Top 25 Gunnar Peterson Quotes

You can make more money – you can buy a new body – but you can’t buy time. If you are wasting it, make different choices. Don’t wait.

I get tired when I keep shorting my sleep, but I always make it to the gym. In our house, we live by this: ‘Never quit, never cancel, never be late.’ We’ve found it’s a great way to live.

Multi-joint movements – squats, push-ups, bent over rows – all put a greater metabolic demand on the body and can be effective when performed with very light weight to get you back up and running. Think bigger movements, not bigger weight, when you are on the mend.

I would love to eat my body weight in chocolate chip cookies, french fries, and peanut butter, but I don’t. I choose not to. That’s on me, just like it’s on me if I choose to do it.

I try to take the approach that everyone really is an athlete at some level. I mean, we were all on the playground in the beginning. Some of us just stayed there.

When I opened my gym, I got rid of the scales! Stepping on a scale empowers an inanimate object – every time you get on it, you turn over the helm of your emotional well being to something that doesn’t care about you.

Make it a joint effort. Doing a workout with a partner or trainer can motivate you to reach your goals.

People tend to shy away from rotation with resistance because they think they’re going to get hurt. Like, ‘If I move in that motion with that weight, I’m going to pull my back.’ But you’re not.

There’s so much you can do with bodyweight alone. The basics always come up for a reason: sit-ups, planks, push-ups. They’ll always give you results. The way to take it up a notch is to compound the basics to work multiple muscle groups at once.

Hydration is everything. Think of this: your muscles are 70-plus percent water – how are you not drinking water during a workout? I get the whole, ‘Let’s challenge ourselves; let’s do that prison, tough guy thing,’ but at the end of the day, you’re underperforming.

Constant deprivation is no way to live. Don’t always skip the delicious stuff for raw carrots and brown rice.

I always train my weaknesses and work on my shortcomings – in the gym and outside the gym. Ha!

You’ll get a cheat meal, no question. It’s not a cheat day. Every day, I indulge with something, because if I feel restricted, I’m gonna lash out.

Home workouts are great, but if you can get out, that’s even better. If you tell yourself you’re going to go do planks in the spare bedroom, you might get interrupted and not get your workout in.

You need to lift weights and do more resistance training. Get more sleep. I’m the first one who‘s guilty of not doing that, but I work on it, and I’m aware of it. And drink more water. Drink Propel. You have to hydrate. You simply can’t perform at the level you could perform at if you’re dehydrated. Period.

Combination movements will give you the most bang for your buck.

You don’t have to be built like Karl Malone to be strong. There are thinner guys who are really strong. Kevin Durant, who I used to work with, has real strength to his body.

Use music to motivate you. If I had to pick one song to work out to on repeat, it would be Prince’s ‘Let’s Go Crazy.’

I think it’s good for people sometimes to get out of their own environments – there are less distractions.

If you think you’re going to do 100 crunches and a plank and burn away belly fat, you’re not. Yes, you’re going to make the area stronger, but it’s not going to get rid of the fat. So do yourself a favor and, once and for all, let that idea go.

SleepScore Max empowers me to identify my own sleep issues and gives me advice for better sleep to maximize my performance every day. It’s critical to measure and quantify improvements while training.

The key to anyone‘s success is staying with it!

If you were inactive due to an injury or a surgery, then common sense rules the day when inching closer to the area that was hurt. That is very different from inactivity due to being ill. After illness, be aware of how taxing your workout is cardiovascularly and err on the side of less.

I try to do the right thing. If you do what you know is right, and you’re a good person, you might not win short-term all the time, and financial gains might not be there all the time, but ultimately, you can be pretty happy, and you can do some pretty good things in the world. Keep a positive outlook.

The Gunnar Challenge offers new workouts every day, a meal plan and daily ‘verbal vitamins,’ which are a motivational video or workout tip. The thing that really makes the program work is the forum, where Challengers can communicate with each other and with me.