Health improvement and fitness gains were just the natural bi-product of a well-balanced environment where “strangers” became friends and a culture of accountability (the good kind of peer pressure) quickly took shape.
It was a great group. A social setting of sorts, disguised as exercise where training hard was as much the norm as the chop busting that was thrown all over the room. Health improvement and fitness gains were just the natural bi-product of a well-balanced environment where “strangers” became friends and a culture of accountability (the good kind of peer pressure) quickly took shape.
It was 2004, when we started referring to it as the “Personal Wellness Experience”, or more descriptively, “personalized training in a socially supportive format”. The model had been developed out of the “college weight room” where a coach oversaw the group, and in some cases administered multiple personalized training plans simultaneously for various members of the “team”, and we decided it was important for the “every-person” to experience it. With program components specific enough to each individual's unique goals, yet appropriate for an entire group, it wasn’t quite group fitness, nor personal training, but it was intended for athletes - people who rely on strong bodies, confident minds and enriched spirits for life’s pursuit, regardless if the individuals that made up the group originally recognized it or identified as such.
And then something happened that created a bit of a ripple. Bruce, a middle-aged construction worker who had recently started back on his health and wellness journey, decided that he wanted to run the local Turkey Trot 5k. Collectively, we made it a “thing”...building some momentum around the concept in his group and sharing it with other groups that had been started and would grow to become the Pro-Activity “Family of Athletes”. We decided to get shirts made and officially entered a co-ed team into the 2005 race. Soon word got out that we’d be training together for a tangible finish line. Word also got out that we were getting “Team Pro-Activity” shirts made….something clients had been asking to purchase for some time.
Soon enough a high school athlete (did we mention “strangers who became friends” often transcended generational gaps?) asked if he could purchase a shirt since his family had Thanksgiving plans. And then, almost randomly, a stroke of brilliance! Program co-founder and Pro-Activity partner Nick Pfaff responded with, “We don’t sell our gear…. You gotta earn it!”. It was simple and elegant. A statement that represented so much of what we believe, what we’re about, and what we would become. There are no free passes. No one person is bigger or more important than the next, and the whole is always more than the sum of its parts. There is only hard work and when done the right way, it always pays off. Sometimes with a finish line, other times a commemorative t-shirt, but always in the long run, with a human achievement.
The Turkey Trot tradition and the catalyst of a self-described ordinary person (Bruce) led to an extraordinary thing. Over the years the momentum led to an annual movement, and what started as a small group of family-like athletes would eventually become a full-circle community. It led to our health and fitness program rebrand from the Personal Wellness Experience to M(ovementum) 360 and the eventual outgrowth of the BaseCamp Athletic Club and the greater BaseCamp 31 Community.
While some things look different than they did in 2005, hard work continues to pay off for all willing to put it in…. And human achievements are earned, not given.
-Eric E.
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