The Specialty Cycle Your Members Will Fight to Get Into.
30-minute HILT sessions. strong retention in our pilot academies.* The fitness modality your CrossFit base won’t resent and your members’ spouses, teenagers, and friends will drive across town for. Built by NASM-credentialed trainers. Validated by Hollywood combat choreographers. Already running in our pilot academies.
Your Gym Looks Different.
ILLUSTRATIVE YEAR 1 EXAMPLE, a hypothetical scenario for how a pilot could play out. Individual results vary.
Your Saturday 5PM has 22 members in it. Six are spouses of existing members. Three are teenagers. Two are couples who joined together.
Your member retention dashboard finally shows the number you’ve been chasing for three years.
Your members’ Instagram stories are training videos from your gym. Their friends are commenting “where IS this place.”
The competing CrossFit affiliate two miles away is asking around about how you did it. Their members are asking too.
Your spouse texts you mid-week: “Heard about your Saturday class at the school pickup line. Everyone’s talking about it.”
You look at the Saturday revenue report and the number is bigger than every Saturday you’ve had in the last two years. Combined.
That’s not aspiration. Here’s an operator already living it.
Don’t Take Our Word for It. Take Theirs.
You Already Know What’s Wrong.
Your month-three members ghost. The chemicals that made them show up have stopped firing.
Adding more variety doesn’t fix it. Specialty cycles, themed weeks, member challenges. They help retention modestly. They don’t pull new demographics through your door.
What you need is a workout your members are emotionally invested in finishing. Built by NASM-credentialed trainers. With the engagement engine of cinematic combat baked into the programming.
That’s exactly what Sifu Nick and I built TSF to be.
This is HILT. High-Intensity, Low-Impact Training. 30 minutes. Cardiovascular load that rivals sprint intervals. Engagement that makes members forget they’re working out.
Engagement Solves Retention. TSF Solves Engagement.
I want to be honest with you about why this works where other novelty programming fails. It isn’t the saber. It’s what the saber lets us do with the workout.
Sifu Nick (Hollywood stunt director. He validated every combat form on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and trained the cast through brutal six-month conditioning blocks) and I spent two years building TSF as a proper fitness methodology. Not "let’s make exercise fun by adding light swords." Actual periodization. Actual progressive overload. Actual heart-rate-zone programming. The saber is the engagement multiplier; the underlying program is built to NASM standards.
What we found in our pilot academies: clients who stay. Members who normally drop in month three are showing up in month six. Spouses who never trained are signing up for second cycles. Teenagers (13+) are joining in numbers no traditional gym has ever seen for a structured program.
The reason is dopamine. Cinematic combat triggers reward circuitry that flat cardio cannot. Members chase the next session the way gamers chase the next level. The workout that should feel hard feels engaging. They keep coming back.
You don’t need a gimmick to fix retention.
You need a workout your members are emotionally invested in finishing.
Built by People Who Hold the Credentials Your Industry Respects.
Sifu Julliana Armstrong
NASM-Certified Trainer. AFAA Group Fitness Partner. 3× WEKAF National Champion. Team USA, 2X GSBA World Champion, Germany 2026. The first American certified to referee international light sword competition (Milan, Italy). Former military contractor at Langley Air Force Base and Fort Eustis. Programmed for active-duty Department of Defense personnel.
Sifu Nick Benseman
Hollywood Stunt Director. Validated every TSF combat form on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Trained the cast through brutal six-month conditioning blocks. Sifu Nick’s job: ensure every combat sequence produces genuine strength and conditioning stimulus, not just choreographed motion that looks intense.
Built. Betrayed.
Rebuilt by four masters.
In 2015, Sifu Edward Armstrong built a light sword martial arts academy in the United States: 68 students, Entrepreneur of the Year, featured on ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox. Sifu Julliana joined him there as co-founder. The same year, Sijo Nathan Young (2× World Champion) authored the 9-form combat system that LSTA still teaches today.
In 2016, the franchise that gave the sport its only international structure betrayed the warriors it was supposed to serve, and the operators who had built their academies on it.
