Ryan is the mythic hero of the GMB epic saga. As Program Director, it’s his job to personally develop and test each of GMB’s programs before releasing them into the wild. With many years of experience in strength and movement coaching, Ryan also has holds black belts in Kendo, Judo, and Shorinji Kempo and practiced 10 years as a competitive gymnast.

Matt: You have a background in martial arts, yoga, gymnastics, and strength training. The Gold Medal Bodies team seems to have a similar approach to training as Nate Miyaki does to nutrition, where you are pulling the best from a variety of styles and methods. Can you talk about how GMB’s training style grew into what it is today?

Ryan: Gold Medal Bodies started out fours ago by looking at skills that not I only wanted to work on, but could help other people as well. We looked at my background, and the backgrounds of my partners Andy Fosset and Jarlo Ilano, and saw that there was a lot of bodyweight stuff and gymnastics stuff out there, but unfortunately the progressions didn’t seem adequate. You’d have people that would start out at a set Progression A and then the jump between A and B was just huge. We felt that the way that things were taught could be improved on so that’s where we started.From there we began to put together these programs and worked to make sure that people knew exactly what it took become successful.

For us it wasn’t just about our clients gaining these new set of skills. It was about making sure they really enjoyed the process. People can get so focused on the end result and nothing else that they kinda lose the purpose of why we are doing all of this. We wanted to focus on making sure they enjoyed the journey and gained a mind-body awareness. That’s huge for us. Right now this is something we’ve really started focusing on explaining even more. How to get that mind-body connection and how to actually start exploring these new movements. Of course it all comes back to the basics and you have to have those down. People talk about flow, stringing movements together, and achieving this awesome state of bliss when you’re doing things. But really, how do you do that? A lot of people don’t. It’s like if you tell a person to relax. Well if they don’t know how to relax they won’t be able to relax. We want to be able to share things now to express how to do that. So, in the very beginning we focus on just teaching one thing with Rings 1 which was our first program. From there our programming just kept growing. We have the movement multivitamin where you get to explore a new movement everyday. We have the Alpha Posse, which is our online community of people who come together to do a lot of cool stuff and help each other out. In the very beginning GMB was very small. Just that one program and where I was sharing a little bit about what I enjoyed doing. Now we’ve got to the point where it’s refined and what we’re doing is trying to educate our community that these progressions are just one method of doing things and this is a way you can continue to have fun learning new skills.

Matt: You started to dig on my second question there.I really enjoy GMB’s message about how you should enjoy the process, but what they are doing isn’t necessarily the end-all program. It’s a process of continually building over time. This message deviates from the majority of marketing in the fitness industry. Why did you zero in on this message and why is it so important to you?

Ryan: Yeah absolutely. To be honest we aren’t targeting the young guys out there who are just looking to get jacked and add some skills along the way. In the beginning I was looking at guys like me, like Andy, like Jarlo. Basically family guys. People who have families and jobs. They don’t have 4-6 hours every day to work out.

If you don’t enjoy working out, if you don’t have a purpose to it, then you probably are not going to stick with it. So thats what we wanted to focus on. We wanted to show people that there are some great programs and coaches out there that would like for you work for X amount of hours per day and focus on performing that one thing for the next six months, but we’re not about this. Yes you can get these skills, but like I mentioned earlier if you don’t enjoy the process and it feels like a grind it’s not going to carry over to your life. That’s what we’re after. What are you doing in your workout to help whatever else that is going on in your life. That carry over is extremely important. In my case, I want to be strong in the things that I’m doing. Not just to get the skills, but to be strong for my family. To be strong for the people that I love. To be a positive influence to everything around me. So hopefully the people that are using our programs, the people in Alpha Posse, are looking at our tutorials and saying, “Wow these are cool skills and good progressions, but it also looks like they have fun. This looks like something I would enjoy.” We want people who think this way. I want to be able to enjoy the process, avoid getting hurt, not spend 12 hours a day working on this, and just keep doing it. So that’s kind of our message and what we’re going with.

Matt: One of the things that has popped up in many of our interviews so far is focusing on long-term change, rather than short-term fixes. It seems like you are going for exactly the same approach but looking to extend these benefits to all areas of your life, which is fascinating to me. Could you elaborate on this a bit?

