Funk Volume CEO, Damien Ritter, details the independent label’s plans to start a fitness initiative. The endeavor is called Funk Volume Fitness and its corresponding website is scheduled to launch at the end of January.
Describing the origins of the idea, Ritter says Funk Volume Fitness is an idea FV’s had for a few years because both he and SwizZz are both heavily into health and wellness. He also explains that the site will also focus on nutrition and mental health.
“We had a Funk Volume Fitness Facebook page for maybe two or three years,” he says in an exclusive conversation with HipHopDX. “I don’t think we thought much about a business behind it at first. I’m heavily into health and wellness. SwizZz is super into health and wellness. He’s all into the meditation. He works out hardcore and really watches what he eats.
“We got the name [Funk Volume Fitness] because we felt that it rings, but it’s more than just fitness. The site will be pretty much three pillars of fitness, nutrition and mind—so it’s a more comprehensive approach to health and wellness. It’s not just, ‘OK, let me go here and see how to work out.’ You’ll also get information around nutrition because if you’re not eating right, you’re not going to feel right to work out. If you’re going through a depression or if your mind is cluttered, it’s going to be hard to workout or eat right. You really need a comprehensive approach to health and wellness to feel good about yourself. That’s the idea behind it.”
AD LOADING...
Funk Volume To Issue Monthly Fitness Challenges
Ritter also shares that the Funk Volume Fitness website will launch as an aggregator site. The label has identified health and wellness sites that it believes provides helpful information and tagged them to FVF. FV also plans to incorporate monthly fitness challenges targeted towards people at various workout levels in hopes to increase engagement.
“The first month challenge is as simple as a pushup challenge,” Ritter says. “There will be a variation of the challenge more for beginners if you’re not used to working out. Then there will be more advanced challenges. We haven’t filmed it yet. We’re filming this week. The beginning of every month, we’ll issue a challenge. Most will probably be fitness challenges, but there might be some nutrition. There might be some mind challenges as well—and that’s where we’ll just encourage people to get involved and participate in an Instagram video and use the hashtag #FVFChallenge. It’ll automatically get pulled into the website so we’ll be able to see everyone actively engaging in that month’s challenge.
“We’re just trying to build a community around health and wellness kind of similar to how we’ve done with music,” he continues. “We’ll pull in the music when it makes sense. If you go to the Funk Volume Fitness site, it’ll be a much more conservative look. We want to reach people that maybe aren’t fans of our music, but we want to start with our fans because we have immediate access to them. I feel like that demographic is actually missed. Even though health and wellness is booming, a lot of time it’s geared toward folks maybe our age or very young kids. I think they miss kind of that 17-to-25 age gap. We already have their attention. Some people have already commented like, ‘What are you guys doing? You guys are Hip Hop. Stick to Hip Hop.’ A lot of people are excited about what we’re planning on doing with Funk Volume Fitness. We’ll start with our fans and hopefully branch out. I’ve already reached out to some other brands to get all the other products that we actually believe in and use. I think it’s going to be dope once we’re able to create the community, create some energy around it and people and actually see what it is. I think we’ll be able to change some lives.”
AD LOADING...
Funk Volume also holds a monthly community service initiative called Funk Volume In The Community. This month’s event is scheduled to take place January 24 in Los Angeles.
“We’re sorting clothes that have been donated to the homeless,” Ritter says, “so they can be more easily dispersed to people in need.”
For more information, follow @FunkVolumeFitness on Instagram and @FVFitness on Twitter. View the logo below:
