Josh Levine and The Fortis Academy began their training with BSM in the summer of 2016 when they trained the BSM boys’ hockey team. Levine reached out to Coach Ken Pauly and was offered the opportunity to train the hockey team during their summer training program. “I was living in Washington D.C. but looking to move back to Minnesota. I reached out to Coach Pauly and he told me I could help out with the summer training if I did come back. We started training in June of 2016,” Owner of Fortis Academy Josh Levine said. 

Today The Fortis Academy has expanded overall and specifically in the BSM community. The Fortis academy has begun training multiple different sports and teams at BSM. “We are now training boys’ lacrosse, girls’ lacrosse, boys’ hockey, baseball, and boys’ basketball. We will be running the girls’ hockey summer training program as well this year,” Levine said. 

Levine has enjoyed working with the BSM athletes and teams over the past few years and has found that their hard work and competitiveness aids in making the training environment enjoyable and fun. “We love working with teams at BSM because of a group dynamic that exists when you train athletes that are all committed to reaching the same goal. Teams at BSM are incredibly athletic and committed,” Levine said. 

The Fortis Academy is a training program located off of Highway 100 in Edina. The program trains a wide range of ages and sports. They offer a new way to train that involves a lot of plyometrics which is also known as jump training. The idea is to produce a maximum force of your muscles in small periods of time. The program also works to build good human beings and leaders. “We want our athletes to learn important life lessons and values. Sports performance training is an amazing vehicle for teaching leadership, learning to respond to adversity, goal setting, and much more,” Levine said. 

With the wide variety of sports that The Fortis Academy trains there is a lot of work that goes into developing a training plan focused on what the sport involves and what the team needs to work on. There are a lot of requirements they must meet during the development of a training plan including the movements performed in the sport and the speed of the sport. “We customize our workouts based on the sport we are training. the frequency in which they are able to attend workouts, and the training history and group dynamic. Some teams are very advanced in their training where most of the athletes have been lifting weights for years. Other teams have a majority of the athletes coming to the gym with much less training experience,” Levine said. 

Although the main idea of working out might be to build strength and athleticism, for The Fortis Academy it is much more. They look to build something within their athletes during the time they train them that will influence them for the rest of their life. “We want our athletes to develop a passion for training and sports performance. With this, they’ll train for hours on their own and do so often for the rest of their lives. We want our athletes to learn important life lessons and values. Sports performance training is an amazing vehicle for teaching leadership, learning to respond to adversity, goal setting, and much more. We also want our athletes to develop an understanding of why we do what we do,” Levine said.