Ryan: Sure. So we are looking at the long run. I don’t like to play the age game, but I’m 41 with two kids. I’m not in this just to get a set of abs so I can show off. Of course you will get those eventually if you keep at it, but we’re a little bit beyond this. We’re looking at things that we can learn now. We want to focus on the basics, whatever that might be to you. Everyone is coming into this at a different point. We might have someone who is just trying to get off of the couch. We can help them do that and understand that it won’t happen overnight. If we can get them focused on enjoying the process we can get them to do this for the rest of their lives. A lot of people these days want to get these results right now and I understand it. I was the same way when I was 20. I think that as you get a little older you realize that things do take hard work and that it’s worth it to put the effort of building a solid base. As your go further into the exercise and progress you will actually get there faster because you have that base.

Also something else that we are very focused on is to look at things in a cycle. Instead of just performing one thing for one or two years and saying it’s the only thing we are going to do we look at three month cycles or maybe even shorter. It depends on that individuals goal. We look at these movements and depending on the process we change things up. We could tell them to put it on the backburner for a bit, focus on something new, and then come back to that movement eventually in a new cycle to focus on getting better and better. Depending on your goal, as long as you cycle it, when you come back to it you’re going to stronger and fresh. You will be back to enjoying the process because people tend to get bored. I’m not telling these people to change things up every two weeks, but instead to cycle through these progressions and continue to build. It lets you step back and get your mind in the right place so when you come back to it you’re ready to go.

Matt: Your approach to GMB I think is way ahead of what many in the fitness industry are offering so far. You’ve built a remote business that operates solely online and have a team that’s scattered across the world. Could you tell me the influences that led to this and how the team came together to build this platform?

Ryan: It originally it was Jarlo and I before GMB. We were involved in another fitness company and doing something completely different. We would travel and teach seminars all over the world. At one of these seminars during a break there was a set of parallettes and I just started doing some stuff to move around. Everyone turned around and started watching. On the car ride back Jarlo said that I needed to start teaching some of this stuff. We kept talking about it during the ride and Jarlo came up with the name Gold Medal Bodies before we reached our destination.

We realized that we couldn’t do this with just the two of us. I’m not very internet savvy. So Andy Fosset is the mastermind behind putting GMB online. The cool thing about our team is that we each have our place. We each know what our strengths are and where our weaknesses are. We let everyone focus on their strengths and don’t worry too much about anyone else. We started off with the three of us and then brought on Amber for customer support. This is something that we’re really big on with GMB is that we will always, always answer your email. Customer support for us is huge. We are creating a community and want to be available to everyone. It’s not just about setting something up, having a downloadable program, and then saying good luck. If you ever have any questions we are there to help. The cool thing is that it’s not just Amber now. We have a whole team working together to make GMB better. So we understood it couldn’t just be us. If it weren’t for the entire team this wouldn’t happen. We’re like a big family. Each month it seems to expand (laughing). Our goal is that each person who comes to GMB enjoys working with us. Of course there will be people who don’t click with us and that’s perfectly fine. We don’t think GMB is the end all for everything. This is just an example of what we like to do. For people who want to work with us, that’s great! If not, we can refer you to someone who would be a better fit for them. There are so many great people out there, but it really depends on that person’s goal.

We have programs that are downloadable, but the big thing we really wanted to do was create a community and we thought that the best way to do that was online. That’s why we created the Alpha Posse. It’s just a group of really cool people sharing similar ideas with each other. It’s like everyone’s working together to get better instead of competing. There’s no ego. We don’t anyone in there who is going to be a dick just to be perfectly honest. We don’t sit around singing kumbaya, but there’s no reason for anyone to think they are better than anyone else. I’m not a guru. I’m not the guy in charge. That’s not me. I’m just the guy who loves what he’s doing and wants to help other people. There’s lots of stuff going on at GMB. It’s touch to say that we are just one thing because we are constantly evolving. Constantly updating our programs and trying to get better.

Matt : So what’s surprised you as you’ve grown this online community and explored the viability of training people online? What have you learned?

Ryan: There are lot of people out there who are looking for much, much more than just a workout course. People are looking for a community. A good example is to look at Crossfit. Crossfit is amazing. They’ve created this community of like-minded people that want to work with each other. That’s what we have learned. There are so many people looking for a community like this. There are some organizations out there who put out content and say that their way is set in stone. I think that this turns off a lot of people. The programs might be created by great coaches, but I think people are looking for much, much more than just an exercise program. They want camaraderie. They are looking for others to gel with, learn from, and who they can share with. That experience allows you to grow really close with other people even if it is just online. What we’ve learned over time is that if we can create this positive experience with all of our members it also helps us as a company. We learn a lot from the GMB community as well.

To follow and read more from Ryan and GMB click the links below:

– GMB Website
– Facebook, Twitter, Youtube