On September 17, 2022 we permanently closed sales of our Vitamin and Mobius movement programs.
Clients who own these programs will continue to enjoy lifetime access and our full support, but they will no longer be available for new purchases.
But whyyyyyyyyy? 😢
That’s the big question, isn’t it?
And I’ll tell you the truth here… no matter what answers we we give you or how carefully we try to explain it, some people will be upset. Either they’ll misinterpret something and get the wrong idea, or simply because change is difficult and uncomfortable.
So with that caveat, here’s some of the main reasons these two programs went bye-bye:
💡 1. We keep learning and refining what and how we teach.
The movement gurus on Instagram like to present themselves as wise, infallible sages who have it all figured out, and frankly, it’s easy to act like you know it all when you haven’t really taught many people off social media.
In over a decade of teaching online, we’ve worked with over 100k clients and had conversations with many, many thousands of people. We have many millions of data points about how people actually use our programs. We would have to be complete idiots if we didn’t learn something new through all that client interaction.
A few things we’ve learned:
- There’s a theoretically optimal way to do things… and then there’s a realistic way that actually works.
- Most people are busy, and training is not their top priority in life.
- There is too much information online, and there are too many “essential” skills and practices out there for any single human to actually use.
- Ryan looks better with a beard.
Seriously, it’s not even close.
- which exercises produce the best results for the most people,
- what physical limitations most commonly slow progress, and…
- which skills people actually enjoy practicing.
We keep learning, and that means doing our “best” work is a moving target.
We know more now than we did in 2013 and 2019 – and a lot more than we did in 2010 – and we need to make room to execute on that in some new courses and programs.
🤷♂️ 2. Many clients had trouble understanding where Vitamin and Mobius fit in.
We have one obvious starting point in Elements, which forms the base of our curriculum. That’s simple enough.
Then we have one mobility program and one strength program…, but we have two movement-oriented programs.
That’s confusing, and we had explain it too often.
It can be overwhelming to have too many options, especially when you aren’t experienced enough to understand the differences between them.
By retiring these two programs, we can rethink the skills/movement component of the curriculum and create other programs that address the most common needs efficiently, with less confusion.
There’s a ton of info and teachers out there. We want to minimize the confusion, not add to it.
⏳ 3. Everything has an expiration date, and both of these programs have seen multiple update cycles.
When we first released Vitamin in 2013, it was a 28-day virtual event called Movement Multivitamin, and people got angry because they thought it was a nutritional supplement.
In the nine years since then, we…
- changed the name,
- reshot all the videos three times,
- doubled the number of sessions, and…
- created and tested at least a dozen different variations of the combo flows before landing on the current arrangement.
It’s hardly even the same program anymore.
Mobius actually started out as a riff on some of those Vitamin flows and turned into a whole new progressive program. And there’s really nothing else out there that covers rotation, level changes, and these twisting movements combos in such a progressive, structured way.
And even though it’s just over two years old, Mobius probably had more updates in a shorter period of time than any of our other programs.
Most of those changes followed the early development of our Praxis training platform.
The Praxis training software we started developing back in 2018 first saw the light of day when we launched Mobius, and it’s come a looooong way since then. With more options and a better experience for our clients using the programs, we can build programs in new ways that simply weren’t possible when we initially planned Mobius, let alone Vitamin.
🙋♀️ “But what about…? Couldn’t you just…?”
Like we said, there’s no way to explain this in a way that satisfies every curiosity or thought or feeling everybody is gonna have.
This is a complex business decision for us and it impacts 10s of 1000s of people, so you can expect we’ve thought very carefully about all our options and the best way to improve our curriculum while doing right by our current clients. Understanding all that would require a lot of context that we can’t provide here.
One thing we can say with confidence: this is definitely the right move.
😢 And despite all that…
…we’ll miss these programs.
Vitamin has helped thousands of people explore new movements, but beyond just being “fun,” we’ve heard stories from clients who’ve used it to rediscover the joy of movement in their lives, and we’ll never be able to think about Dana’s story without maybe getting just a bit teary.
Mobius provided the missing structure many people found they needed after discovering that “just move” wasn’t actually very helpful advice. Mobs was the first training program devoted to the in-between movements that make athletics and improvisation possible.
Though we’re proud of them, it’s time take a fresh look at what these programs were designed to do – which is developing movement skill and fluidity – without being tied to a history and having to maintain continuity.
But GMB has never been about a single piece of equipment or a specific program.
Even from the very earliest days of Gold Medal Bodies, we’ve been about teaching Physical Autonomy rather than some arbitrary set of movements.
And so it’s time let these programs go while we develop the next series.
Even More questions? Cool…
Retiring these programs was a tough decision to make, but these babies have had their time to shine, and now we’re giving them the farewell they deserve. Since you might have some questions about this whole thing, we’ve A’d some likely Q’s below.
Is this real or some kind of trick?
If you stop and think about it, there’s really no incentive for us to try and trick anyone here.
Let me assure you, these programs are not available legally. Anyone who own the programs already will own them for life. Anyone who doesn’t never will.
Pretty simple.
What can you tell me about upcoming programs?
Not much. They will be good, and you will probably want them. But beyond that, it’s hard to say.
We’re still in the planning and testing stages on exactly what to include and how to fit it together. So until we nail that down fully, anything we tell you at this point has about a 70% chance of ending up wrong. We can’t guarantee anything about the content or release schedule, because making good programs is hard work.
What if I already have one or both of these programs?
You’re ahead of the curve, that’s for sure. Good job!
And since these programs include lifetime access, you’ve got them… for life. Nothing to worry about.
Do I really still get lifetime access?
For the love of Colonel Sanders’s 11 original herbs and spices, yes, you get lifetime access to these programs.
Of course, there’s limits. There could be an alien invasion. The internet could explode. Everyone at GMB could be killed in a freak BBQ accident with nobody left to keep the servers running. We can’t 100% guarantee that we will live sufficiently longer than you to ensure actual lifetime access to the programs.
But otherwise, yes, you get lifetime access, and that doesn’t change just because we stop selling a program to new people. Once you’re in, you’re in.
Will these programs still be updated?
Vitamin has had over a dozen major updates (and a name change) since 2013, and in just a bit over two years, Mobius has also seen a handful of programming updates. Both programs are fully evolved for their purposes.
We’ll almost certainly make minor adjustments to both programs, and we’ll definitely make changes to the Praxis software they live on. However, we don’t plan any major content updates to either program.
If I bought these, can I get a discount on other programs later?
Nope.
Anything new will be new. Having this won’t make our other programs less valuable. That’s not how training and learning work. Every program is its own thing that complements each other program.
Whatever we release next will be significantly different and useful, just like Vitamin and Mobius.
OK, then… that’s a lot.
I’ll leave you with an embarrassing pic from 2012, just a few months before we launched Vitamin:
Jarlo, Andy, Amber, and Ryan in 2012, Awkward Family Photos Edition
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