The series ended on Friday. Day 100 was the story of the room itself: how Prototype got here, who built it, and what it's for.
This is one more. Call it the encore.
Tim Schwab went back through the interview footage from the whole run and cut it into a single film. It's about twenty minutes long, and it's the people you've been reading about since May 1, back to back, in their own words.
It Starts With Everyone Getting Their Own Name Wrong
The first two minutes are just introductions. More than forty people, one after another, looking at the wrong camera, asking if they can start over, laughing at themselves. Garret: "Everyone calls me G-man." Nicole St. Pierre, "aka NSP." Erin, who found out that morning she was going to be on video, and says so.
It's the best possible opening, because it's exactly what walking in here feels like. Nobody is polished. Everybody is a little nervous. Then it gets going.
"Of all the hours in my day, I would say that this is the one hour that I feel like I'm most present."
— Brendan Sheehan, Day 14What You Hear When You Put Them in a Row
Read one story and you meet one person. Watch them straight through and they start finishing each other's sentences. Different people, different decades, different reasons for walking in, and they keep landing on the same few things.
The hardest part is the door. One member calls it a "take-a-deep-breath situation," because she'd pictured something "very masculine and militant and scary for a person like me." Another says the workout was never the hard part: the hard part was making the first phone call. A third still uses it on herself on the rough days: "I came through the door. That's a win."
It's never too late."I never would have imagined five years ago that I'd be lifting the weights that I'm lifting now at 57 years old," one member says, describing herself as "a very average middle-aged person who came in here with no weightlifting background." Another, in her 40s: "I think my fittest days are still ahead of me." And the one who watched someone crush double-unders and wants you to know what you didn't see: the two years she was ready to throw the rope out the window.
Strong means more than strong."I don't mean just physically," one member says. "You feel like a stronger person. You can handle more."
"I did my chemo and then I had my surgery and I did my radiation. And if you remember, the whole time I went through that, I was here. I was here and I told you guys not to treat me any different. And there were times when you didn't, and I was ready to kill you."
— Jean Hanks, Day 22"It was an important goal of mine that I wanted to become stronger after having cancer than I was before."
— Dr. Annie Powell, Day 81And it was never really about the workout. Jen Mogensen wanted her kids to remember the mom who always got up and prioritized her health: "I felt like I became the person I always wanted to be." Tony Potenti: "You come in here and you think it's just like a gym. It's more than that. You have 72-year-old women to 20-year-old guys." Debbie Chung: "I feel like home when I'm here." Someone else, summing up fourteen years of culture in one phrase: "a butthead-free zone."
"I realized Prototype kind of filled in that void of what I was missing after my dad died. I had a place to go, I had someone to talk to, I had a community that I could rely on."
— Greg Califano, Day 96The advice they leave you with is about as simple as it gets. From Todd and Peg Kinsman's story: "If you're thinking about going to the gym, go to the gym and think about it later."
The Guy Behind the Camera
There's one name that belongs on this series as much as any of the hundred, and he never got a day of his own: Tim Schwab.
Tim is the Technical Editor and Producer at Westborough TV, the town's community station, which this month won the national Hometown Media Award for Overall Excellence in Public Access. If you've watched a Westborough TV production in the last few years, you've seen his work.
The 100 in 100 videos weren't his job. He took them on as a side project, on his own time, because Mike asked and because he believed in what the series was trying to do. That turned into countless hours: editing, formatting, sitting with every interview until it sounded like the person who gave it. Mike is not a light-touch client. He had notes on everything, often more than once. Tim took every round of feedback in stride, went back in, and made each video better than the one before it.
Every filmed story in this series looks and sounds the way it does because of him. And then, when the hundred were done, he went back through all of it one more time and built the film at the top of this page.
The members told the stories. Tim is the reason you could see their faces while they did. Tim, from Mike, the coaches, and everyone who sat in that chair: thank you. This one's yours.
If You're Just Finding This
Start with the video. Then scroll down: every one of the 100 stories is linked below, in order. Pick the one that sounds like you. The skeptic, the parent, the person starting over, the athlete, the one who was sure they'd be the oldest or slowest or newest in the room. They're all in there.
And if you were one of the hundred, or one of the few hundred more who train here and haven't told yours yet: thank you. Send this to the person you've been trying to get through the door.
