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Results are required if you want to earn the title of America’s Most Wanted Coach, and for nearly three decades, Gunnar Peterson has continued to tick that box, helping hundreds, if not thousands, of people from average Joes to professional athletes from every league to Hollywood, top performers create their own stories of transformation.
Gunnar Peterson has been in the game for nearly three decades, training and coaching everyone from top players like Tom Brady and Sly Stallone to weekend warriors like you (and us).
At 60, Peterson hasn’t slowed down at all, though he still sticks to his old ways of doing things. Which means, no virtual visits or AI-driven programs; he’s a notebook and paper man, handwriting each client’s workload. He does, however, encourage a kind of digital communication: “Texting makes it a lot easier to keep things in line,” he says.
If you put it in football terms, in an industry increasingly dominated by the Saquon Barkley flash-like highlight-roll, Peterson is still opting for John Riggins’ ground-and-pound, three-yard-and-a-cloud-of-dust approach to moving yard markers. It all depends on a steady march towards the goal.
“I’ve always been a hard worker,” Peterson says. “If I was a running back, I would average 2.8 yards per carry. But I would like the ball 40 times a game. I would always bring it and just load everybody up.”
To get started, Peterson regularly started his day at 4 a.m. and ended it as late as 10 p.m. to make sure he was getting his training in and helping clients. Weekends were an extension of the work week: teaching spin and bumping all over the place The angels for customer training.
In between all of this there is the marketing side of things to drive more business and digging through magazines and journals to stay on top of new trends and changing science. “I passed the ACE test by reading Muscle & Fitness,” he says.
For years, even decades, it was a round-the-clock job to rise above the competition. But the sacrifices and relentless pursuit of excellence have undoubtedly paid off. Few people boast his clientele and can say they were the director of strength and endurance for the Los Angeles Lakers.
Most recently, Peterson was named head of athletics with F45, the boutique fitness franchise backed by actor Mark Wahlberg and soccer great David Beckham.
He also lent his name and support to MitoQ, a capsule backed by $60 million in research funding to help alleviate cellular stress to boost energy levels, immunity and support recovery. He does research to keep his name in place. “It penetrates the cell well to get into the mitochondria — your powerhouse,” he says. “For me, that plus hydration, nutrition and training, I feel like I’ve covered all the bases.”
Yet, after some 30 years in the fitness industry, he attacks each (early) morning with the same energy as that rookie trainer in Year 1 who found his first client by accident after the boy’s partner ran out of the gym: “Soon after as his friend joined and then another person joined in the afternoon and just like that I was training three people three times a week and making more than my 40 hour week job. So I left.
Peterson’s winning strategy has an old-school feel with a timeless message: Love what you do and work like you love what you do. His influence paved the way for the personal trainer business to go from a luxury niche for the wealthy to a $12 billion industry by 2022. He hopes today’s generation will benefit from his blood and sweat by putting in the work necessary to avoid being -informed but better suited to provide customers with an experience greater than three sets of 10.
“I would return any calls, any messages, anything,” Peterson says. “And I would just chase, chase, chase everything because it might have led to something down the road, and I wanted to make sure I never left anything on the table,” he says. “I don’t want to judge today’s generation, but some coaches don’t have the capacity to want to make that type of commitment. At the end of the day, do you see it as a career or just a job?”
Love what you do
I love this profession. I just moved to Nashville and not to say that I abandoned all the house work and renovations, but I spent most of my time in my gym because for me it is my powerhouse, my mitochondria.
When I wake up, I think about exercise. I think about what I’m going to do when I go to the gym. I look at the workouts for my clients and maybe make some adjustments. The training part for me is like taking a shower. It’s just something you just do and don’t necessarily talk about. Just do it.
The most exciting thing is to be with people. Remember that every day I see different people who have their own multifaceted lives. I process so much information that is interesting to me and I work with people who are highly motivated, highly motivated, inspiring. There are so many factors that make this great, I love it.
There was an old saying that still resonates with me: You don’t have to, you’re done. I look at training like this. I don’t have to train seven, eight people every day, I have to train them. How lucky is that? That it’s something I love to do. And you know, again, knock on wood, it keeps coming to me. So I can do it. And I don’t shy away from something like that. I’m not going to try to open a restaurant or car detailing business or whatever else you can think of. This works for me and I couldn’t be happier.
