Dan Roberts began professionally coaching in 1993. He has since conducted well over 30,000 hours of 1-2-1 sessions. Dan has extensive knowledge, passion and coaching experience in Body Sculpting Transformations, Weight loss, Strength & Conditioning, Rehabilitation, Athletics, Sports, Holistic Wellness, Performance Nutrition, Life Coaching, Martial Arts and Movement Coaching. Dan’s unique ‘athletic living’ philosophy marries a holistic, scientific and playful approach to facilitate dramatic results for both mind & body.

Dan has worked with a wide variety of personalities and fitness levels while living and living & working as a Trainer in New York, Sydney, Rio de Janeiro and now London. If you’re immensely bored, a tad curious, an ill-informed stalker or a journalist who likes doing their research, you can read the detailed story of his coaching career below.

Fun Facts 

  • Born  Manchester, England.
  • Favourite Book: Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson.
  • Top 3 Favourite Films: Lost in Translation, Fight Club & Wild at Heart.
  • Sporting Hero: Eric Cantona.
  • Favourite Artist: Marina Abramovic.
  • Favourite junk food:  Jack in the Box Tacos and Green Triangle thingies in Quality Street.
  • Favourite London hangout: Groucho Club.
  • The most indulgent place to regularly visit: North Shore, Oahu.
  • Favourite exercise: Barefoot beach running.
  • Exercises he almost never teaches: Burpees & Sit-ups.
  • Exercises he always teaches: Deadlifts, Punching & Sprinting.
  • Character Flaws: Far too many to mention.
  • The trait he most values in others: Kindness.
  • Home Life: Lives in Surrey with his wife (a classical Musician), along with their Albino Gecko and Bearded Dragon.

Career History & Achievements


Livin’ the athletic life: Dan‘s competitive sporting life blossomed while at University. He captained his University’s (Division 1) Tennis 1st Team, captained their Lacrosse Team, set up a Varsity 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 life; he represented England in Lacrosse, ran Ultra-Marathons, competed in Muay Thai fights, trekked, skied (& fell) down mountains, and had many exciting physical adventures all over the world. Now deep into his 40s, Dan’s still learning new ways of moving & playing and sees an athletic lifestyle as the foundation to a long and happy life and the most effective way to feel truly connected in mind, body & spirit.

Coaching Sports: Aged 16, Dan became an assistant Tennis Coach at his local club in Manchester. As a qualified Tennis (and Lacrosse) Coach, he financially supported his way through university through Sports Coaching. He was employed as the Head Women’s Tennis and Women’s Lacrosse Coach at Kings School in Canterbury, the Team Lacrosse coach at Christchurch College, and provided private tennis lessons for fellow University of Kent students. Roberts also coached these two sports during his regular summer job at Kutshers Sports Academy in New York.
In addition to gaining additional sports psychology, Dan had taught over 1000 hours of sports coaching sessions by the time he graduated.

Travelling, Adventures & Self-sufficiency: After graduating with a Business Degree in the late ’90s, Dan suffered the consequences of reading far too much Hemingway & Kerouac and spent a few years ‘wandering’. This included a year exploring Polynesia. In addition to living out his beach-life fantasies, he bummed around; i.e hung out in Jazz bars in New Orleans, rode motorbikes in Goa, played chess in Dahab, bar-hopped in Dakar, tried not to get shot in Caracas and realised that learning the Tango in Buenos Aires would have been easier if he understood Spanish. During his ‘wandering’ years, he also got caught up in a civil war in Bolivia, established a Beach Volleyball league in the Gilli Islands (Indonesia), explored Tikal in Guatemala, climbed Kilimanjaro, trudged the Venezuelan Jungle to see Angel Falls up close and personal and spent several months working as a General Manager of the Youth Hostel at Lake Taupo, New Zealand. Dan also spent some time living, working & studying at a Tibetan Buddhist Monastery. His growing interest in Buddhism led him to visit His Holiness the Dalai Lama at his home at the foot of the Himalayas and, more importantly, led him to Zen Buddhism, which helped shape his life/teaching philosophy.

Before his career in Personal Training, Dan had many random low-skilled jobs he had found while he travelled the world, including telesales, digging wells, cleaning toilets, cleaning dishes, cleaning windows, cleaning out stables, door-to-door sales, and organising pub crawls for tourists. Still a fan of adventure, Dan has woven his love of travel and doing interesting things into his coaching career.

Working as a Personal Trainer in Sydney, New York & London: In 2001, while based in the Gold Coast, Australia, Dan did a course in fitness coaching, which led him to become qualified as a Personal Trainer with the Australian Institute of Fitness. Marrying his love of learning, exercise and teaching with the joy of not having a boss was the perfect fit for Dan, and he finally found his calling!

