4 min readTHE FIRST THING Gunna wanted wasn’t muscle or endurance. It was discipline. The 33-year-old rapper, born Sergio Kitchens, started working out for the same reason millions of people do: Life was loud, and his mind needed a safe and quiet place to settle.
Four years ago, his world was in chaos due to legal issues related to a racketeering conspiracy charge that ended in an Alford plea (in which you plead guilty but maintain your innocence). He began running, which he found allowed him to build focus. The more regularly he ran, the more he realized he was also building discipline in other areas of his life. He used to always arrive late to meetings; now he was getting to them early.
He was calmer overall.
“I’m in a good space, a good mental space right now,” Gunna says in a quiet but smooth voice that drips with Atlanta’s vowel-blending AAVE (African American Vernacular English).
He’s just finished an upper-body workout and sprints on Malibu’s County Line Beach. “It’s not just because of the music. It’s because of the discipline. It’s because of the journey. I feel like it goes together now. Can’t do one or the other. Fitness and music go together for me.”
Running and exercise started as a solo venture. But the reaction to his fitness quest demanded he give it more attention. Gunna smiles a big, toothy, full-face smile as he looks around the room at members of his inner circle. He approached them about doing something with the newfound interest in his health. They didn’t think small.
The rapper hosted his inaugural Wunna Run 5K club in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park in September 2025. Since then, he has led runs on the streets of Toronto, Washington, D.C., Miami, Atlanta, London, Johannesburg, Houston, and Los Angeles, with thousands of fans lacing up and joining in. (Under Armour took note and is now an official sponsor.)
The overwhelming majority of runners at Gunna’s 5Ks are Black folks, who, as a community in America, have faced structural and cultural barriers when it comes to adopting fitness as a form of health care. “We were not taught fitness like that,” Gunna says, explaining that fitness in the Black community has been gatekept by athletics. “You got to be, like, that one who really didn’t go and hang out with the other friends. You stayed in the backyard and played basketball. You kept going to practice, to the football field. It wasn’t for everybody.”
To an outsider, hearing a trap heavyweight opening up about mental and physical struggles and community and positivity might feel like record-scratch moments (and not in a good way). The played-out cultural stereotype insists that hip-hop demands machismo and bravado, ruthlessly discouraging any sign of weakness or vulnerability.
But in truth, the genre has been dissecting its own trauma since Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five gave us “The Message” in 1982. It’s a lineage that spans from Scarface and the Geto Boys’ paranoia in the ’90s to Logic’s 1-800-273-8255 suicide-prevention lifeline track in 2017.
Gunna isn’t merely inheriting this cultural legacy; he is scaling it and amplifying it. As a multiplatinum artist, he’s dropped six studio albums—his latest, The Last Wun, debuted at number three on the Billboard 200 and has garnered more than 104 million streams. He boasts a social following of more than 10 million strong. But while the charts measure his commercial dominance, a far more potent metric is how he is connecting with fans on the pavement.
Gunna wants to show the culture that muscular strength and run clubs aren’t exclusive to the most athletic among us. You don’t have to play sports to go to the gym, a sentiment that has become a deeper responsibility for him.
He works out five or six days a week, often with trainer Dustin Enriquez, alternating run days with total-body lift days and boxing sessions. On Gunna’s recent global tour, 27 stops on four continents, Enriquez traveled with him and says they barely missed a day. They usually trained in the morning or did a gentler workout in the afternoon prior to the concert. “Working out helps me as a performer with my breathing, my stamina,” Gunna says. “I can move more, engage more, and give my full energy.”
In his mind, losing discipline or slacking off are not options. “Honestly…” He pauses to take a look at the ocean before lowering his head. “I would feel like a failure.”
No need to worry on that front. Gunna’s fans have fueled him from the beginning of this journey. The reactions to his fitness-related social media posts have been different, he says. More views. More engagement. “People wanted to be more educated on the workout tip and the health journey,” he says. He’s also a co-owner of both Flerish, a watermelon-based electrolyte drink with “no fake stuff,” and Cymbiotika Wellness Bar, where he has a signature protein smoothie.
Gunna isn’t setting his sights only on 5Ks. He’s looking at longer distances, maybe even a Wunnathon, as he calls it. He has also taken up tennis and is curious about triathlons and Hyrox.
Gunna doesn’t know exactly what the next cycle holds, but he believes that “sometimes you do things and you don’t know the purpose till later.”
Photographs: João Canziani
Styling: Bobby Wesley
Creative Director: Jamie Prokell
Visual Director: Sally Berman
Video Executive Producer: Dorenna Newton
Video Set Producer: Lauren Hampton
Video DP: Ryan Murphy
Video Editor: Kyle Orozovich
A version of this story appears in the Summer 2026 issue of Men’s Health.