In 2017, Edward, Julliana, Nathan, and Nick walked away at the top, and rebuilt from scratch, on their own terms, engineered against the exact failure modes they had collectively survived.
That organization is LSTA.
The Total Saber Fit pilot was designed by Julliana and Nick. The two co-founders whose backgrounds most directly speak to fitness operators, but it’s built on the same curriculum, federation, and rank system that the full LSTA network runs. When you put TSF on your floor, you’re plugging into a system that survived its own betrayal and was rebuilt by people who refuse to repeat it.
Sifu Julliana Armstrong is the lead voice of TSF. NASM-Certified Trainer. The fitness modality your members will fight to get into is built by people who hold the credentials your industry actually respects.
Four Modules. Programmed Like a Real Cycle.
No franchise fees. No royalties. No three-month onboarding. You buy the package, you get instant access, you run a TSF specialty cycle on your existing floor with your existing coaches. If your market doesn’t pull, refund. If it does, you scale. Here’s the breakdown.
Your Local Market in Dollars
I walk you through the demographic math for your zip code. Who’s buying TSF cycles, what they’re paying, what your cycle should price at, and the competitor analysis nobody else can give you because nobody else has the data yet. By the end of the module, you have a number on the page: what one TSF cycle is worth at your gym, in your city, this quarter. If the number is small, save your $597 and don’t buy. If it’s big, keep going.
The 30-Day TSF Cycle Launch Playbook
Week 1 you announce to your existing membership. Week 2 you run a free Saturday HILT demo I script for you, opening the floor to your members’ spouses, teenagers, and friends who’ve never set foot in your gym. Week 3 you collect money for the first paid cycle: pricing card, registration form, intake workflow all done. Week 4 you have data and a decision. Every email, every social post, every conversion script. I wrote them so you don’t have to.
The Coach-Ready HILT Programming
Six weeks of TSF programming carved from the foundation curriculum that anchors the TSF Instructor Certification. Saber Flow Cardio sequences, strength-conditioning circuits, mobility blocks, recovery protocols. Structured for a coach who has never held a saber. If you can program a Hero WOD or read a periodization template, you can teach this. The deeper TSF Instructor Certification track is there when you’re ready to scale, but you don’t need it to run the pilot cycle.
The Tech Stack, Set Up Live
I record myself setting up your white-label AcadevoFit build. Cycle registration, membership billing, class scheduling, the email and SMS sequences, your online saber shop, and your gym’s branding on your own domain. You follow along and your platform is live by the end of the video. One platform, included free for 90 days. You don’t configure anything from scratch.
Your Own Platform. Branded to Your Gym. Free for 90 Days.
Sifu Edward Armstrong (Federation president, our LSTA business architect) owns the platform. That’s why we can hand you your own white-label build of AcadevoFit with the TSF Pilot Program at no additional cost, your gym’s name on it, not ours. Every other “specialty cycle” consultant tells you to go set up your own software. We’re setting yours up for you.
The studio management platform built for fitness & wellness operators, delivered as your own white-label version: your gym’s branding and custom domain, full member profiles, check-in, membership billing via Stripe, class scheduling and attendance, the member app your members download, an online shop (sell TSF sabers direct to your members at retail), email and SMS campaigns that fire from member behavior, a parent portal for under-18 athletes, and the built-in AI suite: chatbot, content writer, and menu & workout plans.
Your cycle registration, your intake workflow, and your member tracking all run here from Day 1: one platform instead of a duct-taped stack of scheduling, billing, and email tools.
Every TSF course and every piece of training material lives here. The four Pilot modules, the Operator Growth Vault, the programming templates, the demo-day scripts, and every future drop while your access is active. One login, nothing scattered across email attachments.
It’s also where the trainers are: live training sessions led by Sifu Julliana. The same NASM-credentialed programming lead who built the curriculum, currently training for the World Championships. Plus the other pilot operators running the same 30-day launch you are. Ask the question on Tuesday, run the answer on Saturday.
