GMB Fitness

GMB Approved! A Few of Our Favorite Things 👇

It’s difficult to find quality products from all the choices out there. There can be a lot of disappointments.

Well, we’ve done loads of product vetting over the years (all of us on Team GMB have close, personal relationships with our mail carriers from all our Amazon orders), and the list below reflects the products and brands we love the most and want to share with you.

In some cases, we get a commission if you click through these links and end up buying something. It’s kind of silly but we’re legally required to tell you that, so there you are. Good times…

Recommended Programs

Dr. Eric Goodman: Foundation Training

Foundation Training is our preferred program for back pain

Despite being active and generally healthy, decades of abuse and injury take a toll. This is the approach that helped both Andy and Ryan the most. Bonus: Eric has become a good friend in recent years.

Dr. Kelly Starrett: Virtual Mobility Coach

Kelly Starrett teaches recovery from pain and injury

Kelly has spent over a decade focused on injury prevention and recovery for athletes. The Mobility Coach app in particular makes it dead simple to target specific pain points for better performance.

Mike Fitch: Animal Flow

Mike Fitch teaches Animal Flow

Despite some similarities with our programs, Animal Flow is a fun and unique system for building strength and fitness. Mike is a good friend of ours and a fantastic teacher.

Favorite Apps & Gizmos

Activity Tracker: Whoop

whoop

Autoregulation is a key part of our approach to training, and Whoop ads some objectivity to measuring your readiness. GMB friends get one month free.

Focus Aid: Brain.fm

Brain.fm App

Background music for managing your attention and mood – great for focus, meditation, or winding down to sleep. Use the coupon ‘gmbfitness’ for 20% off.

Meditation App: Headspace

Headspace

Ryan’s been recommending Headspace for years now, and dozens of our trainers and clients have told us it was the thing that helped them finally build a meditation habit.

Book and Gear Lists

Favorite Books on Amazon

GMB recommended books

We read a lot. A LOT, a lot. No way we can list every book we love, but this is a selection of some that have had an impact on how we teach.

Top Gear on Amazon

GMB Recommended Gear

Everything from lacrosse balls to pull-up bars and Ryan’s favorite hiking shoes. We try to update this periodically and keep it up to date.

Recommended Training Equipment

recommended training equipment

Gymnastic Rings & Parallettes

perfecting hand grips on rogue gymnastics ringsOur recommendations: 

These are easily the most comfortable and durable rings we’ve used. They’re not cheap, but you’re going to love working out with them. Though we prefer wooden parallettes, the ones we use are no longer available, and we can confidently recommend Rogue as a dependable supplier of high-quality gear.

If you’re in the U.K., we recommend checking out Wolverson Wooden Rings.

(Not sure where to hang your rings? We’ve got you covered.)

Pull-Up Stand

metal framed squat rackOur recommendation: CAP Barbell Exercise Stand

Ever since releasing our Integral Strength program, which features a lot of pulling movements on a bar, we’ve gotten a number of questions about a pull-up bar we recommend.

Really, anything sturdy will do, but if you’re looking for something relatively cheap and easy to assemble, this exercise stand from CAP Barbell is a great option.

Recommendations for a Quality Life

Prince

Here are some other things we love.

Film – Purple Rain

His Paisley Majesty was one of the very best musicians of our time. He had more range than Mariah Carey and played more instruments than most jazz combos – and played them better, too.

Purple Rain is, to be honest, badly acted, with a plot to match. But it captures Prince’s musical universe at a pivotal time in his career and introduced the world to what a real rock concert should look like. Also, everyone needs to say the phrase “that’s not Lake Minnetonka” at some point in their lives.

Production Knives – Spyderco

KnivesJarlo is our resident knife man. I’m not even sure how many knives he owns, but he recommends Spyderco’s knives for general use.

As Jarlo puts it,

It’s the Honda Civic of knives; reliable and gets the job done.

Writing Tools – Moleskine and Uniball

As much as we all love our Macs, there’s really nothing like good ‘ole pen and paper.

Ryan does his journaling, to-do lists, and training logs in a Moleskine notebook, with a regular Uniball pen. Andy does the same, and both of them find that this really works best for certain things.

Buy Quality and Don’t Skimp

One of our mottos at GMB is “buy quality.” It can sometimes be tempting to buy an off-brand to save a couple bucks, but really, if you can’t afford to buy the trustworthy, high quality brand, you’re better off not buying it.

We’ve tested out all the products above and can recommend them confidently.