After 18 years as a gym owner, my mission has changed.
When I opened FJP Training in 2005, my mission was simple: feed my family.
As we evolved, my mission was adopted by a team and became more complex. We wanted to introduce real fitness to Laredo, Texas. We wanted to be counterculture. We wanted to stomp out the myths around fat loss, performance and health. Our mission, for a while, was hard to iterate.
But my friend Greg put it like this:
“If you care about somebody, you have to care about their health. And if you care about their health, you have to care about the community around them.”
So we built a caring, supportive community. We planted seeds and cut back the brambles and grew in a hundred different directions. It’s been amazing. But if you ask any member of the FJP Training family, “What’s FJP Training?” you’ll get a different answer. So here it is, the FJP Training mission, 2023 edition:
The FJP Training mission is to enlarge the lives of 1,000 people in Laredo.
I care about this city. I came back here by choice after time away. I started working as a fitness trainer (remember the old Wu Lin Wushu Institute? It gave me a home, way back in 1998).
When I opened my own gym, I chose the name FJP Training and the slogan “to educate and inspire,” because that’s what a FJP Training does. I don’t have to bring every single resident in Laredo to fitness and health to succeed. Because Laredo is a great big-small town, with one degree of separation, we can change the city by enlarging the lives of 1,000 citizens. They, in turn, can ask their friends to go for a walk, or share their salad and meat for lunch. We can be the city’s catalyst for health.
Why “enlarge”? Because our brand of fitness is more than life-extending; it’s life-broadening.
If you cut out processed carbs and sugar and start doing squats, deadlifts and presses, you’ll live longer. But you’ll also live better. You’ll stay independent to an older age. You’ll have strength and mobility and the will to live right up until the end—you’ll practically be your own pallbearer.
You’ll be younger for longer. And while you’re young, you’ll do more things.
You’ll Spartan Up. You’ll play more hockey. You’ll ride your bike 100 km to raise money for people who won’t. You’ll get down on the floor with the kids, up on your feet to dance and over the walls of diabetes and depression. You will go, you will see, and you will conquer. You will live a larger life.
The FJP Training mission is to enlarge the lives of 1,000 people in Laredo. What’s yours?