“Roberts is a man that makes Oscar-winners and royalty sweat, his forensic knowledge of all things fitness is jaw-dropping”
The Sunday Times
“World-renowned Trainer Dan Roberts is the man behind some of the world’s hottest bodies”
Heat Magazine
“Dan Roberts (Group) is one of the most respected and talked about fitness and wellbeing companies in the UK”
Psychologies Magazine
Dan Roberts first began professionally coaching when he was just 16 back in 1993: He has since conducted over 30,000 hours of 1-2-1 Personal Training sessions; covering Body Transformations, Strength & Conditioning, Rehabilitation, Athletics, Holistic Wellness, Sports, Life Coaching, Martial Arts, Stage Combat, Pilates, Olympic Lifting and Movement Coaching. Dan’s enjoyed a fun and interesting coaching career so far and feels blessed to be able to spend his days teaching, helping and inspiring others. If you’re curious about his background and the development of the Dan Roberts Group’s global reputation, here follows an extensive overview of his career to date:
An athletic sensibility: Dan‘s competitive sporting passions blossomed while at University. He captained his Varsity’s (Division 1) Tennis 1st Team, captained the Lacrosse Team, set up a University inline-hockey club and was awarded colours for his contribution to Sport. Throughout his 20’s and 30’s, Dan continued to live an athletic lifestyle; represented England in Lacrosse, ran Ultra-Marathons, competed in Combat sports, trekked, skied (& fell) down mountains, and had many exciting physical adventures all over the world. Now well into his 40s; Dan’s still learning new ways of moving & playing and sees an athletic lifestyle as the best way to feel connected in mind, body & spirit.
After graduating with a Business Degree in the late ’90s, he suffered from reading far too much Hemingway and Kerouac and spent several years doing random things in random places. This included a year chillin’ in Tahiti & Raratonga, partying in New Orleans, Goa, Dakar and Buenos Aires, being caught up in a civil war in Bolivia, setting up a Beach Volleyball league during a few months in the Gilli Islands in Indonesia, managing a Youth Hostel for five months in Lake Taupo, New Zealand and living, working & studying at a Tibetan Buddhist Monastery up a Mountain in the middle of nowhere. His interest in Buddhism inspired him to go visit his Holiness the Dalai Lama at his home in Dharamsala at the foot of the Himalayas… and his interest in seeing beautiful things led him to have many trekking adventures over the years, including up Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Mount Sinai in Egypt, along the Inca Trail in Peru, Tikal in Guatemala and trek the dense Venezuelan Jungle to the foot of Angel Falls. By the time he was 25, Dan had solo-visited over 40 countries, self-funded by working as he travelled (which included jobs digging wells, cleaning toilets, working in cafes, farming, door-to-door sales, telesales and organising pub crawls). Dan has since incorporated both travel & living in different countries into his coaching career – because it’s important to see, and experience as much as we can from this beautiful world in the short time we are here.
Working as a Personal Trainer in Sydney, New York & London: In 2002, while based in the Gold Coast, Australia, Dan did a course in fitness which lead him to get qualified as a Personal Trainer with the Australian Institute of Fitness. He immediately fell in love with the idea of being a Trainer. Roberts then moved to Sydney and established a running club/athletic Bootcamp at Bondi Beach while also providing personal training to triathletes. He then moved to New York and got a summer contract job as an Assistant Strength Coach – training High School & College level American Footballers before heading to London. After 18 months of working as a self-employed Sports & Exercise Specialist Trainer at LA Fitness Gyms (at both the Kingston & Holborn branches), Dan set up his own Personal Training consultancy and began seeing his clients in parks, hotels and their homes.
Ambition & Academia. When Dan realised that personal training was the best job in the world, his ambition kicked in and set himself the goal of becoming one of the world’s best trainers. This silly, totally unquantifiable (yet very useful) goal has motivated him ever since to keep on learning and continually develop his knowledge so he could be more useful to his clients. Aside from learning from experience, his technical knowledge of exercise, nutrition, wellness, and high-performance psychology has expanded over the last 20 years from collaborating with peers, reading scientific papers, attending conferences and gaining a plethora of specialist accredited coaching qualifications. As of 2023, Dan has 25 different specialist qualifications to his name, including the prestigious Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) award via USA’s National Strength And Conditioning Association, along with a variety of qualifications in Personal Training, Kettlebell Training, Olympic Lifting, Athletics, Nutrition, Massage, Weight loss, Stress Resilience, Lifestyle Coaching and Sports Psychology.
Strength & Conditioning of Professional Athletes: While based in London from 2003 to 2007, Dan specialised in the 1-2-1 physical conditioning of professional/full-time athletes. He helped his clients better compete in all kinds of sports, including American Football, Ski Racing, Basketball, Ballet, Boxing, MMA, Wake Boarding, Tennis, Rock Climbing, Surfing and Athletics. He also worked with various teams and sporting organisations, such as India Tennis – where he was flown out to Mumbai to create and install their first national-level Strength & Conditioning program to aid their top-ranked Players and Coaches. Looking after such a wide variety and quality of professional athletes at that relatively young age was rare and lucky. It accelerated Dan’s technical & practical understanding of elite-level strength & conditioning coaching.
Teaching Personal Trainers: In 2006, Dan was headhunted to be the Head Lecturer & Assessor for a London Coaching Education company which included teaching the Active IQ/Premier L2 Fitness Instructor & L3 Personal Trainer qualifications to students. At this time, Dan also devised, authored and taught advanced nationally accredited coaching qualifications in Kettlebell Training and Kickboxing Fitness. He also taught other Educators how to train up current Personal Trainers. More recently, Dan created the nationally accredited Methodology X™ Group Instructor certification and is currently developing a Strength, Conditioning & Movement Coach qualification for Personal Trainers.
Coaching Supermodels in Brazil: Dan moved to Brazil and lived in Rio de Janeiro in 2007 for a year. Being a rather sociable kinda guy, he knew a lot of models and soon started personally training Brazil’s top female Fashion Models and became the recommended trainer of Elite (one of the leading Fashion Modeling agencies in Rio). He enjoyed the new challenge of helping non-athlete clients to precisely sculpt their bodies while also helping them feel fit and capable. The experience helped him develop a holistic training methodology that got both aesthetic and athletic results while also taking into account body image and body confidence. Working in Brazil, Dan also earned about the lifestyle and unique needs of an international fashion model. Since 2008 Dan has worked closely with London modelling agencies, trained hundreds of models and is a now widely considered as a leading authority in the physical conditioning of international Catwalk, Editorial & Lingerie models.
Living in Asia as a Fighter: While also looking after his clients in London, Dan was seeking new challenges, so he began a Master’s Degree in Philosophy and started learning Muay Thai. The latter ended up having a more significant impact. In 2009/2010, Dan moved to the source (Thailand) to study properly. He was looked after by ex-champion fighters – training six hours a day, six days a week for 11 months. Dan sparred, trained, fought against locals and lived the life of a full-time Muay Thai Athlete, which, in practical terms, also meant he lived in a smelly hut while getting kicked in the face every day!. After his last fight, Dan was flown to Abu Dhabi to work as the in-house Muay Thai Instructor for an Arabian Princess for a little while before he headed back to London.
Becoming a Fitness Concierge: This Middle Eastern experience also kickstarted his life as an international Trainer and Concierge. Between 2011-2020 Dan travelled to/with select VIP clients to assist with athletic lifestyle curation – sometimes, this includes assisting in designing home gyms and interviewing, employing and assisting local trainers, coaches and private chefs so they can look after his clients in his absence. In addition, since 2012, Dan has curated and led many fitness retreats in Miami and across Europe and has consulted with numerous UHNW families. NB: As a company, we now look after the fitness of four different Royal families.
Martial Arts & NUK SOO™: Dan returned to London in 2011 and integrated martial arts into his fitness coaching practice. As a keen student of hand-to-hand combat and movement, Dan has also formally studied Boxing, Wing Chun Kung Fu, Shotokan Karate, Kendo, Qi Gong, Kempo, Tai Chi, and various weapons techniques (Bo Staff, Jo Staff, Katana, Filipino Kali Sticks and Okinawan Sai’s). His experience combing martial arts and fitness coaching, being in the ring, and his admiration of the Samurai mindset inspired his unique 90-day body & mind transformation program, NUK SOO™ – which launched in 2019 as an online membership.
“Dan is the man A-list Actresses call when they come to London”
Elle Magazine
Brand Expansion 2012-2023: By 2012, Dan had eight full-time trainers working under him at his gym in the West End, London. Since then, Dan has pivoted away from running a gym and focused on more fun and scalable ways of sharing his methods. For example, his Methodology X™ and NUK SOO™ workout brands were established pre-pandemic and have coached thousands of people in over 60 countries. With the help of his management team, Dan’s also been growing his eponymous brand by expanding the scope and depth of his coaching services and developing long-term partnerships with Hollywood production companies and luxury hotels (including Four Seasons & Shangri-La) – where we provide a range of guest wellbeing services, including creating healthy menu design, running clubs, in-room digital classes and gym design.
Global recognition & Awards: For over ten years, the international media have cited Dan as an ‘A-list Celebrity Trainer“, and ‘renowned fitness expert’ and has been interviewed (or has his advice featured) in over 500 publications. the Dan Roberts Group has won numerous accolades, including winning at the Annual Tatler Gym Awards in 2015, 2017 & 2019 and ‘The most innovative fitness company’ at the 2021 South East Enterprise Awards and ‘the most innovative online coaching business of 2022’ by Global Health & Pharma.
The growth of Dan Roberts Group. The corporate structure around Dan has grown organically. From being self-employed when he started personal training in Australia back in 2002, to establishing his first limited company in London in 2011… now in 2023, Dan oversees what has become the Dan Roberts Group of companies. With the help of his team, the Group exists as a platform to better share Dan’s methods and ‘athletic living’ philosophy. We exist to help more people get the body of their dreams while also bettering their relationship with food, exercise and, ultimately themselves. Our brand tagline is “Live the athletic life” – this is the philosophy behind what we do. Living athletically is not just about getting great results… it’s about having fun, loving your body and pushing yourself to be more than you were yesterday. Living the athletic life is also a state of mind that will help you connect mind, body and spirit.
What’s next?: “Our ‘mission’ as an organisation is to keep on doing our thing and, as a collective, remain grateful & ambitious and be a positive force in the global fitness industry. We understand that our existence (let alone the reputation, recognition and success we have enjoyed) is purely down to our wonderful clients & customers. Our focus will always be to serve them so they can elegantly reach their goals, feel amazing, live athletically and shine brightly.”
Our London clients enjoy access to Dan’s in-house specialist coaching team (teaching ballet, martial arts, fitness, nutrition, yoga and meditation) and his trusted network of private doctors, masseurs, life coaches, Pilates teachers, physiotherapists, psychotherapists, osteopaths, dermatologists, surgeons, performance nutritionists, dieticians and therapists.
We also enjoy close working relationships with many of the world’s most celebrated coaches including specialist personal trainers in New York, Los Angeles, Sydney and Paris. We endeavour to provide our globe-trotting clientele with the ultimate in personal fitness and well-being care.
Our MX Group exercise class is taught by our family of Methodology X™ coaches. We train them up and help them as they build their fitness coaching business around our Methodology X™ exercise system. We currently have Instructors operating MX classes in seven different countries. An interactive directory is coming soon.
