Fitness trainer Rob Forcelli’s mantra, “Bring your best and nothing less,” is music to the ears of hundreds of Westchester gym rats. The 40-year-old Yonkers native has inspired such a loyal following that people line up a half-hour in advance to squeeze themselves into his weekly classes at the Equinox Fitness Club in Scarsdale and The Gym in Armonk.

“Westchester has a lot of die-hard, pretty, in-shape women, and a lot of them find their way to Rob,” says Denise Groothuis of West Harrison. The self-described exercise fanatic worked with seven trainers at three Westchester gyms before becoming a Forcelli follower two years ago. “Now he’s responsible for a large part of my training. He motivates, pushes, challenges, and keeps you focused.”

So do all good fitness coaches. What’s Forcelli’s special appeal? A combination of caring, charisma, and consistency. “You could put a hundred people in the room and he’d be able to personalize the workout for each one,” says Equinox General Manager Anthony Cicchesi. “There’s an aura about Rob. You feel something when you’re with him.” Jamie Nicastri, general manager and legal counsel for The Gym, says, “Rob knows his stuff, and if you do what he asks, you’ll get what you want.”

In Armonk, weekend sessions sometimes take place on the basketball court rather than in the regular studio, to accommodate upwards of 75 people, and, in Scarsdale, the club has had to cap class capacity at 60 because of fire department regulations. “In my experience managing three locations, including one in Midtown Manhattan, I’ve never seen a line like that,” Cicchesi says.

In addition to group fitness classes based on his Speedbody workout video, Forcelli’s weekly schedule includes private personal-training sessions, Contenders Basketball, a year-round league for men over age 35, and Contenders Club workouts, which he describes as private fitness training in a group setting. Contenders Club classes, limited to fewer than 20 people, are “much harder and more personalized than the bigger class,” Groothuis says. She finds them a good substitute for personal training. “It’s smart and cost-effective. You can cut back financially without cutting back on fun and fitness.”

For some clients, Forcelli functions as a life coach as well as a fitness coach, spending more than 40 hours a month on the phone or by email dispensing diet tips, training suggestions, and advice on dealing with problems. “I get a great reward when people can gain something from my twenty-one years of experience,” he says. “Getting them in shape forms a connection that’s priceless.”

In his spare time, Forcelli is working on a treatment for a television show he calls The Trainer, loosely based on what he’s seen in the fitness industry, plus “stuff I added to spice it up for the drama of TV.”

Forcelli’s life would provide plenty of fodder for a TV series. Nicknamed “Fastlane” by a coach for his ability to accomplish the maximum on a minimum of sleep, Forcelli has tried his hand (and feet) at kickboxing, Golden Gloves boxing, bodybuilding, and baseball. He has been a security guard for rock stars and a bouncer at exclusive Manhattan nightclubs. He was also the co-owner, with his father, of Potato King, a small business selling baked potatoes off a lunch cart. “The first day, there were thirty-five people on line for three straight hours. That’s what I’ve been doing my whole life—making people line up.”

A photographer “discovered” Forcelli working at a Potato King cart and asked him to pose for Playgirl magazine. “I was in great shape. I was doing a lot of modeling at the time, including underwear modeling—it was just a few inches less clothing.” His photos in the February 1995 and April 1996 issues of Playgirl led to appearances on talk shows including Ricki Lake and the Gordon Elliot Show, where he was dubbed “the Spud Stud.” The attention resulted in an offer to play the role of Frankie the Handyman on Another World and small parts on other soap operas. However, Forcelli found acting boring. “First and foremost,” he realized, “my passion is fitness.” Each week, hundreds of people around Westchester are happy that Forcelli came to that realization.

Source: Westchester Magazine

Rob Forcelli never intended to organize an adult four-on-four basketball league.

Forcelli, a personal trainer at The Gym in Armonk, who has worked with former New York Knicks Allan Houston and Howard Eisley, would hold workouts for his clients incorporating a variety of basketball drills for its fitness benefits.

“That’s where this was started from,” said Forcelli. “It wasn’t started for the basketball. It was started for the workout.”

Houston was with Forcelli at a workout, going through the drills and playing basketball with the participants. The response to the session was so overwhelmingly positive it became the impetus for Contenders Basketball.

(Houston) definitely was part of the process,” said Forcelli. “It piqued people’s interest a lot quicker than if I was just doing it myself.”

