Shamaira Gonzalez and Mac Foster with Marine Corps poolees in red and black beside a recruiter truck in Tampa
Gulf & Grit
A Tampa Bay Lifestyle Magazine
VOL. IV · ISSUE 5
The Next Generation IssueFall 2026
Apollo Beach · Tampa · Riverview
Cover story

The Next
Generation
Trains Here.

Inside the youth athletics and Marines bootcamps where LaBella Beast and Foster Physique are quietly turning Tampa Bay kids into athletes, and future servicemembers into finished product.

The Youth ProgramMarines Pool PrepOne Hour, Ten-Year Head StartWhere Discipline Starts
Youth athletes training at Apex Elite
01
Feature · Youth Athletics

The
Youth
Program.

Nobody taught them how to land when they were nine. Nobody taught them how to eat when they were twelve. Apex Elite's two coaches are rewriting that story one kid at a time.

A Gulf & Grit feature · Reported from Apollo Beach, Tampa and Riverview

By Elena Marchetti · Senior Features WriterApollo Beach, FLPhotographs from labellabeast.app/bootcamps and fosterphysique.app/bootcamps
7–17ages trained
2 coachescertified elite
1 houra week to change a decade
0generic app plans used

The thing most youth-athletic programs get wrong, according to Shamaira Gonzalez and Mac Foster, is that they treat kids like small adults. Apex Elite's youth program treats them like what they actually are: nervous systems that are still learning how to produce force, decelerate, land, and recover. The coaching reflects that. Every session is run by a certified coach — not a seasonal hire — and every plan is built around what the athlete's sport actually asks of them.

Why a strongman and a former D1 player care about kids

Both coaches come to youth training from the same place: knowing what it felt like to arrive at the next level unprepared. 'Nobody taught me how to land when I was nine. Nobody taught me how to eat when I was sixteen,' Foster, a former Division I basketball player, told Gulf & Grit. 'I can give a kid a ten-year head start in an hour a week. Why would I not do that?' Gonzalez, a nationally ranked strongman athlete and mother of three daughters, puts it even more plainly: 'My daughters watch me lift. I want every kid I train to see that strength isn't a body type. It's a decision you make on a Tuesday.'

What the sessions actually look like

Youth training at Apex Elite runs in small groups and private 1:1s for athletes ages seven to seventeen. Each session begins with movement — single-leg balance, deceleration drills, landing mechanics — before anything gets loaded. Sport-specific work follows: speed and agility for a thirteen-year-old volleyball player from FishHawk; posterior-chain strength for a fifteen-year-old baseball player from Apollo Beach; conditioning for a seventeen-year-old wrestler driving in from Riverview. Nothing about the programming is a youth version of an adult template. The adult templates don't exist in this program at all.

“
Strength isn't a body type. It's a decision you make on a Tuesday.
— Shamaira Gonzalez · LaBella Beast
Kids doing core work in a youth sessionGirls and boys small group coaching in Apollo BeachApex Elite coaches Shamaira Gonzalez and Mac Foster
Scenes from the youth program at Apollo Beach, Tampa and Riverview.

The Youth Program

Ages
7–17
Formats
1:1 private · small group · sport-specific small group
Coaches
Shamaira Gonzalez (LaBella Beast) · Mac Foster (Foster Physique)
Focus
Movement first, strength second, sport-specific third
Locations
Apollo Beach · Tampa · Riverview (FishHawk-adjacent)
Link
labellabeast.app/bootcamps · fosterphysique.app/bootcamps

Give your kid the head start

Youth sessions in Apollo Beach, Tampa and Riverview. Beginners welcome.

Apply for your athleteLearn more
Marines bootcamp group photo in Tampa
02
Feature · Marines Bootcamp

Marines,
Made
In Tampa.

The Apex Elite coaches are quietly running one of Tampa Bay's most effective pool programs for future Marines. They're not getting paid for it. That's not an accident.

A Gulf & Grit feature · Reported in Tampa

On a rainy afternoon in Tampa, two dozen young men and women in matching red and black shirts gathered in a parking lot with a Marine Corps recruiter truck idling behind them. In the center of the photograph, next to the recruiter, stood Shamaira Gonzalez and Mac Foster — the two coaches of Apex Elite — and the group of future Marines they had just finished running through conditioning. If you did not know who the civilians were, you would assume they were drill instructors.

