GMB Fitness is a movement education company that teaches skill-based strength, mobility, and motor control to active adults who want to stay capable for decades.
Since July 2010, over 130,000 people in more than 100 countries have used our programs to move better, hurt less, and build capability that holds up outside the gym. Everything we teach is self-paced, home-based, and built on progressive skill practice instead of random workouts.
The method draws from physical therapy, gymnastics, and martial arts. The delivery is a curriculum you follow on your own schedule, with human teachers who answer when you get stuck. The goal is physical autonomy: a body you understand and can run yourself, for whatever you want to do with it.
Who GMB Is For
Our clients are active adults, mostly in their late 30s through 50s, who already train or play and have started noticing the gap between what they know about fitness and what their body will currently do.
You might recognize yourself here:
- You train at 5am before the kids wake up, or in the twenty minutes between the school run and your first call, and your “training space” is also the living room
- You’ve been strong for years, and lately you’re stiff in ways your workouts don’t fix
- You hike, climb, surf, roll, or play something you love, and you’ve started avoiding certain movements because of a nagging knee, shoulder, or back
- You have opinions about barefoot shoes
- You’ve done enough programs to be skeptical, and sales-y language trips your detector immediately
- You’d rather own a system you can run yourself than depend on a trainer, a gym, or a piece of equipment forever
You’ve done the grind. You’ve pushed through pain and burned out and come back. You want something that works for the next 30 years, and you’re willing to practice for it.
That’s who we built this for.
Why We Started GMB
We kept seeing the same problem: people who were strong in the gym couldn’t control their bodies outside of it.
Lifters with impressive numbers who couldn’t get into a deep squat. Athletes sidelined by injuries that shouldn’t have happened. People grinding through workouts they hated because they thought that’s what fitness required.
The fitness industry sells intensity and aesthetics. It has very little to say about how to move well.
There’s a gap between physical therapy (which fixes what’s broken) and elite athletics (which assumes unlimited time and recovery). Most people live in that gap. They want to stay strong and capable for decades, and nobody was teaching them how.
So we built a systematic approach to movement training that develops real-world capability through progressive skill practice. Deliberate, sustainable training that makes your body work better, in sessions you can fit around an actual life.
How We Train
We teach progressive movement skills that build strength, mobility, and control at the same time. Think of it like learning a martial art or an instrument: systematic practice that builds on itself, session after session.
Every program runs on the same loop. Assess where you are with specific movement tests. Address your weak points with progressive exercises, rating your own quality and effort so you can adjust to how your body feels that day. Apply what you’ve built to whatever you actually do. Then repeat as your abilities grow.
The details of the method, the session structure, and how the programs fit together live on their own pages:
- 👉 The GMB Method: how our training works and why
- 👉 The Curriculum: how the programs build on each other
- 👉 All Programs: what’s available and who each one is for
What Makes GMB Different
Most of what sets us apart is structural. It’s how we sell and support, and every piece of it is a decision we made on purpose.
Lifetime access, one payment
You buy a program, you own it. No renewal, no expiring license. Our flagship, Elements, is $150 once. The only recurring product we run is Alpha Posse, our membership for people who want ongoing coaching and a place to train with others.
The price is on the page
Anyone can see what anything costs before talking to anyone. There is no “free assessment” that turns out to be a sales call, no countdown timer, and no closer. If a method works, you shouldn’t need pressure to decide.
A 90-day guarantee, in plain English
Try any program for 90 days. If it’s not working for you, email us and we’ll refund it. That’s the whole policy.
Human teachers who answer
When you get stuck on a progression or aren’t sure how to adapt something for a stiff shoulder, a trained coach on our team replies. It’s not as fast as outsourcing to the third world, but we’ve been doing this since 2010 and it’s still the part of the business we’re proudest of.
A clinical foundation
One of our co-founders is a doctor of physical therapy who still sees patients. Every progression accounts for joint health from the ground up, which is why people with previous injuries and chronic tightness can train with us without wrecking themselves.
No Gurus
Nobody invented any of these movements; they’ve been used for millennia. We’ve spent fifteen years learning to teach them well. And lots of other great people are doing similar work. We’ve collaborated publicly with MovNat, Animal Flow, Nerd Fitness, Onnit, and 24 Hour Fitness because no single teacher or company owns the whole truth about movement.
We teach you until you don’t need us
That’s the business model. Our programs are built to make you a practitioner who understands your own body, with the coach eventually getting out of the way. Clients stick around anyway, which is the nicest possible problem to have.
What we deliberately do without
There’s no native app to download, no AI “coach,” no Facebook group, no limits on how long you use the programs, and fake coaching calls designed to push you into expensive coaching contracts.
The Team Behind GMB
GMB was founded by three martial arts teachers who met through a few fitness certification courses and found they shared the same frustration. We’re now a team of nine, with coaches and programmers rounding out the crew.
Ryan Hurst, Head Coach
Competitive gymnast turned martial artist. After a training accident ended his gymnastics career, Ryan spent 28 years in Osaka training judo, jiu-jitsu, and Iaido, and worked with the Osaka police judo team. A shoulder dislocation from judo forced him to rethink what sustainable training looks like, and that rethink became GMB’s approach to building capability that lasts. Ryan designs our programs and teaches most of the video instruction you’ll see.
Dr. Jarlo Ilano, PT, DPT, OCS, Managing Director
Licensed physical therapist, board-certified Orthopedic Clinical Specialist, and certified Therapeutic Pain Specialist, with clinical work in the Seattle area. Jarlo has over 40 years in martial arts, including two decades teaching Filipino martial arts while treating spinal injuries and mobility restrictions in practice. He’s the reason our programs are safe for people with real histories of injury and pain.
Andy Fossett, The Boss
6th-degree black belt in Taido and a lifelong martial arts educator. Andy spent years as a public school teacher in Japan and has designed learning systems for physical skill development for more than 15 years. He built GMB’s curriculum structure and teaching methodology by applying educational theory to movement training, and he writes most of what you’ll read from us.
Amber Mira, The Secret Weapon
Amber joined soon after GMB launched in 2010 to help answer client emails. She now manages the entire team, oversees product quality and client support, and handles everything else that keeps the place running.
How We Got Here
None of this happened overnight. We’re teachers first, and we’re still learning. Fifteen years of working with clients and coaches has changed how we train and how we organize it.
2005-2010: Three martial artists met through a fitness certification organization and discovered a shared frustration: even strong gym-goers lacked the motor control and mobility for real-world movement. Started teaching through a series of small projects. Gold Medal Bodies officially launched in July 2010.
2011-2014: Developed the core methodology by coaching thousands of clients to do handstands, train on gymnastic rings, and build functional flexibility. Launched Alpha Posse, our membership, to 100 founding members (unfortunately, “The A-Team” was taken).
2015-2018: Created Elements as the foundational program and expanded the curriculum with Integral Strength. Launched the Apprenticeship program for coach certification. Realized the original name no longer fit what we taught, so we became simply GMB.
2019: Launched Praxis, our custom training platform, named after the concept of applied practice: turning knowledge into capability.
2020-2024: Gave Elements a complete overhaul, retired older programs, and built a more cohesive curriculum around systematic progression in strength, mobility, and motor control.
2025, forward: Continuing to refine the programs and the curriculum. Big things on the horizon 😉
A lot of fitness fads and companies have come and gone since 2010. We’re still here because our clients keep coming back, and they tell other people why:
