this, do me a favor. Just admit that you want to stay the same. Just admit that to yourself and say, nope, I'm as good as I'm ever going to be. I'm as good as I ever need to be. And so I should not try anything new. If you can say that out loud with honesty to yourself in the mirror, please don't come to a workout. You've nailed it. There's nothing we can offer you. But if there's even a hint of hesitation as you do so, then I'm here to tell you, you owe it to yourself to look. You owe it to yourself to look. Just come and see. Just come and see.

speaker-0: find it hard to believe that anyone listening out there doesn't have at least a hint of doubt when they say that.

speaker-1: Let me just say it this way, Wendy. I don't make bets I can't win. you know, any man who says that, I don't want him here anyway, because he, we can't offer him anything. You know, if he really believes that to his core, that he's perfect just the way he is, we can't help him. That's fine. I'm not mad.

speaker-0: Okay, so Frank, I end with two questions I ask everyone. First one is what mindset tip or life philosophy are you bringing to the health feast? What's something you live by?

speaker-1: Uh, it is funny. And this is, you know, recent dish in the last decade or so. Um, but, uh, I think I, in fact, I think I wrote this down the other day, tweeted it out. Uh, but if you are, if you're on a mission of continuous improvement, then there is no peak and there is no arrival. Right. And so I think that that is where some people want things to be done. They want to just say, I am finished. Right. And I know how I break it to you. I don't think that happens until long after this life, right? I don't believe we get finished while we are here. And so ⁓ I bring that, that mindset is there's never, there's never a time when I'm not going to be working on myself. There's just always going to be room for me to do better and do more and help others in a different way ⁓ and to find a deeper.

speaker-0: And then and then Darrell helmet last question. How do you personally make your own life a health feast?

speaker-1: Hmm. I try really hard to, you know, we use an analogy a lot in F3. We don't believe in work life balance, right? We think that's kind of a false ⁓ way of looking at it. We said that there's a rhythm, right? And so we talk a lot about spinning plates, right? You know, so I think that ⁓ the way that I try and make my life a hell of a feast is is number one to the word feast, I think is really instructive there. is to maintain a mindset of abundance. It's not a zero sum game. Nobody wins. You can't accumulate your way to happiness, right? So everything is abundant. ⁓ Life is abundant. Love is abundant. Service is abundant. Relationships are abundant. I will never run out of anything. All the resources that I have that I need for myself exist and they there in abundance. And I do not have to have a scarcity mindset. And so think that's probably number one. And then I think the other thing is, you when I think about how do I, how do I do this? It's recognizing what plates need to be spun when, ⁓ asking for help to spin, you know, when I, when I don't have it. ⁓ and also, you know, understanding that, that some plates probably don't even need to be on these little poles and then figuring out how do I continually reduce my, my focus down to those things that I can be the most influential in and then removing those things that are are distractions that would lead me to not be effective. And that's tricky, you know? Because there's some things I like doing, you know, but I'm not really good at them and I shouldn't be dealing with them, you know, like they're distractions, you know? They're distractions. So, yeah, figuring out how to remove those things, maintain an abundance mindset, and seek to be effective.

speaker-0: Wow. I love it. ⁓ Well, if we already mentioned the websites, but I'll have them, of course, in our, in our show notes. And I just want to say, ⁓ you know, well, first of all, thanks for making the time today. Absolutely. What you've kind of helped shape with F3 is I want to say it's, it's structured, but it's also playful. You know, it's serious, but it's. It's also vulnerable and it meets men where they are. doesn't, but it, as we say in F3, it doesn't leave them there.

speaker-1: True. That is the credo, right?

speaker-0: Yeah. And, just this conversation I see you carry the same kind of paradox. You're tough, but you're funny. You're ⁓ emotionally honest and sharp, but willing to disrupt ⁓ at the same time, invite people in. And that, that mix is what I think makes this whole thing work. So I'm really grateful that we had the opportunity to spend this time together.

speaker-1: Very much appreciate it.

speaker-0: All right, and we do a requisite fist bump to the camera, please. Boom. All right. Boom. ⁓ Please find us on wherever you get podcasts and share and give us a five out of five review. That's how you can support the pod. And until next time, everyone live well and rock on.

speaker-1: you