Yes, we want to help you improve your fitness and health. Yes we want to get you leaner, stronger and moving better. Yes, we want to improve your mindset and your eating habits. Yes, we want you to learn to climb ropes, flip tires, snatch, deadlift and just generally kick ass. Yes, all this is true. But we also want to make you smile. Make you have fun for an hour. Forget about work, traffic, due dates, bills, the guy in the next cubicle that microwaves fish at lunch and every other godforsaken stressor that life throws at you on the daily.
Sociologist Ray Oldenberg first pioneered a concept called your “third place” in his 1989 book The Great Good Place, in which he explains that your third place is a hangout spot, community center or “home away from home” that provides an essential zone outside of home and work. Oldenburg calls one’s “first place” the home and those that one lives with. The “second place” is the workplace — where people may actually spend most of their time. Third places, then, are “anchors” of community life and facilitate and foster broader, more creative interaction. In other words, “your third place is where you relax in public, where you encounter familiar faces and make new acquaintances.” Where you get the creative juices flowing and form friendships and relationships over shared bonds and experiences.
We love the fact that we’re the “third place” for a lot of you. We take that designation pretty seriously and we strive to make it as enjoyable and stress free as possible. We’ve got the hour planned out by the minute and the Coaches will lead the way. You just have to show up. Show up, turn up the music, blow off some steam and high five some people like Pat Sherwood famously said. We want to not only be the third place for you, we want to be the “happy place” for you. When you think of us, your fellow members, your coaches and the community in general, we want you to smile. We want you to get the warm fuzzies, to laugh remembering a joke someone made, to think about an event we held, a lift you made or missed, a time you helped someone get through a tough wod, game or funny warmup we played, all of it, the good stuff. Inside and outside these four walls. Like a family, there are ups and downs but we care for, support, include and love each other unconditionally.
Smile. For an hour a day at least. Look around at your Fortis Fam and smile. It’s contagious, it’s reciprocated, it feels good and it’s least you can do in the Happy Place.
CrossFit Fortis