Frequently Asked (or Implied) Questions

Absolutely not. If you want to learn real gymnastic sport, you must find a quality instructor and enroll in regular classes. It’s really the only way.

Though Ryan was a competitive gymnast in his teens, Gold Medal Bodies programs are designed for non-gymnasts to get the benefits of gymnastic-like training without having to devote themselves to the sport totally.

We will teach you how to perform some cool skills and build an impressive body, but we’ll do it in a way that doesn’t take away from your sport or other activities.

More than you might think. You see, most sports (powerlifting is one notable exception) rely more on skill than absolute strength. Practicing gymnastic movements develops your control and coordination, and that translates directly to improved performance of most sport skills.

Don’t get us wrong – strength is absolutely important for most sports, but when was the last time you saw a basketball player do anything resembling a squat during a game?

The movements we’ve chosen for our programs will build loads of strength that can be applied to most sports. We’ve heard of people improving their martial arts, snowboarding, soccer, and plenty of other sports. If your sport can benefit from greater strength and control, you’re in the right place.

Not unless you want to (and we won’t tell a soul if you do).

If you have two arms and two legs, you can use our programs. If you happen to have a different number of arms or legs, get in touch, and we can probably still help you.

In short, yes, women can do this.

But I don’t want to get bulky…

Do you have any idea how difficult it is for most people to gain muscle? It takes a lot of work. To be frank, you stand as much chance of accidentally bulking up as you do of growing a second head.

GMB programs will make you stronger, but since muscle is denser and more compact than fat, strength training will actually make you less bulky overall. In addition, you’ll firm up your arms, legs, and butt, you’ll improve your posture, and you’ll feel stronger and more powerful in everyday tasks.

Put down the pink dumbbells and soy milk. The women’s fitness industry is milking your time, money, and self image for all it’s worth.

GMB can give you what you really want – a body that looks as good as it feels.

Maybe some. We wouldn’t count on losing too much though.

GMB programs are not opti­mized for weight loss. The weight loss indus­try makes us feel dirty, and we choose not to partic­i­pate in it. We don’t make anything designed to “torch belly flab,” or get you skinny.

That said, you will burn a lot of fat and strengthen your muscles with this train­ing. If you follow the programs, get proper recov­ery, and follow a diet targeted for fat loss, you will achieve the results you’re after.

Gold Medal Bodies programs are based on training skills to develop attributes like strength, power, and mobility. Since this training can’t replace the skill training for your sport, it works in parallel with those skills, supporting your sport training.

In many cases, we recommend Rings One as the ideal starting point. It seems a little counter-intuitive, but training on rings builds the strength and mobility for performing moves on bars, on the ground, or in the air.

We also realize that rings can be a little intimidating and that some people just don’t have anyplace they can hang them. If that’s the case for you, starting with Parallettes One or Floor One will be just fine. You can always assume that anything with the word ONE is the title is just fine for a first step. All level-one courses will be suitable for beginners.

If you’re uncertain, check out this post on the GMB Curriculum or sign up for a Roadmap Session with Ryan to put together an individualized plan.

No. Training does not make you weak.

Unless you’re under ten years old, three months (the length of several of our programs) is not a long time.

If you really want to get a lot out of your training, one of the best things you can do is extend your timeline. Plan to make your health a lifelong effort and keep doing physical things that you enjoy for the remainder of your life.

Three months is a very short period to spend focusing on improving an area of your abilities.

Many people become fixated on achieving certain outcomes within narrow time frames. That’s just fine, and it’s good to be ambitious, but you’ve got to understand that making big changes takes time. If you’re overweight because of years of bad habits, it’s unreasonable to expect to undo all that damage in a matter of weeks.

It’s a common misconception that focusing on one goal means that everything else in your life is going to go to crap. Maybe for extremely disciplined and narrow-minded people, that’s possible, but who do you know that’s really capable of that kind of dedication? Probably nobody.

Focusing on getting better quality or longer durations of sleep will not have a detrimental impact on what you do for the other sixteen hours in the day. Likewise, working on handstands won’t make you fat.

Choose ONE major goal and work ONE program at a time. Then switch to something else.

You can’t achieve perfect balance at any one moment – life is too dynamic – but you can create harmony in your endeavors over the long term. If you plan to stay healthy to the end of your days, spending a few months working on a well-crafted training program can only be a step in the right direction.

Seriously, we have no idea where this idea comes from, but we get this question a lot, and we want to set your mind at ease.

There are two reasons not to worry.

