Orange County · Long Beach · Los Angeles
About First Step Fitness
The story of a Long Beach personal training gym — where it started, the trainers who built it, and the team-based system that set it apart from a standard boot camp or open gym floor.
Origins
2007 — training local college students
Roots
Chapman University — shared alma mater of the coaching team
Served
Three regions — Orange County, Long Beach, Los Angeles
How First Step Fitness Grew From College Clients Into Long Beach’s Best-Known Private Training Gym
It began the way most independent gyms do — one trainer, a handful of clients, no premises of its own.
2007
Mike Matuz was working as a personal trainer across several sports clubs while attending Chapman University as a collegiate athlete. He used his sports background to build training systems for his own clients, starting with local college students.
Founding
Mike and Amanda Matuz founded First Step Fitness together to fill a gap they saw in the market: innovative personal training delivered in small group classes, blending team-building workouts with the individual attention members actually needed.
2009
The gym opened its own Long Beach premises on Loma Avenue as a family-owned private facility specializing in small group and private training.
Expansion
The client base widened well beyond students to entrepreneurs and young professionals commuting in from Orange County and Los Angeles. The company described itself in this period as the largest personal and private training gym in Long Beach, and added specialist trainers to the coaching roster.
After 2016
As their family grew, Mike and Amanda began looking for successors who shared their approach. They transitioned ownership to a coaching couple who had come up through the gym’s own membership, and the business has continued under that ownership since.
The Founders Who Built the First Step Fitness Team Training Method in Long Beach
Mike Matuz
Co-founder
Mike began training clients in sports clubs while still at Chapman University, where he competed as a collegiate athlete. That background shaped the athletic, circuit-driven structure the gym became known for.
He graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Marketing from Chapman, alongside national accreditations in health, fitness, nutrition and wellness. Before opening his own facility he had also worked as a fitness director within large commercial gym chains across Orange County — an experience he credited with showing him what a conventional membership model leaves out.
His stated ambition ran past physical results: he wanted the gym floor to be a place where clients built professional connections as well as fitness, and ran networking-style training events to that end.
Amanda Matuz
Co-founder and nutrition lead
Originally from Orange County, Amanda moved to Long Beach after graduating from Chapman University. Her enthusiasm for training came out of a background in dance, practiced since early childhood, which fed directly into her emphasis on movement quality, rhythm and pace.
She became one of the gym’s most requested trainers, with members joining specifically to train with her. Her programs were built from the inside out — dietary change and hydration first, combined with high-intensity resistance work at a quick tempo.
Amanda also drove the small-group format itself, arguing that team-building workouts and genuine personal attention did not have to be mutually exclusive.
The Private and Team Trainers Who Coached Members on the First Step Fitness Floor
The coaching roster grew as the gym did, drawing in specialists from kinesiology, combat sports and physical education.
Erika Gasztonyi
Private and team trainer
A Long Beach native, Erika first walked into First Step Fitness as a client at sixteen. That early exposure turned into a serious interest in the science of movement and nutrition.
She went on to study Physical Education at Chapman University — the alma mater of her mentor, Amanda Matuz — and trained toward yoga instructor certification alongside coaching work, later teaching physical education at a Long Beach school. She took the gym’s core principles and extended them with her own skill set.
Vishal Kumar
Private and team trainer
Vishal grew up in the Bay Area playing club and high school soccer. Working with a personal trainer during that period introduced him to both traditional and functional training methods, and to how the body adapts, heals and outperforms expectation.
While studying at Long Beach State he took up Brazilian jiu-jitsu with Brazilian Top Team, which pulled him back toward competitive team environments. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Kinesiology: Exercise Science in 2011 and moved into instruction and personal training from there.
| Team member | Role | Specialist background |
|---|---|---|
| Mike Matuz | Co-founder | Collegiate athletics, commercial gym management, national health and nutrition accreditations |
| Amanda Matuz | Co-founder, nutrition | Lifelong dance training, nutrition and hydration programming, small-group class design |
| Erika Gasztonyi | Private and team trainer | Physical education degree, yoga instruction, movement science and nutrition |
| Vishal Kumar | Private and team trainer | Kinesiology and exercise science degree, soccer, Brazilian jiu-jitsu conditioning |
Why the Gym Drew Members From Orange County, Long Beach and Greater Los Angeles
A single Long Beach studio pulling clients across three regions came down to three things.
A format that did not exist locally
Small coached teams sat between one-to-one pricing and anonymous boot camps — a gap nobody else in the area was filling.
A professional client base
Entrepreneurs and young professionals with unpredictable schedules found programming that flexed around travel and long working days.
Trainers members followed
Individual coaches built their own followings, and members travelled specifically to train with them.
What the First Step Fitness Training Philosophy Meant on the Gym Floor Every Day
The method was consistent enough that members could describe it in a sentence, and specific enough that no two sessions repeated.
Resistance Training at a Cardiovascular Pace
High-intensity resistance work run at an upbeat tempo, rather than heavy lifting with long rests or cardio on its own.
Mixed Modalities in a Single Session
Sprints, free weights, body-weight isometric holds and plyometrics combined inside one workout to push members to their limits.
Nutrition Built From the Inside Out
Dietary change and hydration treated as the foundation the training sat on, not an optional add-on sold separately.
Common Questions About the History and Coaching Team of First Step Fitness
When did First Step Fitness actually start?
Mike was training clients from around 2007 while still at university, and the couple founded the business together in that period. The Long Beach gym itself opened its doors in 2009 — which is why you will see both dates attached to the brand.
How was this different from CrossFit or a boot camp?
The company positioned its workouts as more effective than a standard CrossFit or boot camp session because of the coaching ratio. Groups stayed small, a trainer set the load for each person, and the programming combined resistance and cardiovascular work rather than favoring one.
Are the trainers described here still coaching at the gym?
No. These profiles document the founding team and the coaching roster from the years Mike and Amanda Matuz owned the business. Ownership passed to a new coaching couple after 2016, and the current staff is different.
Before Starting Any High-Intensity Training Program
Anyone with cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, a joint or spinal injury, a history of chest pain or fainting on exertion, or who is pregnant or recently postpartum should speak with a physician first. The same applies to adults returning after a long sedentary period.
This page is informational only. Nothing here is medical advice or a treatment recommendation, and it has not been reviewed by a physician.
Biographies and company history on this page reflect the business as documented in its own published materials during the period described, and in public coverage from that time. Roles, qualifications and staffing have changed since. Nothing here represents current membership terms, pricing, schedules or personnel at any facility.