The Equipment That Makes the Workout Real.
One thing I want you to know about TSF before you decide: this isn’t a contact-combat program. It’s a fitness program. Your members aren’t striking each other. They’re executing form sequences, partner choreography, and high-intensity solo drills. That means TSF needs sabers only: no uniforms, no helmets, no gloves. Members train in their normal workout clothes. The only equipment investment is the sabers themselves.
The TSF combat saber is purpose-built for fitness conditioning, weighted for the strength stimulus (think 1–2 lb dumbbell, but engineered for full extension and rotation), with a polycarbonate blade safe for partner-flow drills, internal LED bright enough to glow visibly under your overhead lighting, and a hilt grip that doesn’t slip when palms get sweaty. Not consumer toys. Not movie props. Real fitness equipment that happens to look like the most engaging thing your members have ever held.
Sabers ship to your gym at wholesale. You resell to your cycle members at retail through your AcadevoFit online shop. Most operators run 35–50% margin on saber sales alone. A second revenue stream that runs alongside the cycle itself.
Sabers are purchased separately at pilot-operator wholesale pricing. Bundles start in the low four-figure range depending on your class size, and are typically recovered within the first paying cycle. The Pilot Program ($597) gets you the wholesale access; the saber order is yours to size and time however your launch needs it.
Because This Group Doesn’t Get the Watered-Down Version.
Every bonus below ships with your enrollment. This is our second intake, and it gets the same stack we built for the first group, intact. When these eventually move behind the Instructor Certification where they belong, that changes for future intakes. It doesn’t change for you.
The TSF Member Engagement & Retention Brief
A 12-page strategic brief written by me, walking you through the underlying behavioral mechanics of why TSF members stay enrolled in our pilot academies. Includes the dopamine-loop programming framework Sifu Nick and I developed, the member-progression structure that turns 6-week cycle members into 12-month subscribers, and the upsell path from cycle participant to private TSF coaching client.
This is the document that turns your specialty cycle into a retention engine. Your members aren’t signing up for a 6-week class. They’re entering a structured progression that engages their brain’s reward circuitry the way no traditional fitness modality can. That changes everything about how the cycle gets sold and how members re-enroll.
The TSF Operator Growth Vault
The growth curriculum I wish someone had given me when I started my own training business. Five modules pulled across our TSF operator resources, deployable across your gym’s entire programming, not just your TSF cycle:
- 13 Ways to Monetize Your Fitness Expertise Beyond Class Hours
- Building a Responsive Member Pipeline That Sells Cycles
- Why Fear Enrolls More Members Than Selling Benefits
- Converting Trial Visitors Into Paying Members
- Why Your Gym Needs a Podcast Right Now (And How to Launch in 30 Days)
These five modules normally only sit inside the TSF Instructor Certification track. This group gets them as part of the $597 pilot.
Office Hours with Sifu Julliana & Sifu Nick
Sifu Nick and I sit down together and answer the ten questions gym operators ask most often about adding TSF as a specialty cycle. How to price the cycle for your local market. How to position it so your existing CrossFit / strength base sees it as variety, not competition. The combat form validation work Nick did on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (and what fitness operators can learn from how Hollywood programs intensity for non-athletes). How to integrate TSF with your existing programming calendar. The strategic mistakes operators make in the first 90 days. The long-term revenue ceiling for a fully operational TSF program running 4–6 cycles per year.
The most direct access to both of our strategic thinking on this topic available outside of one-on-one consulting.
All of That. For $597.
Add It All Up. Then Look at the Price.
No Surprise Charges. Ever.
Here’s What Happens After 90 Days
On Day 90, exactly one subscription begins: the TSF Program License at $149/month. It carries everything you need to keep running TSF. Your white-label AcadevoFit platform (members, billing, scheduling, shop), the TSF programming drops for each new cycle, your TSF Trainer Community access (all courses and materials, plus the live sessions with Sifu Julliana), your TSF Certified Studio mark (your certification to display while your license is active), continued wholesale saber access, and your listing in the TSF operator directory. We send you email reminders 30 days before, 7 days before, and 1 day before it starts. You can cancel from your dashboard in three clicks. No phone call. No retention specialist trying to talk you out of it. No penalty. The default on Day 90 is one license, one price: $149.