Why they show up for poolees

The Marine Corps 'poolee' program is the limbo between enlistment and boot camp — a stretch of weeks or months when future Marines are expected to show up to Initial Training Pool sessions and prove, physically, that they will not be the person who washes out of Parris Island or San Diego. For many poolees from south Hillsborough, Apex Elite is where that proving happens. 'When these kids ship, I don't want them to be the one who gets sent home,' Foster told Gulf & Grit. 'We're not training them for a workout. We're training them for the moment someone yells and the body has to do what the body has to do.'

What the session actually is

The Apex Elite poolee bootcamp runs conditioning, body-weight strength, grip, and mental-load work — the kind that mirrors what a poolee will meet in the Initial Strength Test and later at boot camp. Gonzalez brings the strongman piece: carries, loaded conditioning, the specific brand of exhaustion that teaches a nineteen-year-old what their actual limit is. Foster brings the athletic development piece: progression, pacing, teaching a young body how to produce force under fatigue. Neither of them bills the Marine Corps a dollar for it.

“
We're not training them for a workout. We're training them for the moment someone yells and the body has to do what the body has to do.
— Mac Foster · Foster Physique
Inside the Marines bootcamp. Video courtesy of Apex Elite.
Marines poolees with the Apex Elite coachesMarines exclusive Apex Elite bootcampApex Elite bootcamp group
The Marines pool-prep bootcamp, Tampa.

Apex Elite × Marines

Program
Volunteer pool prep for Marine Corps poolees
Who runs it
Shamaira Gonzalez · Mac Foster
Focus
Conditioning · body-weight strength · grip · mental load
Cost to poolees
$0
Why
Because both coaches know what being under-prepared feels like
Link
labellabeast.app/bootcamps

Are you a poolee?

If you're shipping and your recruiter hasn't told you about Apex Elite yet, come find us.

Join the next sessionDM @__apexelite__
Apex Elite bootcamp action shot
03
Feature · Discipline

Discipline
Is a Skill.

What a thirteen-year-old volleyball player from FishHawk and a seventeen-year-old poolee from Ruskin have in common — and why Apex Elite trains them in the same room.

A Gulf & Grit feature · Reported across three Apex Elite sessions

Walk into an Apex Elite session on a Saturday morning and the age range is wider than most gyms will ever see on their best day. A middle-schooler is working on landing mechanics in one corner. A high-school junior is finishing a weighted carry across the turf. A college-aged poolee is in the back, grinding through a conditioning circuit. 'Everyone in this room is here to learn the same skill,' Gonzalez says. 'The skill is discipline. The sport is just the delivery vehicle.'

Coaching is care disguised as work

It is tempting to describe what Gonzalez and Foster are doing as mentorship. They would push back on that word — not because it isn't accurate, but because, as Foster puts it, 'mentorship is what you call it when you want to be thanked for coaching.' What they call it is their job. A hard, non-negotiable, uncompensated version of it, in the case of the poolees. A high-touch, high-expectation version of it, in the case of the kids. The through-line is the same: show up for them because somebody should have shown up for you, and often did not.

An unfashionable pitch

In an industry where youth training is often outsourced to apps and poolee prep is a line on a recruiter's clipboard, Apex Elite's pitch is almost reactionary: an hour a week, in person, with the same two coaches, who know your sport, your schedule, and the name of the move you can't yet do. It is also, by every available measure, working. The kids are coming back. The poolees are shipping. The parents are telling other parents.

“
Mentorship is what you call it when you want to be thanked for coaching. We just call it the job.
— Mac Foster · Foster Physique

Next Generation, at a glance

Who
Youth athletes ages 7–17 · Marines poolees · adults who train with their kids
Coaches
Two certified elite coaches: LaBella Beast + Foster Physique
Cities
Three cities covered: Apollo Beach · Tampa · Riverview
Instagram
One Instagram: @__apexelite__
Price
$20 drop-in for group · $0 for poolees · 1:1 and online available

Raise them stronger

Youth sessionsFollow @__apexelite__

Also from Gulf & Grit

Tampa Bay StrongOne Beast. One Physique. One Family.Apex EliteThe full Apex Elite feature on fosterphysique.app