Getting fit with FiA
Most weekdays around the Birmingham area, you can find groups of women working out in the early hours of the morning. They are part of FiA (Females in Action) Birmingham, a free, women-only, peer-led boot camp style of workouts. It is designed to support, encourage and challenge the participants.
Rain or shine, classes start at 5:15 a.m. or 5:30 a.m. and last 45 minutes. On Saturdays, the time is bumped back to 7 a.m., and the workouts last an hour. There is also a running group that meets on Wednesday and Sunday mornings.
Beth Phillips, a mom of four who lives near Spain Park, started the FiA Birmingham chapter in September 2019. Her husband was a part of F3, a similar organization for men. She saw what it was doing for him, and she wanted to create a group for local women.
Phillips and her sister-in-law went to Georgia one weekend to do the workouts, which is a requirement before starting a region in your area. When they came back, Phillips started groups at Spain Park and Liberty Park.
“Uniquely, we launched 2 AO’s [areas of operations] at the same time,” Phillips said. “Typically, only one is launched, but we had so much interest they approved us to do two.”
During the three-weekend launch in September 2019, over 40 women attended. It has continued to grow from there.
Although the COVID-19 pandemic shut things down for a bit, the groups continued to meet via Zoom. When things began opening back up in April 2020, three more FiA locations were launched in Helena, Trussville and Cahaba Heights within a five-week period. In January 2021, the sixth location was launched in Gardendale.
“We launched three different locations coming out of quarantine, which was really surprising,” Phillips said. “We had not anticipated that. We currently have about 250 people total.”
Participants range from 22 to 63 years old. Phillips said at FiA, it’s “you do you.”
“You know what your body is capable of and what exercises you can do,” she said. “We always encourage people to do modifications.”
Word has spread about FiA by word of mouth and social media. What makes it unique is there’s no cost involved. There is a calendar to sign up for each class, and the workouts are different each time.
While Phillips is over the organization, each location has its own leader. Tiffani Powell, a mom of three who lives near Spain Park, started going to FiA in October 2019. She found out about it through word of mouth, and the leader had just had a baby when she started, so she became the leader of that location.
“I think it’s really cool what we have,” Powell said. “It connects us with lot of different people, Spain Park families, Oak Mountain families, Vestavia families. I think it’s cool that the location of it brings so many different people together.
Powell is able to do the 5:30 a.m. class and get back home and get her kids ready for school and herself ready for work and still drop them off by 7:05 a.m.
Equipment isn’t usually required for the classes. Phillips said that they do tell participants to wear gloves because they use the ground and other areas like trees and sides of buildings. If a mat or weights are required for a certain class, participants are informed beforehand.
Phillips and Powell say the whole basis of FiA is accountability, and members become like family. At the end of each session, there is a prayer time. Although FiA is faith based, all are welcome. It is also based off the military type attitude of getting it done and not leaving anyone behind.
Participants can show up at any location, and everyone is given a nickname after their first workout. If you go out of town somewhere, there’s a FiA location you can show up to that location.
Phillips said FiA has brought her back to exercising, which was a huge passion of hers before she had kids.
“It’s amazing what a good workout and good community base will do to set them mentally right for a day and into your week,” she said.
For more information, visit facebook.com/fiabham or visit them on Instagram @fiabham, or email fiabham@gmail.com.