We run the license as an auto-continuation because we’ve watched too many operators lose their member database, their automations, and their cycle infrastructure on Day 90 because they forgot to set a calendar reminder. The default we want is your business keeps running. If that’s not what you want, you cancel. It takes 90 seconds.
If your pilot doesn’t pull and you decide TSF isn’t for your gym, cancel before Day 90 and you’ve paid $597 total. The Pilot Program modules, the bonuses, the Engagement Brief, the Growth Vault, the Office Hours recording, all of it is yours to keep regardless.
30 Days. No Hard Feelings.
You get the full 30 days to open every module, review every bonus, run the Module 1 numbers for your zip code, and decide. If you’re not 100% certain this is going to work for your gym (for any reason or no reason at all), you email support, you get every dollar back. No phone interview. No retention script. No "let me transfer you to a specialist."
Keep the TSF Member Engagement & Retention Brief regardless. Consider it my apology for not being the right fit.
Three reasons
this isn’t your specialty cycle.
The pilot works. But not for everyone, and not in every facility. Three things to confirm before you commit $597 to test it on your floor.
TSF assumes a recurring member base. People who’ll commit to a six-week specialty cycle, who already see your facility as their place. If your business model is day-passes and walk-ins, the conversion math is different and the pilot isn’t designed for it.
The pilot doesn’t run itself. The owner or head coach has to put their face on it, recruit the first class of members, and run the first cycle. If you’re hoping to delegate this to a junior trainer who didn’t buy into it, retention won’t hit the projections.
The cycle is 12 sessions over six weeks. If your schedule doesn’t have that window or you can’t protect it from being absorbed by your existing class roster, the pilot can’t prove itself. Move it to a quarter where you can carve out the time, and come back.
If any of those describes your facility right now, we’ll do you a favor by saying not yet. The pilot is for fitness operators ready to give a specialty cycle a real test.
Things You’re Already Wondering.
I’ve never trained a fitness modality with sabers in my life. Can I actually run this?
Yes. Module 3 is built for a coach who’s never held a saber. Saber Flow Cardio sequences, strength-conditioning circuits, mobility blocks. All programmed in language a NASM-credentialed coach (or any experienced fitness programmer) can follow on first read. If you’ve ever taught a CrossFit specialty cycle, run a strength program, or coached anything. You can teach the demo session. The deeper TSF Instructor Certification track is there when you want to scale, but you don’t need it for the pilot.
Will my CrossFit / strength base resent this?
Not in any of our pilot academies. Different floor time. Different demographic walking through the door. Spouses, teenagers, the "I want to get fit but CrossFit terrifies me" prospect who’s been parked on your sales funnel for six months. A meaningful number of your existing members will sign up for it themselves as cross-training. Nobody’s yet had a member quit because their gym added TSF.
How is this different from buying $200 of cheap sabers from Amazon and running an open mat myself?
Try it. You’ll get a Saturday of fun, no programmed progression for your members, no engagement framework, no retention mechanics, gear that breaks under partner-flow drills, and an LED that’s too dim to read in your overhead lighting. Then your members get bored in 4 weeks and you’ve wasted the slot. Or you do this once and have a properly programmed fitness modality with infrastructure that compounds for years.
What if my market doesn’t pull?
Then you cancel before Day 90 and you’re out $597, which you wrote off as the cost of finding out. You keep the modules, the bonuses, the Engagement Brief, the Operator Growth Vault, the Office Hours recording, all yours. Most operators who get to Day 30 keep going. The few who don’t typically discover their local demographic isn’t there for it. Knowing that for sure is itself worth $597.
Is TSF actually backed by exercise science, or is this novelty programming dressed up?
