Participants in FiA (Females in Action) workouts share encouragement, exercise together to build strong bonds
Piles of leftover snow glow under the lights of the parking lot of Assumption Parish in south St. Louis County at 6:45 a.m. on a sub-freezing Saturday in February.
The sun’s not up, but a couple dozen women are, clad in beanies and thick sweatshirts as they set down their water bottles and hand weights, stretch, then take off jogging around the church.
The moon shines above the steeple as the women start the Iron Cross workout, spreading out among four stations to complete exercises before returning to the middle for lunges. They rotate stations, then lunge some more. Every kind of lunge, the “hard way” — one rep means one lunge on both right and left legs.
“Push yourself, don’t hurt yourself,” Kathleen Schulte reminds them as they go. Women encourage each other as they leap through burpees and chat as they sit side-by-side for American hammer ab twists.
After more than 30 minutes — and truly, so many lunges — the group circles up, and Schulte leads a closing prayer. The beatdown is finished. The sun is up. It’s time for coffee.
Sacrificial moves
Since August, Assumption’s parking lot has been host every Saturday morning to Females in Action (FiA), a national network of free, peer-led workouts open to all women. FiA was founded in 2013 and inspired by F3, a similar network of workouts for men. FiA has locations in 24 states, including several in the greater St. Louis area.
Like F3, FiA is always outside, led in turns by group members at various sites in a region. The groups share a lexicon, using terms like “AO” (area of operation), “beatdown” (workout) and “Q” (the person leading the workout) as insider shorthand, and each participant gets a nickname at the end of her first workout. FiA has adapted some aspects for women; while F3 men use cinderblocks, FiA women opt for free weights, for example.
Schulte, aka Spike, brought FiA to South County after seeing how much her husband, Brandon, was benefiting from F3. She was recently named the regional leader for the newly created South County region.
“I’ve seen a change in a deeper faith life, a deeper sense of belonging and community,” she said. “The fellowship is such a huge part of that.”
FiA is not a Christian organization, but participants have found it to be a path to both personal virtue and opportunities to share their faith.
Schulte chose the name “the Queen’s Gambit” for the Assumption site as a nod to the chess move of the same name: a sacrificial move used to gain control of the board. FiA inherently demands sacrifice — like getting up at 6 a.m. to do push-ups in 20-degree weather — and that sacrifice bears fruit in increased discipline and drive as well as a flourishing community of women, making each other stronger, she said.
“If you would have asked me a year ago if I would ever get up at 6 o’clock in the morning on a Saturday to go work out, I would probably tell you you’re crazy,” Schulte said. “… My dedication has definitely increased, my motivation has increased, but really just the sense of community and fellowship that I have found within FiA and knowing what it’s brought to other women, too. I’ve had women come up to me and be like, ‘Kathleen, this is what I’ve prayed for. This is what I’ve been searching for.’”
Grace Lightner, aka Mastermind, has been involved with FiA for about a year-and-a-half and serves as regional leader for the St. Louis region. A parishioner at Sacred Heart in Florissant, she regularly works out at North County locations but also helps organize monthly socials for FiA women across the region. She’s enjoyed the chance to connect with fellow Catholics she might not have met otherwise, but also share her personal witness of faith in everyday life with women who aren’t religious themselves.
“It’s a way that we can evangelize in a sense to women that maybe don’t experience that (regularly),” she said. In the circle of trust, “if I’m able to pray, even if they’re not religious, it could be encouraging or maybe touch someone in a way that they don’t otherwise experience.”
Beth Willett, aka Seal, went from rarely working out to two to three beatdowns or “black ops” — extra workouts outside of the regularly scheduled ones — every week.
The South County group is made up largely of Catholics and other Christians, so prayer is the norm and it’s easy to talk about spiritual challenges and growth with her fellow members, she said. That “community of believers” makes a huge difference.
“We are here to really uplift each other,” she said. “It’s positive, and the best of what female community should look like, or what we strive for — to build each other up so we can be better women when we go back home.”
Valerie Stringer, the director of religious education at Assumption, has been a FiA regular since it launched at Assumption in August.
“I was not really a person who appreciated exercise, but to do it in a community like this, it pushes me to do things that I know I need to do for myself but I don’t do on my own,” Stringer, aka Slater, said. “… Knowing that there’s other women who have Jesus at the center of their lives and are trying to navigate adult living, motherhood, all of those things, it just encourages me to keep doing what I need to do in my spiritual life and in my physical fitness, too.”
A path of discipleship
Victoria Raithel, aka Lavender, decided to check out a FiA workout after her husband got involved in F3. After forming a friendship through the Saturday morning workouts, Schulte invited Raithel to join a couples’ discipleship group at Assumption.
The group meets once a month to share a meal, listen to a speaker, talk through discussion questions and go to confession and eucharistic adoration.
“It just seemed really exciting to know that there was this community who loves God and wants to grow in marriage and bringing our families closer to God,” she said. “My husband and I just thought, we need this in our lives. We need community to raise our children and to keep feeding our marriage.”
Showing up for those first FiA and F3 workouts led to so much fruit in the Raithels’ lives, she said. Besides the discipleship group, her husband has also participated in Exodus 90 and other men’s faith sharing opportunities. He’s reading the Bible more, and their children notice and ask him to read it aloud. She’s found clarity in making big life decisions through more intentional, prayerful discernment and support from women walking the same paths.
“I feel like our hearts are being drawn deeper to grow with the Lord, and surrounding myself with this kind of community, I’m opening my heart more to being open to God’s will,” she said. “Knowing I have friends I talk to every month at discipleship pathway, or praying every week with people at FiA, it’s a good community to surround myself with as we move forward, little by little.”
FiA Lexicon
AO: Area of operation; where the workout takes place.
Beatdown: A workout.
Circle of Trust: The end of every FiA workout, where PAX congregate in a circle for attendance count, name-o-rama, announcements and closing thoughts from the Q. Christian Qs often end in a prayer.
PAX: People in attendance at the workout.
Q: Leader of a workout or other FiA event.
Find your FiA
Workouts in the St. Louis, St. Charles, Jefferson County and Wildwood areas: fianation.com/locations/ missouri/
FiA principles
FiA is for women only.
FiA workouts are free.
FiA workouts are outside, rain or shine.
No one is left behind.
A scheduled FiA workout is a promise.
A FiA workout ends with a Circle of Trust and Name-O-Rama.
Growth is a natural and important part of FiA.
