Advice For GMB n00bs From Our Top Clients

This is advice I wish every new GMB client got before their first session.

Tens of thousands of people have run our programs. The ones who get the best results share a handful of habits. The ones who quit or stall usually made the same handful of mistakes early on.

Watch the video first. Then keep reading for the specifics.

What Our Best Clients Do Differently

Take the Basics Seriously, Especially When They Feel Easy

The first time you do a Bear or a Frogger, your reaction will probably be “this is it?”

That reaction is the first test.

People with serious training backgrounds tend to be the worst at this. They’ve squatted heavy, run distances, hit handstands, so a slow crawl on the floor feels beneath them. They skip ahead, and six weeks in they’re stuck on something Elements would have set up for them.

The work in the basics is the noticing. Slow enough to feel which hip catches, which side has been compensating for the other one, what reaches you’ve been faking with momentum. Those details are the program.

A few places to start:

• 👉 If you’re brand new, two bodyweight movements we teach everyone first.
• 👊🏼 How we teach any new skill: the GMB Method.
• 💪 What most workouts leave out that we focus on.

“You can never spend too much time on the basics. Even if they feel simple or easy, if you take the time to slow things down and feel what’s happening in your body, you’ll gain so much more body awareness and understanding of the movements, which will allow you to progress with more confidence and ease.” — GMB Trainer Verity

Consistency Beats Intensity. Always.

Clients who come to GMB from competitive sports backgrounds tend to have the hardest time with this. They’ve spent years grinding through workouts to the point of failure, and stopping with gas in the tank feels like cheating.

It isn’t. It’s the actual mechanism.

Three sessions a week for two months will get you further than six sessions a week for ten days followed by a week off because your knees hurt. The pattern that breaks people is the same one they use to feel productive in the moment.

A few rules:

• Start with three sessions a week. Add a fourth or fifth only after that’s been easy for a month.
• Pick a session length you’ll actually do. The Elements program runs 15, 30, or 45 minutes. The 15-minute option is the one you’ll choose on days you don’t feel like training, and it counts. The longer sessions do their work once the habit is built.
• Don’t write goals you wouldn’t sign up for sober. Realistic targets compound. Ambitious-sounding ones just buy you an excuse to quit later. More on goal-setting here.

You’ll be sore in the first week or two. That’s normal. Active recovery isn’t optional and isn’t complicated:

The clients who get the furthest are the ones still training in month nine.

“If you can find a way to have fun with your training, it’s going to make consistency a whole lot easier – and you feel super cool doing fun stuff.” — GMB Trainer Eduardo

Take Care of Your Wrists Early

Most new GMB clients haven’t put serious weight through their hands since elementary school. Your wrists, forearms, and the connective tissue between them aren’t conditioned for what the programs ask.

Wrist work is built into the warmups and the sessions, and you’ll adapt over the first month. The first couple of weeks just tend to be uncomfortable while that happens.

A few things help in the meantime:

Two Good Reps Beat Ten Sloppy Ones

When something feels hard, the default fix is more volume. Plenty of training methods reward that approach. Ours doesn’t.

A clean, slow-tempo Bear with full breath control will teach you more in two reps than ten sloppy ones. The early movements are diagnostic. Their job is to surface what you can and can’t do cleanly, so the program can address it. Grinding through them defeats the purpose.

When you find a position that’s harder than it should be, that’s the program working. Stay there. Notice what’s happening. Adjust. Try again with more precision. Reps alone don’t earn you anything.

Mindful training is how the assessments work, how progress actually compounds, and how you avoid the injuries that come from forcing patterns your body can’t yet control.

Run the Program. Don’t Customize.

The most common self-sabotage move is mid-program improvisation. You’re three weeks in, something feels easy, so you start swapping in your own variations. Or something feels hard, so you skip it and tell yourself you’ll come back to it.

Both of those are how clients end up six months in without the results they wanted.

Ryan, Jarlo, and I have spent decades building these progressions: martial arts, gymnastics, physical therapy, and tens of thousands of conversations with clients about what actually works. The order, the pacing, and the cues are all doing specific work. When you cut them, you cut the result they were producing.

Run the program as written for one cycle. Take notes on what you’d change. Then we’ll talk.

👊🏼 Where to Start: Elements

Elements is the first program for almost everyone who comes to GMB. It builds the foundation of strength, control, and movement quality that the rest of the catalog assumes you have.

You don’t need equipment. Ryan trains in jeans. You need your body and enough floor space to lie down in.