A year and a half later, Contenders Basketball has become so popular that it has rapidly expanded and already made a name for itself as one of the most competitive and enjoyable adult leagues around.

Initially, Contenders Basketball started with four teams and held an open tryout for 25 interested players. Teams were divided into six-player squads, and the league has grown from there. With games played at The Gym, Contenders’ fourth session had 10 teams and its fifth, which began Jan. 10, launched with 12 teams. There are also 15 to 20 players on a waiting list if the league continues to expand, which could lead to Forcelli’s ultimate goal—a 20-team league. This session will run 16 weeks, not including playoffs.

“Right now, The Gym is trying to find space for the day care so I can expand it 14 to 16 teams in the fall,” said Forcelli. “I’ll try to take it as far as I can.”

When a new team enters the league, the players have to go through a screening process. They come in for a scrimmage with an already-established team, and players are selected from the waiting list to fill the sixman roster. Forcelli makes sure to round out the roster with players that will maintain the league’s competitive balance. Each game is full court but is played on a smaller-thanregulation surface. One referee officiates the contest.

“My job is to make sure teams are competitive,” he said. “It’s been a huge success.”

Forcelli has only recently branched out into basketball. He was an amateur boxer, going 16-2 and gaining recognition as a Golden Gloves contender. He parlayed that success into personal training and group fitness, which has been his career for the past 17 years. Forcelli maintains hundreds of private clients and uses basketball, as well as boxing, as a training tool in many of his workouts.

“They were having fun, and they were keeping themselves in shape,” said Forcelli. “I didn’t design it to be competitive, but right now, it is so competitive that (players are) reliving their youth.”

Most league participants are in their late 30s and early 40s, (the oldest is 55), which makes health and injuries a major concern. This is where Forcelli’s background in personal fitness comes into play.

“My job is to make sure (they) don’t get hurt,” Forcelli explained. “You really have to gain their trust that they’re safe. Once that’s established, then the other particulars come along.”

Many of the league’s players, like Armonk’s Bobby Barad, a 37-year-old attorney, live in the area. Barad had played pickup games for years in the city and looks forward to the weekends, even though games sometimes begin before 7 a.m.

“If there’s a weekend where we’re not playing, it’s miserable,” he said. “We really love it. It’s so much fun.”

Investment banker Rick Schnall, 39, said he and some of the other players participate because it seemed like a fun way to stay in shape. But Contenders Basketball has evolved into a passion for most of the guys, with statistics and standings maintained and the games hotly contested.

“Most of the games are close and that makes it fun,” Schnall said.

Stats for scoring, rebounding and assists are kept for every game. At the end of each session, a league MVP is chosen and rewarded with a jacket embroidered with the letters M-V-P and the year. The league fee is $400 per player for each session. For that price, not only do the players get a chance to take part in an evenly matched, competitive league, but Forcelli provides motivational tips and personal training advice as well.

“I keep the ticket high because I want (people) to know (they’re) in an upscale setup from the minute (they) walk in the gym,” he said.

While Contenders Basketball emphasizes fitness and competition, the league does not tolerate bad behavior—to referees or fellow players. Forcelli has had to eject only two players, both coming when the league was still in its four-team infancy. One of those players, however, has returned and made a complete turnaround to be a productive
player, he said.

Contenders Basketball has also grown into more than just a basketball league. Barad said that some of the players have become good friends. Members have made business deals with each other and have developed relationships on and off the court. While it is more than just playing a game every week, there is genuine excitement among the players every chance they get to play.

The league’s motto is “Bring your best and nothing less.” Forcelli does his best to lead by example going out of his way to help the players “experience the beauty of the game of basketball and the benefits it has as a workout.”

“People know they’re in really good hands,” Forcelli said. “That’s the way you should be treated when you’re going somewhere outside of the everyday stresses of life.”

Source: The Examiner News

While the rest of the world seems to be slowing down and mellowing out exercise routines with low-impact mind-body-spirit activities such as yoga and tai chi, some dedicated New Yorkers are rising at 5:30 a.m. to wait in line for boxing-inspired “Contender’s Club” classes.

The creator of the classes is Rob Forcelli, a three-time Golden Gloves boxer with a record of 14-1. He was also a baseball player who had to give up the game due to a knee injury, a kick boxer who fractured his ankle, a soap opera actor in “Another World” and a “Potato King” street vendor in Manhattan.