It’s programmed to NASM standards by a NASM-Certified Trainer. Periodization, progressive overload, heart-rate-zone targeting, mobility integration, recovery protocols. Sifu Nick (Hollywood stunt director, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3) validated every combat form against real-world movement patterns to ensure they generate genuine strength and conditioning stimulus, not just choreographed motion. The saber is the engagement multiplier; the underlying program is real fitness science.
What do the sabers actually cost?
Sabers are a separate purchase from the $597 Pilot Program. They’re the inventory you’ll resell to your cycle members at retail. TSF needs sabers only (no uniforms, no helmets, no gloves. This is fitness training, not contact combat). The Lean Pilot Saber Bundle (5–8 sabers) is enough for your Week 2 HILT demo. Bundles start in the low four-figure range at pilot-operator wholesale through the Light Sword Trading Post. Most operators recover saber cost through cycle pricing by Week 3 paid registrations and run 35–50% margin on resale. You set the retail price.
What’s the upgrade path if my pilot cycle works?
The TSF Instructor Certification at $1,497 (plus monthly platform access; pricing varies based on your tech stack choice) unlocks the full TSF curriculum, your TSF-certified instructor credential, the Wellness Insight (WISE) analytics platform integrated with Tribal4Life supplements, listing in the TSF instructor directory, and the operational tools to run TSF as a permanent program at your gym, not just a 6-week cycle. Pilot bonus: your $597 Pilot Program enrollment credits toward the TSF Cert if you upgrade within 90 days. So a pilot operator who decides to scale pays $900 to convert, not $1,497. Most operators don’t make that decision until after they’ve run their first cycle and seen the numbers themselves.
What kind of support do I actually get?
Pilot operators get direct onboarding support from me during the trial period. This is the entire reason the cap is 100 gyms. You also have the TSF Trainer Community from Day 1: every course and material in one place, live sessions with me, and the other operators running the same launch. Past the trial, ongoing support continues through your TSF Program License, the Trainer Community, and your white-label AcadevoFit platform.
In Six Months, Two Gyms in Your Zip Code Will Tell Two Different Stories.
Six Months From Today. Their Gym
- Saturday 5PM HILT class is at capacity. Waitlist of 8.
- Member retention dashboard finally shows the number they’ve been chasing for three years.
- Three new members joined this week through TSF cycle inquiries. Zero would have come through CrossFit.
- Their saber resale margin alone covers their lease.
- They’re considering running a second cycle on Wednesday evenings to handle demand.
- Their spouse heard about the gym at the school pickup line.
Six Months From Today. Their Gym
- Saturday 5PM is empty. Same as last quarter.
- Member retention is 68%. Their best WOD programming isn’t fixing it.
- Two of their members are now training at the gym down the street, the one running TSF.
- They saw the LinkedIn post about the operator who scaled. They scrolled past again.
- They’re considering running another themed challenge week. Their members aren’t excited about it.
- Their spouse asks why everyone’s talking about the gym across town.
TSF not the right specialty cycle?
Here’s where else your facility might fit.
Some operators belong on TSF. Others belong on a different rung of the LSTA ladder. Both are fine. Pick the door that matches what you actually want to build.
If your floor is a martial arts academy (not a gym), this is the version of the pilot built for you.
SWITCH TO LSPP →Want to run Saber Tag events instead of a recurring cycle? The mobile license is built for pop-up, tournament-style operations.
EXPLORE LEAGUE →Already convinced and ready for the full model? Skip the pilot and look at the Partner License.
VIEW LICENSE →Not sure yet which LSTA path is yours? Four questions and we’ll route you.
FIND YOUR PATH →One of Those Operators Is You.
Here’s the truth about the timing. We paused Pilot enrollment while I prepared for Team USA training camp. The same training I’ll be teaching your members from. Before I leave for the World Championships in Germany, I’m reopening the doors for 100 gyms, and this window runs alongside my competition season. The operators who claim a spot now get the version of me that’s training for Worlds: in the live Trainer Community sessions, in onboarding, in the programming drops. That has never been available before, and after August it won’t be available like this again.