The first one is simply that we know what we’re doing, and it would be pretty stupid of us to make a program that results in uneven or unbalanced muscle development. As a matter of fact, you’ll notice that we created an entire add-on module to make sure you build leg strength during the program. No other parallettes course has this.

The second reason you can relax about being imbalanced is that pushing does not make you weak at pulling. Doing pushups won’t weaken your biceps, in fact, it will increase the potential of the bicep to generate force and to grow when you do work it hard.

While there are no true “pulling” movements you can do on P-bars, we can stimulate the shoulders and lats in other ways – primarily through scapular depression and retraction. This is the key initialization movement of the pull-up where most people are weakest, and P1 will shore that up.

Just to be clear: No, you do not need to add pull-ups to P1. If we thought that was a good idea, we would have included them ourselves.

Seeing an exercise is not the same thing as mastering it.

You’ve probably seen push-ups and squats before too, but that doesn’t make them any less excellent. That’s why they’re classics – they get the job done.

There’s much, much more to designing a training program than just picking out some fancy-looking exercises. The value of a training program in is the selection and arrangement of movements and protocols to achieve specific goals.

GMB programs aren’t designed to impress you with our creativity. They’re designed to get you the promised results with minimal flash and maximal bang.

If you want show-off workouts with five hundred different exercises, look elsewhere.

Furthermore, there are no magical exercises that will make you reach your goals any faster. In fact, almost any exercises can make you strong if you have a great program.

The whole point of “training” is to do something repeatedly, in an organized fashion, so you get better at it. Push-ups and bench presses will both build you pecs if you do enough of them, but you’ll never get strong if you don’t have some form of progression in your routine.

GMB programs are designed around progression, so the beginner level variation of some exercises may not look all that tough. That’s OK. You have to master that foundation so you can progress to the following steps. Over time, with continued practice, you’ll improve.

This is training.

You may think you “know” an exercise in one of our programs, but that’s not the same thing as having trained it the way we teach it in the context of our programming and progression. “Empty your cup,” and you’ll learn a lot.

Our advice is to cut out the exercise collection and start following programs.

Of course you can’t. We’ve been practicing, and you haven’t… yet.

Just do what you can.

Start at the beginning and do the easiest version of the exercise you can. Reduce the range of motion, for example, by only going down half-way (or as far as you can manage with good form) on push-ups until you have the strength to go further.

Be patient with yourself. You can’t expect instant results.

Work with what you have. Do a little more at each session. Don’t give up, and you can achieve your goals.

We all started out as helpless babies, just like you did. We’ve suffered (serious) injuries and had to take months and years to rehabilitate. We’ve felt stiff and weak and had days we felt like giving up. Just like you.

But we kept training consistently. Just like you will.

In a word: no.

Sure, it will be harder for you to get started and make progress, but you have to start somewhere. All of the exercises are doable by almost anyone, and our team is available to answer your questions about making them work for you.

Each program includes detailed instruction on building up to each movement from the very basic fundamentals, and we not only give you examples of good form at each stage – we also provide clear performance cues for getting the maximum benefit out of each exercises.

It may be intimidating to try something you can’t yet do. That’s natural. But if you start with what you can do and follow the instructions, you will get stronger.

We’re very glad you asked. Getting updates is easy if you join our GMB Posse.

We send out one email a week to members about a variety of topics. Messages include updates and discount notices about new products, a monthly newsletter full of exclusive videos and articles (NOT the fluff and crap you might see in some other email newsletters), and notes about the health and training topics that are on our mind.

When you subscribe for updates, we’ll go ahead and send you a free Handstands “The Right Way” Tutorial Video. (We’re just crazy like that.)

The GMB Posse is our general community of friends, fans, followers, and good-looking people who use GMB-style training to build skills and strength. Joining is 100% free and entitles you to updates and exclusive video tutorials.

Alpha Posse is a bit different. This is a special group within the Posse that enjoys close interaction with the GMB Team via out private forums and gets access to special programs and benefits we don’t release to the public. It’s kind of like our version of the A-Team, except we meet online instead of riding around in a black van.

We no longer produce DVDs. Instead, all GMB programs are available for immediate download onto your computer, which we find more convenient, not to mention ecological (just think of the resources required to manufacture and ship DVDs and books).

All of our videos are recorded in true HD and edited to maintain the highest possible video quality at a reasonable size for downloading. They’re also optimized for viewing in iTunes, so you can load them onto your iPad or other portable media device for portability you can’t get with DVDs. The videos are completely compatible with both Windows and Mac software.