Roberts moved back to Sydney in 2002 and established a running club near his home in Bondi, while also providing personal training to amateur triathletes. This also marked the official launch of his eponymous business. Dan then moved to New York, and he luckily got a contract job as an Assistant Strength Coach – training High School & college-level American Footballers.

After a few months of spending everything he had earned in Hawaii, he left the States – tanned and broke, but with a qualification, passion, and experience in Personal Training. Dan moved to London and worked as a self-employed Sports & Exercise Specialist Trainer based out of LA Fitness Gyms in central London. 18 months later, Dan left the comfort of working in a commercial gym and set up his own Personal Training consultancy and trained his clients in parks, hotels, and their homes.

Strength & Conditioning of Professional Athletes: While based in London from 2003 to 2007, Dan had two different jobs – a life coaching business and a fitness coaching business. When the fitness side took off after a year, he focused on that. 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, wakeboarding, 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 very first national-level strength and conditioning program to aid their top-ranked ATP Tour Players and Coaches.

Dan’s technical understanding and practical application of elite-level strength & conditioning training principles in various sports/disciplines has since grown considerably and earned him an industry reputation as an innovative & highly effective trainer to professional athletes in a wide array of disciplines. Dan trains more in the entertainment industry nowadays, but he still allocates time for athlete clients. Recent clients include Team GBR 100m Sprinters, World champion BBJ fighters, Stuntmen and individuals working for the MET Police, London Firebriage and British Intelligence.

A life of study: Around 25 years ago, Dan set himself a long-term goal of becoming one of the world’s best trainers – this has focused him ever since. Gaining useful knowledge is the foundation of becoming a great coach and Dan’s technical understanding of exercise, nutrition, wellness, longevity and sports/performance psychology has expanded greatly thanks to actively working with a diverse client base, collaborating with various experts, attending workshops all over the globe and gaining a plethora of specialist highly-regarded coaching qualifications.

As of 2024, Dan has 26+ different coaching qualifications to his name, including the prestigious Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) award by USA’s National Strength And Conditioning Association, along with various qualifications in Personal Training, Olympic Lifting, Athletics, Nutrition, Massage, Weight loss, Stress Resilience, Lifestyle Coaching and Sports Psychology.

“Dan is one of Europe’s leading Strength & Conditioning Coaches.”

Muscle & Performance USA Magazine  – 2020

Educating Personal Trainers (and teaching the educators who teach Personal Trainers): In 2006, Dan was headhunted to be the Head Lecturer & Assessor for a London Coaching Education company, which included teaching students the Active IQ/Premier L2 Fitness Instructor & L3 Personal Trainer qualifications. At this time, Dan also devised, authored and taught advanced nationally accredited coaching qualifications in Kettlebell Training and Muay Thai Fitness. He also taught other Educators – teaching them how to up-skill Personal Trainers.

Dan has also created the nationally accredited Methodology X™ Group Instructor certification and, in recent years, ran business-related workshops and masterclasses to help fellow coaches on the marketing, operational and brand-building side of coaching.

 

 

Coaching Supermodels in Brazil:  Dan moved to Brazil and lived in Rio de Janeiro in 2007 and 2008. 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 precisely sculpt their bodies while also helping them feel fit and capable. The experience helped him develop a holistic training methodology that got dramatic aesthetic and athletic results.

Working in Brazil, Dan also learned about an international fashion model’s lifestyle and unique needs. He started unifying his various methods and ideas into a cohesive philosophy that considered athletic performance, sculpting the body, mental health and body confidence. Since 2008 Dan has worked closely with several London modelling agencies and has trained over a hundred full-time international fashion models. Thanks to his many hardworking model clients getting amazing results and the popularity of Methodology x™, Roberts is now globally recognised as a leading authority in the physical conditioning of international Catwalk, Editorial & Lingerie models.

Creating Methodology X™: Dan’s award-winning Methodology X(a.k.a. MX) workout began her life in 2012/13 as a little PDF guide: It has since had many iterations and upgrades! Now, we help customers get fit & lean body online via the MX Fashion Model Workout membership club and offer MX Group classes in eight countries.
Dan provides a nationally accredited MX certification to instructors & trainers and has a popular MX Podcast. Methodology X™ has been called ‘the workout bible for models’ by Women’s Health Magazine and has become a go-to workout for the international fashion modelling community.

A year in Asia living as a full-time 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. Ex-champion fighters trained him up. He was 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 (i.e., he ate a lot of rice, lived in a little hut and was kicked in the face most days). After his last fight, he was flown to Abu Dhabi to work at a Palace and be the full-time Muay Thai & Kickboxing Instructor to a Princess.

