Frank Schwartz

Frank Schwartz, known in F3 as Dark Helmet, joins Evan for a conversation that starts with men recapturing themselves and never really leaves that territory, just keeps finding new angles on it. Frank is the head of F3 Nation, the free peer-led men’s fitness and leadership movement that started with twenty guys in a Charlotte parking lot on January 1st, 2011 and has since spread to twenty-plus countries, all fifty states minus Maine, and somewhere north of a hundred thousand men who show up in the dark to get yelled at by strangers in the rain. The conversation moves through the necessity of the first-half container, the disorientation built into F3’s language and outdoor-no-matter-what culture, why politeness is sometimes the cruelest thing you can do for another man, and the seed-to-fruit metaphor Frank uses to hold the tension between you’re perfect as you are and you could be better. It closes with Frank’s own story of showing up to F3 fifty pounds heavier, too proud, and hearing something like: I can’t work with you like this.