About Us

Mission Statement:
Fitness Finders, Inc. is committed to Shaping America's Future. This is accomplished through health, education and fitness strategies such as:

Program and product development
Incentive development and utilization
Education and behavioral training programs
Market assessment and research

About Us:

Fitness Finders, Inc. was created in 1969 and since that time, we have touched the lives of millions. We have served as fitness innovators, workshop/training specialists, researchers, writers, program and product developers and motivators. Our company desires to provide practical solutions to your health and pedagogy needs.

We have assisted the YMCA of the USA; Campbell's Soup; Kinney Shoes; Phillips Petroleum; Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Michigan; Rodale Press; Pacific Life Foundation; the United States Government; the President's Council on Physical Fitness, Health and Sports; Consumer's Guide; Consumer's Digest; Rainbo Bread; Kraft Foods; the State of Michigan and thousands of schools. Our passion is youth. We have been concerned about the decline in physical activity levels of America's youth, and their increasing obesity, since 1971.

In the early 1970s, we developed the highly successful Feelin' Good Program that has reached more than 5 million children in all 50 states and 15 nations. Our research demonstrated the alarming number of risk factors that children exhibit and how physical activity can play an important role in reducing these risk factors.

We have tracked the physical fitness, physical activity, motor skills and health-related knowledge of Michigan youth, as well as their development in the area of personal-social skills during the 1990s. This allowed us to be instrumental in the development of the Michigan Fitness Foundation/Michigan's Governor's Council on Physical Fitness, Health and Sports' highly successful and innovative Exemplary Physical Education Curriculum (EPEC) that is used by more than 70% of Michigan school districts.

One of our key programs, developed to counteract the alarming rise of obesity among American youth, is the Feelin' Good Mileage Club, a noon-hour recess program that has swept the nation over the past 20 years. Last year, 2.5+ million children in almost 15,000 schools logged almost 30 million miles (48 million kilometres) with our Mileage Club.

The Mileage Club is not a replacement for physical education, but rather an adjunct to physical education that helps provide schools with a simple way to increase activity among children during the school day. To supplement the Mileage Club we introduced, in the fall of 2007, the Mileage Club Challenge Series. This program involves a sequence of monthly events to encourage young people to set goals for running/walking.

In 2008 we launched our Lift-A-Ton Program. Lift-A-Ton was designed to enhance young and old to have enhanced body strength. Many of the health challenges that people experience in their youth and as they age are due to a lack of adequate muscle fitness. Low back pain, "week-end athlete" syndrome, obesity, osteoporosis and more are examples of some such conditions which afflict many people.

This fall (2010) we will be releasing Pack-A-Snack. Using a list of more than 125 Incredible Edible Snack foods young people will learn to choose readily available, everyday snacks that are whole, fresh and lower in fat.

Our other fitness programs include The Mega Mileage Club which is ideal for staff members and Families In Training (FIT) which was developed for the Pacific Life Foundation to encourage families to become "fit and close-knit".

During this past decade we have also expanded our educational offerings to include I Love To Read and Character Bound. I Love To Read is designed to encourage young readers to read a myriad of materials books, newspapers, magazines and pamphlets. The number of minutes read is the emphasis with this program. With Character Bound we have emphasized helping young people develop their core values. These are values which will serve them for a lifetime.

We have also developed numerous incentives to go with our programs and to permit teachers and youth leaders to encourage and/or reward young people to develop positive behaviors and achievements in various disciplines. We plan to expand our program/incentive offerings over the coming years. Many of our clients have made excellent recommendations for our consideration. As you review our products, programs and services please be aware than many of these grew out of suggestions provided by individuals, like you, who work with young people.

Because schools, recreation departments, YMCA's and Boy's/Girl's Clubs need to adapt to unique situations all of our programs and awards are adaptable to individual circumstances. Materials are packaged in such a manner to provide for optimum flexibility

Our teacher/instructor-based programs are designed to make the jobs of education and motivation easier for youth leaders. We know that teachers, youth leaders and their supporting staff are busy people. Each year their assignments increase and more is expected of them. We want to help you do what you do best: teach children to read, acquire lifelong behavioral skills, develop character and become fit.

Why Fitness Finders?

Several of you have asked: Why does a fitness company (Fitness Finders, Inc.) provide reading and character development in addition to incentives which address math, art, music attendance, school spirit etc.? As mentioned above, we started as a fitness company in 1969, providing group exercise classes in communities near the eastern seaboard of the US in the late 60s and early 70s.

In a relatively short time, however, we started doing workshops and seminars for YMCAs across the US, Canada and Australia. The success of these efforts soon attracted the attention of several Fortune 500 companies, hospitals, communities, universities, foundation, military groups plus federal and state agencies. We were asked to create programs and services for their workers and constituents, conduct research on program effectiveness and develop curriculum materials for people of all ages. We continue to provide workshop and consulting services to various organizations and agencies.

Our current professional staff of Beth, Charlie, Rich, Karen and Debbie have more than 140 combined years of experience in the fields of health, education, physical therapy and changing behavior. We have conducted more than 500 training workshops, authored close to 100 books, delivered more than 3,000 lectures, written more than 200 articles and developed (and/or helped develop) more than a dozen programs for implementation by organizations. Along with these people we have a support staff of Alison, Bonnie, Carol, Dean, Fran and Scott who are committed to giving you fast and friendly service.

Fitness Finders, Inc. is an American company with 96 per cent of our products and programs being American made. Additionally, we are a sole source provider for almost all of our products. Fitness Finders is a name you can trust to help you prepare youth for a world none of us can imagine.

We are here to serve you. We are constantly in search of ideas that can help us do a better job. Let us know what we can do to improve our services to you. We would appreciate any input on programs we've already developed or ideas we should put on the drawing board. We look forward to hearing from you.

The Fitness Finders Staff