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02/01/2023 07:00 AMPrakash Kandel’s relationship with fitness has, for most of his life, been marked by extreme ambivalence.
While exhibiting drive and excellence in his professional life–which is marked with accomplishments worldwide from his battle with polio in Nepal to his fight on the frontlines of COVID here as a doctor at L & M Hospital in New London–Kandel just couldn’t find the time or enthusiasm to stick with a fitness routine, try as he might. There was this one time he signed up for a fitness program for a year. He went once.
“For so long, this fitness, I have always wanted to do it, and I have never done it before,” he says.
Then, one of his colleagues at L & M, Chris Song, who lives in Madison, told Kandel about this new group that was meeting once a week. The group—free and open to all men and any man—was doing workouts, outside, on a driveway, even when it was raining, even when it was snowing, no matter what the weather, at the crack of dawn on Friday mornings. Come join us, said Chris Song. It’ll be fun, he said.
Kandel’s reaction? 5:30 was too early. Also, the day he planned to go, it was raining. And he had to drive all the way to Madison from Old Saybrook, where he lives. Too early. Too rainy. Too far. Still, mainly because he likes Song and knows, from working with him, that Song has good ideas, Kandel went. And now?
“It’s a perfect time. It’s about commitment. And you know, I’m excited about waking up in the morning. It’s nice to wake up early, and I’m really into fitness now,” says Kandel
Now he’s one of about 10 regular attendees, men who are meeting every Friday morning at 5:30 a.m. at Madison Town Campus, 8 Campus Drive, Madison. Sure, it’s about fitness. But it’s also about cultivating male leadership, fellowship, and creating and sustaining faith in the broadest, most inclusive, and most generous sense of that word.
The men are coming from all over the shoreline, including Madison, Guilford, Clinton, Killingworth, Old Saybrook, and Branford. More information about the group is available on both Twitter and Facebook at F3Shoreline. And Song, Kandel, and Robert Derry, who lives in Clinton and is one of the other organizers, love it so much that they hope other men will show up, check it out, and decide to join as well.
‘This Is Different’
The group started in October, and already it’s clear that Song, Kandel, and Derry have a close and easy-going camaraderie.
Other than their enthusiasm for F3, they also are very different.
Derry, for example, unlike Kandel, has been involved with sports ever since he was a kid. A former police officer who has also served his community in local government, in his spare time he works out at Orangetheory. Orangetheory is, in a word, intense. Workouts escalate from resting, to easy, to challenging, to uncomfortable, and then one more level to “All Out.”
Derry and Song, separately, read or heard about F3 late last year, around October, and both were immediately drawn to the concept. Derry thinks he may have heard about it first on the Today show and then later read about it in The New York Times. So Derry got in touch with F3 Nation, as did Song, who also read about it in The New York Times.
Both were very taken with the idea of fellowship and how the group could help cultivate supportive friendships, and connected through F3 at the national level. Derry has an outgoing personality and has no problem making friends, but he realized that, for many men, life revolves around career, family, and all the responsibilities that come with that, making time for friendships sparse.
“Don’t get me wrong, that’s great and I have plenty of associates and friends I talk with daily, you know. But this is different,” he says. “It’s really geared towards reinvigorating men, giving them leadership skills, and letting them know they are not alone.”
He’s on to something there.
Men and Friends
As another article in The New York Times pointed out, the world is currently set up in a way that can make it hard for men to make friends. “Why Is It So Hard for Men to Make Close Friends?” the headline asks, adding, “American men are stuck in a ‘friendship recession.’ ...” The article cites a survey from The Survey Center On American Life, run by the think tank The American Enterprise Institute. The survey says “declining religious involvement, lower marriage rates, and changes in the workplace may be creating a surge of disconnection.”
The survey, a random sample of 2,019 adults in the United States, conducted in May 2021, revealed:
“Over the past three decades, the number of close friends Americans have has plummeted.
“This friendship recession is particularly bad for men. The percentage of men with at least six close friends fell by half since 1990, from 55 percent to 27 percent. The study also found the percentage of men without any close friends jumped from 3 percent to 15 percent, a fivefold increase.
“Single men fare the worst. One in five American men who are unmarried and not in a romantic relationship report not having any close friends.
