KATY, Texas — By day, Glenn Ayala is a 50-something account manager who spends much of his time behind a desk. But at Rick Rice Park in the early morning darkness, doing pushups and jogging with a 20-pound rucksack on his back, he is known as K9, and he is with his people.
One Friday in August, Ayala joined about 20 other men in what they called the pre-dawn “gloom” for the group’s regular workout. They grunted and hooted un-self-consciously, razzing one another and shouting encouragements, using nicknames generated by the group. (Ayala got his because he trains dogs in his spare time.)
The members also often gather to pray together and talk, building friendships that have extended into their daily lives: When Ayala separated from his wife, members of the group helped him move. When his relationship with his adult son foundered, they texted him Garth Brooks songs to buoy him.
This is F3 — that’s fitness, fellowship and faith — a fast-growing network of men’s workouts that combine exercise with spiritually inflected camaraderie. After its founding in 2011 as a free, outdoor group workout, its popularity exploded during the pandemic, expanding to some 3,400 groups across the country from 1,900, aiming to solve, as John Lambert, aka Slaughter, the network’s CEO, put it, “a problem that society at large and men definitely didn’t even know they had: middle-age male loneliness.”
In Katy, a booming upper-middle-class suburb just west of Houston bursting with office parks, new housing developments and the most expensive high school stadium in the nation, the F3 model has thrived. The former railroad town now has 18 workout locations, compared with four in Houston proper.
I first heard about F3 through a few acquaintances in Texas, men who spoke about their local groups with the zeal of evangelists. It reminded me of how urban women used to talk with me about SoulCycle, only these guys were suburban fathers.
Its no-frills formula inspires fervent devotion. “F3 has changed my life,” Ayala said. He first attended last year, when a friend repeatedly nudged him to try it — or in F3’s baroque jargon, put him in an “emotional headlock.” He was hooked immediately. About a year ago, he got an F3 tattoo on his chest.
A few miles away from Ayala’s regular workout location, about 30 men had assembled in the middle of a summer heat wave for an F3 workout at Katy City Park. It was 5:15 a.m. and already 80 degrees.
The men jogged to a soccer field for the meat of the workout, a paired exercise in which one partner sprinted across the field and back while the other lifted a cinder block like a weight; when the sprinter returned, they switched, with the team goal of counting up to a collective 200 lifts. Occasional shouts punctuated the heavy breathing: “Be a man!” and “Let’s go, Double Play, you freakin’ stud!”
In F3, there are no facilities, no formal gear and no membership fees. Popular in the South, where outdoor workouts are pleasant most months of the year, the groups are ostensibly nonsectarian, in the style of Alcoholics Anonymous, though many have a Christian emphasis. Some men describe the group as complementing and expanding on their experiences in church.
F3 is also the rare setting devoted to male bonding. It means you “have guys to do life with,” said Pastor Giraud, aka Baby Shark, who works out with Ayala. “To really care for others and be cared for, to acknowledge others and be acknowledged.”
The F3 ethos “embraces healthy male masculinity,” said Kevin Weaver, aka Camo, who started F3 in Katy in 2017. “It’s OK to be to be masculine and to embrace that side of yourself as long as it’s channeled in a healthy way with love and for positive effect.”
Weaver, 42, played football in high school. But after college, marriage and children, it was hard to find time to work out, and even harder to make and maintain deep friendships. It was a “long season of acquaintances,” he said.
