THE GFI! STORY

In the summer of 1993 Mark Gibson was a frustrated gymnastics coach. Frustrated because he wanted to give his gymnasts a book. A book that would help them deal with their fears, be more self-motivated, develop the mental toughness to handle setbacks and failures and generally develop a winner’s attitude. He couldn’t find one, so he wrote one. It took him two years to experiment and come up with a design that gymnasts would want to read over and over. He called his book Going For it, A Gym Bag Companion For Living Our Dreams. Mark not only wrote the book, he illustrated it, self-published it and then spent several thousand dollars to print three-thousand copies. Now all he had to do was sell it. That’s easier said than done.

Just three months before the birth of his first child, he quit his coaching job. Soon thereafter he loaded up his Ford Escort with books and went to the USA Gymnastics National Congress in Boston with his wife and new-born son. The book was a hit. Coaches loved it and bought, not just one copy, but one for every member of their team. Soon, orders started to flood in from gyms all over the US and Canada. Two years after GFI! was published Mark wrote a sequel, GFI!2. 

The popularity of the GFI books meant that Mark was asked to create workshops for gyms. Starting in gyms around his home in Pennsylvania he was soon speaking in gyms from Key West, Florida to Seattle, Washington. Over the next few years, the Gibson family grew to include two new babies. Knowing that they had just a brief window of opportunity available to them, Mark and Donna decided to buy a large motor home and take the whole family on adventurous, cross-country tours. By 2002 the Gibson entourage had traveled through 48 states. They’d hiked in National Parks, played on miles of sandy beaches, visited dozens of Zoos and camped in the back of countless Wal-Mart parking lots.

Mark eventually spoke in more than 800 gyms to more than 40,000 gymnasts, coaches and parents and sold thousands of books. He spoke in small gyms for a dozen people or so and he spoke in big city gyms to audiences that ran into the hundreds. His biggest audience was more than 5000 at the YMCA National Championships. He also presented programs at the National Congress as well as most of the Regional Congresses.

 
As their children grew to school age, Mark and Donna, decided it was time to hang up the motor home keys and seek new adventures. But even with no promotion the GFI! books kept selling. Orders were still coming in six years after Mark stopped touring.

So, now that many of the gymnasts who loved GFI! are coaches themselves looking for a great book to motivate their gymnasts, Mark has rewritten the GFI! and republished it for a whole new generation.