“Even men with a couple of close friends are not in great shape. When it comes to our social circles, size matters. Americans with one close friend are not any less lonely or isolated than those without any close friends. And those with a couple of close confidants are only modestly better off. For those with three or fewer close friends, loneliness and isolation are fairly common experiences: More than half say they have felt that way at least once in the past seven days.
“The bad news doesn’t end there. Not only do men have smaller friendship circles, they report being less emotionally connected to the friends they do have.”
Song says when he read the article in The New York Times about F3, the need for this kind of group resonated with what he’s seen locally.
Core Principles
“I realized, we have got to start something like this. So I reached out to F3 nation, you know, the national network, as Spare Key did. And, you know, it was just one of those thing like, come on, we have just got to try this. You know? I would never be happy if I had to say we never tried this.”
Spare Key?
That would be Derry. All of them have F3 nicknames bestowed on them upon joining the group. Derry is Spare Key. Song is Wedding Singer. Kandel is Sherpa. Other regulars include Blindside, Yogi, and Gamecock. The stories behind the names? Well, you’ll have to join to find out. It’s all part of being Team F3Shoreline.
Singer says he started the shoreline group to help men get in better shape and to help invigorate male community leadership. He says nationally “F3 has grown to 40,000 men attending on a weekly basis at over 3,500 workout locations in 46 states and six countries on four continents.” The shoreline group’s first workout was Oct. 28, and “we've been having a blast ever since. The camaraderie is great, and all the men feel the encouragement to push harder in the workout, and to press on in life once the workout is done,” he says.
The core principles of F3 is that it is free of charge, open to all men, peer-led, held outdoors no matter the weather, and each session ends with a “circle of trust.” Singer, Spare Key, and Sherpa, all approach the third “F,” faith, with respect and care.
“Faith, in the F3 world, simply means believing in something bigger than yourself,” he says. “F3 is not tied to any particular religious group. In the very short circle of trust at the end, a man can speak a word of wisdom to the group, or mention a need or concern that he may have. And he will have the support of the other F3 men.”
‘It Just Opens Another Door’
The trust that is established is part of what keeps people coming back, says Spare Key.
“We’re starting to establish a trust system now between us as we get to know each other every week. And as those weeks start unfolding, I think, you know, I think the guys who may have something on your mind or something they’re going through may feel that they can share it with the group,” he says. “And we’re here all to be supportive, to help each other out. And just to have that outlet, because I’m sure we all know we have something that’s really bothering us, or it’s something that we’re going through. It’s nice to be able to verbalize it.”
Once someone mentions what might be going on with them, he adds, “what do you hear? ‘Oh yeah, that happened to me.’ Or, you know, ‘I went through that.” So everyone knows that they’re not alone in this world, right? When we get these guys together, it’s just really a positive vibe, no matter what’s going on.”
Sherpa says the friendships he has made are as important to him as the inroads he has made with a fitness routine. He says it can be easy to make friends, but that circumstances can conspire against it. As a kid, he and his family moved often. And then he moved to this country, which, along with being an opportunity, was another upheaval in his personal life. “We all know it’s important to make friends, but you don’t always have the time or opportunity. So, you know, when Chris told me about this, I knew this was something important for me to do.”
Spare Key agrees this is a whole new way to approach connection and camaraderie, something that transcends work friendships and personal friendships, as important as those are too.
“This is a new group. It just opens up another door to establish more relationships and friends, and you know, find the people you connect with and can be there. You know, we collectively, we really don’t know each other all that well,” he says. “But I can guarantee that in just the short time we’ve been doing this that God forbid, something happened, and we were made aware of it, as a group, I can guarantee just knowing what I do know a little bit about these guys, these guys will be the first ones to step up and help out anybody.”
Find out more about F3 Shoreline by visiting https://www.facebook.com/F3shoreline. Or, if you want to join them, just show up and check it out by going any Friday morning at 5:30 a.m. to the area of operation (AO) at Madison Town Campus, 8 Campus Drive, Madison and just look for the shovel with the flag on it and the guys running around and having fun. All men are welcome.
Editor’s note: This article was updated on Feb. 2, 2023 to correct the name of Orangetheory.