His philosophy: “A contender is somebody who strives to better themselves. Everybody in life, no matter what you do for a living, wants to be a contender.”

Rob Forcelli and his Contender’s Club videos are listed in the January 2004 issue of W magazine as the hottest up-and-coming fitness trainer and fitness videos in the country.

One benefit of this workout is that it only takes five square feet of space to do it, so it works in Hawai’i's small homes as well as in hotel rooms so those who travel can take it with them.

The popularity of his classes inspired Forcelli to develop a series of videos that enable folks to participate in Contender’s Club classes at home. The format is divided into “rounds,” as in boxing, and uses moves such as jabs, hooks and punches in conjunction with jumping rope, squats and push-ups.

A warning: These workouts are not for beginners. They may challenge even intermediate fitness buffs.

Source: honoluluadvertiser.com

A private jet greeted him on the rain-soaked tarmac, pilots sat in the cockpit and a group of business partners waited inside, eating mixed nuts passed around by the flight attendants. Mr. Forcelli, however, was the only one with luggage.

Surprise!

The 10-year anniversary of Mr. Forcelli’s introduction to Sharley, his wife, happily coincided with the promotional schedule for a new fitness infomercial featuring Mr. Forcelli and a bouncing, sweating workout class. Two investors in his project, Mr. Itzler and Kenny Dichter, run a company that leases private jets, and they thought that a business trip would be a good cover for a surprise party.

But the jet, which was equipped with a stereo system, a VCR player, telephones and Internet access, would not be going anywhere. ”We thought it would be just as good to stay on the ground,” Mr. Dichter said. ”We didn’t want a bumpy dinner.”

Pushing the curtains into the cabin aside, Mr. Forcelli, who has the biceps and the toothpaste smile of a fitness instructor, was greeted with a roar. ”Fastlane in the house!” someone shouted. He staggered back a few steps, surprised.

”When I couldn’t get a hold of my wife for over an hour, I was freaking out,” he said. ”Jesse kept saying: ‘Bad cell connection here.’ ”

A flight attendant handed Mr. Forcelli a drink, and he settled into a seat to watch the latest version of the infomercial, which was playing on little monitors that folded out of the walls, filling the cabin with the strenuous sounds of exercise: ”One, two, three — come on, ladies!”

For four years, Mr. Forcelli has been teaching fitness classes in Westchester County. One of his clients was married to a venture capitalist, and, as a result, for the past few months Mr. Forcelli had been talking with him and a group of other investors about videotapes, clothing lines and television contracts.

The attendants squeezed past the seats with trays of food that would send any Atkins adherent fleeing: baked potatoes with assorted toppings, tuna tartare on potato crisps, lightly braised purple fingerling potatoes.

Before his career as a fitness instructor, in the austere 1980′s when butter-slathered steak was still a bad thing, Mr. Forcelli ran a group of street stands in Manhattan that sold baked potatoes. The business was called Potato King, and its intention, explained Mr. Forcelli as he sprinkled a potato wedge with bacon bits, was to provide a healthy alternative to normal street food.

”Sweetheart, when was the last time we had potatoes?” Mrs. Forcelli said.

”Not since the Potato King,” her husband answered wistfully.

The guests, with the exception of his wife, were all connected with Mr. Forcelli’s business venture, called the Contenders Club. Bonnie Bernstein, a reporter on CBS Sports, who is a spokeswoman for the workout program, complained about some of the cities she had been visiting to cover the National Football League. Steven Starker, a former partner in Goldman Sachs, who is a primary investor in the project, leaned back in his seat, recalling a recent occasion when he almost took a commercial flight. ”I actually went through making a reservation,” he said with a shudder.

A few minutes later, Mr. Forcelli was summoned to the center of the cabin, where a giant red cake in the form of a boxing glove sat on a little table (a no-carbohydrate cake, presumably for the Atkins followers, who would otherwise be reduced to eating the in-flight magazines).

There was a pause as the crowd debated whether to sing ”Happy anniversary” or ”Happy infomercial.” Finally, it was decided that an innocuous round of ”Happy Fastlane to You” would cover all the bases.

After the song, the guest of honor was called upon to deliver a speech, or, at the very least, to do some push-ups. Mr. Forcelli, who was choked up for a moment, said he was living out his dream. ”I haven’t flown anything but private for a year and a half,” he said.

Source: New York Times