Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Reardon is an active-duty Marine with over 13 years of service. Growing up in Waterbury, CT, he attended the US Naval Academy, earning a degree in Mechanical Engineering, followed by a master's in Environmental Engineering & Science and a master's-level program on integrating Christian faith into leadership. He's deployed multiple times overseas across aviation, infantry, and expeditionary units, working closely with military chaplains, and created programs like "After God's Own Heart" while leading SoCal Crucible events that helped Marines strengthen resilience and reduce sexual assault and suicidal ideation. He's also CrossFit certified, has coached at gyms, and runs his own boot camp.

Chris saw that military leaders were preparing troops for the battlefield but not for life's personal challenges, and that existing training relied on quick lectures or online courses that didn't build real mental, spiritual, and family readiness. From 2015 to 2017, while working with faith-based military nonprofits in San Diego, he saw firsthand how impactful, but costly and unsustainable, resiliency events could be. Friends and family pushed him to combine functional fitness like obstacle courses, shooting, and team activities with life skills and optional Christian-based guidance, and the name "Freedom Fitness" came to him in June 2016 during a Christian retreat for military families.

In April 2017, he piloted an obstacle course event at MCAS Miramar featuring trail running, group fitness, shooting, and resiliency training, capped with a talk from a Vietnam combat veteran, along with optional secular or faith-based sessions led by counselors or chaplains. The pilot proved that unit-led fitness and life skills training worked and could scale, laying the foundation for Freedom Fitness America, which today builds physical, mental, and spiritual readiness so service members can face combat stress and life's challenges and come home whole. His motto: "Fit for the Fight and Life."