Weightlifting Program Helps At-Risk Kids

By Toni Waterman

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Oct. 21, 2011

BOSTON — Six days a week, Jon Feinman can be found at the gym, teaching inner-city teens about the lesser known sport of Olympic weightlifting.

"Olympic lifts just involve a tremendous amount of technique and practice and patience and learning," he said. "And what we see with a lot of our students is that it teaches a lot of basic skills in terms of patience, hard work, dedication."

Feinman is the founder of Innercity Weightlifting, a program designed to get the city's most at-risk kids off the streets and into the gym. It launched two years ago with four students. Today, its membership tops 200. But, Feinman says, weightlifting is just the hook to get kids through the door. Once inside, it's all about mentoring.

"Hey, how's school going?" Feinman asked a young student in between reps.

Feinman and his team of 11 coaches and tutors are dedicated to rebuilding their students' lives, offering classes on personal training and in-house GED tutoring. And the two-year-old program is already seeing some real world successes.

"We have some kids who get back into school. There are two students this summer that have graduated from the Boston public school credit recovery program and now they're working full time jobs," said Feinman. "We've gotten three and hopefully four now, students into Year-Up where they get college credit, stipend and internship."

And Feinman added, there are a lot of success stories still in the making, like that of 23-year-old "Frank," who asked that we not use his real name. He dropped out of school in the ninth grade and has been in and out of jail ever since.

"My record, I've got gun charges, I've got attempted murder, robbery— basically violence, gun charges basically," Frank said.

Since joining Innercity Weightlifting, Frank said he's turned his life around, meeting with a tutor twice a week and studying to become a personal trainer.

"I come here for hope. It did change my life a lot because usually I would have been in the streets, running wild," said Frank.

Volunteer GED tutor Kelly Jeffers works with Frank twice a week and said he's made incredible progress since joining the program last year.

"He's been able to take the GED test one time already. He's passed a majority of the test and only has a couple more to pass," said Jeffers. "He has to take the remainder and we're hoping he's the first person from this program to get their GED through the tutoring we do here."

Jeffers is the program's one tutor and says out of all the programs out there looking for tutors, this is the one that caught his attention.

"The guys are really great. They all have amazing personalities. They're all very loud and boisterous and they really like to joke around, but they also seem very receptive to a lot of the lessons you're really teaching them, not just academic lessons, but the life lessons," said Jeffers.

The program has also helped to get 19-year-old "Breeze," who also did not want his real named used, off the streets and back into school. With the help of an Innercity Weightlifting tutor, he graduated from a technical school in August.

"I've got good coaches, good mentors. They're actually training me now for college, because I start college in January," Breeze said. "It keeps me out of trouble. I have somewhere, something to do."

As for Jon Feinman, he said the program's popularity and success is making it hard to meet demand. His biggest obstacle? The uncontrollable nature of the streets.

"My fear is that there's always going to be the streets around that are going to be trying to prevent what we're trying to accomplish," Feinman said. "But, we've seen change happen in some kids that people thought wasn't possible. And just those success stories alone are enough to keep us going."