Developing a luxury Fitness Concierge service: This Middle Eastern experience kickstarted his work as an international Trainer and Fitness Concierge. Since  2011, Dan has regularly travelled to/with many VIP/UHNW clients to assist with their health, mindset & fitness. This includes Personal Training and assisting in designing home gyms, establishing family-wide wellness initiatives, and interviewing, employing and assisting local coaches, chefs and experts so they can look after his clients in his absence. As a company, Dan Roberts has now looked after four different Royal families’ fitness & wellbeing needs.

In the last 14 years, Dan has also curated and led many fitness 1-2-1 and small group retreats in Miami and across Europe – which have been given rave reviews in How to Spend It and The Times Travel Supplement. 

Launching NUK SOO™ – his 2nd workout system: 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.

His experience combining martial arts with fitness coaching and his admiration for the traditional Samurai mindset inspired a unique 90-day body & mind transformation program, NUK SOO™ – which he launched in 2019 as an online membership club.

Hollywood came a callin’: In 2011, Universal Pictures hired him for what would be the first of many big-budget movie projects. Physically training Actors/Actresses for action roles has become an area of specialist expertise for Dan and his team.  Dan has trained the lead talent for 30+ Hollywood Movies and multiple HBO, Netflix and Amazon Prime TV shows. He has also helped the leads of West End Plays, coached several Oscar-winning Actors (helping them transform their bodies for notable projects) and regularly helps Actors stay in shape, move better and learn how to fight while in between film projects.
Dan’s discretion, varied skill set, and track record of results with many famous Actors have helped him build his reputation with Hollywood production companies, build close working relationships with some of LA’s leading Personal Trainers, Producers and Talent Agencies and gain regular attention from the such US publications as Vogue, Gear Patrol, People and in particular, The Wall Street Journal.

“Dan is the man A-list Actresses call when they come to London”

Elle Magazine 

Brand Expansion 2012-2024: 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, Mentoing & consulting for various wellness brands, developing long-term working relationships with Hollywood production companies and collaborating with various European luxury hotels for pop-up retreats and for comprehensive wellness partnerships.

For example: In London, we partnered with the Four Seasons Residencies & Shangri-La Hotel, where we provide a range of integrated well-being services, including creating healthy menu design, establishing guest running clubs, in-room digital workout classes, gym design and facilitated wellness events.

Mentoring, Writing, Podcasting & Consulting: Dan has been mentoring Personal Trainers, Strength Coaches & and yoga teachers since 2007, helping them on both the technical and business side of coaching. In addition, he has been a Business Mentor for Virgin Startup for the last five years (Dan was named their Business Mentor of the Year for 2021). The Business School was established as a new company within the Dan Roberts Group in 2022 to consolidate Dan Roberts Academy’s work along with our continuing education courses for coaches, his mentoring services and brands advisory work.
In addition, over the years, Dan has served as an expert consultant with various brands and advised behind-the-scenes for exercise-themed TV shows and numerous action films. Dan has also been a Columnist for Men’s Fitness, Women’s Running, and Men’s Running magazines, appears on expert panels and hosts two podcast shows. Dan is currently writing his first book and is represented by Dorie Simmonds Agency Ltd.

Global recognition & Awards: For 20+ years, the national & international media have cited Dan as a leading fitness expert and ‘A-list Celebrity Trainer.He’s been interviewed (or has his advice featured) in over 500 publications and has won numerous accolades and awards, including winning at the Annual Tatler Gym Awards in 2015, 2017 & 2019,  “The Most Innovative Fitness Company'” at the 2021 South East Enterprise Awards ‘the most innovative online coaching business of 2022″ and “2023 Body Transformation Expert of the year” at the GHP National Fitness & Nutrition Awards (please see below for a list of awards Dan and the company have won). Dan also serves as one of the Judges at the prestigious TPP Annual Wellness Industry Awards. 

“Dan Roberts is the world’s greatest Celebrity Personal Trainer.” 

Men’s Health 

“Dan Roberts is one of the most important figures in the wellbeing industry.”

The Malestrom Magazine
  1. The growth of Dan Roberts’ companies:  The Dan Roberts Group of companies originated from the self-employed consultancy he ran in Australia in 2002. As his services expanded, so did the corporate structure. As of 2024, the Dan Roberts Group is comprised of a few limited companies, with each having Dan as Managing Director and majority shareholder.

The Dan Roberts Group of companies (a.k.a Dan Roberts) exists to help you love your body by living a healthier, happier and more athletic lifestyle.

As a world-renowned boutique fitness & lifestyle coaching organisation, we provide a range of specialist holistic coaching products, services & experiences to our global clientele.