Gianfranco F

Gianfranco Frattelli started karate when he was nine years old. He's still at the same school more than two decades later, now a fourth-degree black belt. That kind of staying power tells you most of what you need to know about how he coaches.

Along the way he's put in twenty years of calisthenics and Muay Thai, and spent the last seven getting deep into balance training, the kind of work that keeps you moving well at 50 and 70, not just at 30. He's coached in big box gyms across California, Arizona, and now Pittsburgh, where he landed a few weeks ago and immediately started looking for a place that actually coaches people instead of just handing them a key fob.

He's also been the guy who was overweight. He's been the guy working around an injury. So when a client tells him they're frustrated, or scared to load a movement, or starting over after a long time away, he's not guessing at what that feels like. He's been there and worked his way back.

Nutrition is his next horizon. He's building it into how he coaches, because he's learned the hard way that training alone only gets you so far.