Work like you love what you do
I still print workouts for every person, every day. I can’t go to the gym and hide it – I don’t think that’s fair to the person. I’m sure some coaches make a killing doing it this way, but it’s not my style. So I write them down the night before and I come to work in the morning and I have them all there. However, I reserve the right to edit it on the fly if we feel something doesn’t fit or work. But I think organizational skills are important. It’s like any good coach. They take the field with a clipboard full of plays and an idea of how he will coach the game. That’s how I feel about it.
I make my schedule via text message. I’ll just text everyone over the weekend and say see you next week. I was a paper guy until about six, seven months ago – I would still have it on paper like I needed to. But being able to write, there is no confusion. It just makes it easier for people to come train and it’s definitely easier for the coach. You can now properly plan your time for the other things in your life that are also important.
Make social media your friend
I was at a conference in May. And I’d say almost every speaker has tried social media. I sat down with Jen Witherstrom and said to her, “Next time I present, I’m going to give so much love to social media.” It’s a great tool.
People should remember: social media is voluntary. You don’t have to go on. So what you’re whining about, you’re really doing to yourself. Unless you’re defending your platform, dispelling myths, or breaking down something you think is misunderstood in the world, I can’t imagine taking the time to write a negative comment. This just blows my mind.
For the casual user, there is so much information that you learn about. You can learn training techniques from top people, you can learn about equipment, supplements, nutrition, protocols and things you just didn’t know. And there’s so much to take from it, obviously you have to put it through a filter system – and that’s your own task – but there’s so much good stuff.
Remember back in the day how long it would take, exercise-wise, to get and gather all that information – now, just like that, it’s right there. Consider trying to get some powerplay info from Ed Coan or find out what Jay Cutler or Phil Heath are up to – you can go right now and see him on Instagram. Want to know about a supplement or protein powder you’ve heard of, go to their social profile. Check out the people who are tagged – you can go down all these rabbit holes and come away with knowledge about supplements and ways to train that you never could back in the day. Then it would be like writing a thesis.
Put your name on what you believe in
I always have to do my research. I need to know that the people I work with are cool people that I want to know. I don’t mean they’re hanging out on the beach kind of cool, I mean they’re in it for the right reasons. Because I’m in my job for the right reasons, I think I want to know that this isn’t some kind of sellout or quick move. They’re not just trying to throw out a bunch of products and go out of business and move on to the next product. I also want to know that the product itself is healthy. That means I want to find out how the trials went and read about the research and the money that went behind it. Money talks. Are they really researching it or doing it like a frat house. I really want to see what went into the trials and the results.
And I want to try it on myself – I always try it on myself. I know it’s a focus group of one, but if I take it and like how I feel or notice a difference in performance – and that it’s legit.
I’m too late in the game to sell out—it would look too desperate. I said if I had to sell it should have been 10 or 15 years ago. Now it would seem like an act of desperation, and I want no part of that. So I’m going to write it like I wrote it and stick with quality partners and products that I think are effective. I love taking MitoQ. There are so many antioxidants that work and are good for you.
Make every customer feel like an A-lister
Someone told me years ago that I should raise my prices for celebrity clients, and I thought, what are you talking about? And they say, “You know, if you charge X, you should charge like X plus 20%.” I asked why you do that, and he said they can afford it and they’re used to it.
I told him that was wrong and just crazy. If I owned a restaurant and I said, a steak is $28, but oh, I’m sorry, I just saw you in a movie recently. For you. It costs $36. Are you crazy? you can’t do that to people, you’ll kill your business.
Everyone is the same and I try to make the experience the same for every person – same allowances, same preparation. When you start spending the time and hours around them, you see every celebrity as ordinary people. Yes, it is unbelievable what they have achieved and how they affect your life. You don’t even realize it’s so and so who made that movie or TV show, and you’re still quoting the joke from it 20 years later. Now that person is in your gym, but that doesn’t mean they’re getting a better workout than anyone else. To me, they are all the same – in a good way. I tried to get everyone on there. Everyone is a celebrity in their own world.
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