Training manuals are delivered in Adobe PDF format, which is the industry standard for document downloads. Chances are, your computer came pre-installed with the software necessary to view PDF, but if you have any questions about your download files, we offer full support in our members’ area.

Once you submit your payment for a GMB program, you’ll be sent to our private members’ site where you can download all of your purchases in one place. We keep all our downloads under one roof, so you can always come back and access your programs, even if you’ve lost your files.

For all our downloads, you should be able to register for access immediately upon payment. If you’re expecting a download and don’t get sent to a registration page, just drop us a short email, and we’ll hook you up manually.

If you follow the program, it will work. We’ll make sure of it.

Simply put, we’re in the business of making programs that achieve specific outcomes. If our programs didn’t work, we’d be out of business in a hurry.

It’s in our best interest to be sure that the programs work.

A lot of companies do a “no questions, money back” guarantee. What they’re really telling you is that they don’t care enough about your results to try and help you – they’d rather just give you your money back than actually work with you until you’re successful.

What a crappy way to treat a client.

If you have a question about implementing a GMB program, we’re here to answer it. If you aren’t sure how to do something, we want to explain it. If you’re concerned, we want to hear you and work through it.

Watch the videos and read the manuals. Follow the schedules. Ask questions.

If you don’t feel you’re making progress, show us your training logs (we provide ready-made charts with all our GMB Curriculum programs). We’ll find out where things went wrong and give you concrete actions to make corrections to get you moving in the right direction again.

We are committed to your results, and we stand behind that with our time and attention. You deserve better than a buy-off.

We might have to let you down.

If we sere selling cars or socks, we would definitely offer refunds on defective merchandise. But you can’t un-download a program once you’ve got it on your hard drive.

Having a system in place to allow speedy and secure transactions and reliable downloads is not simple or cheap, and using that system incurs a cost. Requesting a refund without a very good reason abuses our other clients by driving that cost unnecessarily high.

Please allow us to work with you to make sure you receive and can use all of the resources we’ve worked so hard to prepare for you.

We honestly want to see you succeed.

With a good reason, yes. Of course.

If you have extenuating circumstances, we can take things on a case-by-case basis.

If you have an insurmountable technical issue (unforeseen internet service problems that completely prevent you from downloading), we will give you a complete and speedy refund.

If you show a program to your doctor or physical therapist who then advises you not to do the exercises, we will either help you find alternatives or give you a complete and speedy refund.

If you live in the tundra and don’t have a place to hang gymnastic rings in your igloo, we probably will not give you a refund on Rings One, because this is a circumstance you were aware of before you downloaded the program.

If you change your mind, we will probably not give you a refund, because that’s purely your own whim. You can’t go to a restaurant, order a burger and decide you’re not hungry once it gets to the table. Rather you can, but you still have to pay for the burger.

GMB programs are like a quality burger – meaty and tasty – but if you think you might be a vegan, you shouldn’t be looking at that section of the menu to begin with.

No way. We would never resort to sarcasm.

Honestly, as seriously as we take our training and the quality of our products, we don’t have a lot of seriosity left over at the end of the day for much else.

Do you really want to get emails full of corporate speak and read manuals that sound like something an engineer would write? We didn’t think so. We’re also assuming you don’t like high-pressure sales or insincere pitches. That’s cool, because neither do we.

Sometimes we may be smart asses and sometimes we may be blunt. But we’ll always be straight with you, and if that’s half as important to you as it is to us, we’re hoping you’ll forgive any faux pas.

Because we’re not that guy. We’re GMB.

There’s more than one way to skin a cat, 50 ways to leave your lover, and at least a thousand different opinions on why one or another way of training is The Ultimate Best. Except that no one method is the best for every goal – and anyone trying to convince you otherwise is somebody not to trust.

GMB teaches full-body control and strength you can use for whatever activities you enjoy.

But hey, at the end of the day, it’s just advice. You can do whatever you want to do.

We’d love that. If there’s anything that makes us feel important, it’s having someone ask us questions about ourselves. If you like, we can also talk about training, the kinds of results our clients get, and ways to bring a little more Gold Medal attitude to just about anything.

We are available for interviews via email or Skype. We also write and accept guest blog posts if we think there’s a mutual benefit to both audiences.

Yes!

Please see our seminar page for more details. Note that we don’t do weddings or Bar Mitzvahs, but under the right conditions, slumber parties may be considered.