A while back I got a phone call. If it’s a local number I usually pick up since it could be a potential personal training client looking for help. Most of the time it’s just some Robo caller or a telemarketer out for my money.

In this case, it was someone looking for something greater than money. This person that called me was either an up and coming personal trainer looking to become one and was unsure how to be good at it and asked me a question.

She asked me “What do you think is the most important thing to being a successful personal trainer?”

Without even really thinking about it I blurted out “Well technical proficiency and knowing what you are doing is important, but the most important skill I would say is empathy and the ability to listen.”

Truth be told, if I had to sleep on it, I would have come up with the same answer. It’s been key to not only being technically proficient (I always sought out what I thought to be the best ways of doing things because I legit wanted to help my personal training clients).

The other thing is if you get down to the core of what I do, I take people from where they are, to where they want to be. And you don’t really know where they are until you assess them and see what it might be like to be them.

Before Neal came to me for personal training, he had been to 5 others before me. They either didn’t listen to him, or didn’t know how to progress him. He had said to me I was the only one that listened that seemed to know what I was doing.

Most of the time personal trainers come into it with the right intentions. They started working out themselves, got decent results, liked the results decided to help others get the same results. The thing is many times they just simply have good genes that respond quickly to exercise, and the ones that need help often have multiple things going on.

With another one of my clients before he came to me, he worked with a personal trainer for like a week before she pushed him too hard too soon and he couldn’t move the next day. Anticipating that he was initially hesitant to work with me.

It would be unreasonable to push people at a level they simply aren’t ready for. If I were to compare them to me, I have close to 20 years of working out. If I were to push someone like they were a world record holding professional performing strongman that would be unreasonable.

What is reasonable, is figuring out what challenges them. It might be easy for me but could be challenging for them. That’s how the game is played.

Start where you are, challenge yourself at a level you can handle without issue, build as you go. If you need my help starting I offer a 1 week free trial and have a handful of spots left. Text me at 973 476 5328 and introduce yourself to get started.

I truly hope that this pandemic ends soon and I can start training people in small groups again because I’m running out of space.

Eric Moss is a world-record-holding modern-day professional performing strongman, author, motivational speaker, and personal trainer. In the tradition of the strongmen more common during the turn of the century, he performs feats of strength such as bending steel and breaking chains as part of a show and speaks on goal achievement for corporations, nonprofits, government as well as for schools and universities. His exclusive personal training studio is located on Main Street in Boonton New Jersey, is close to Mountain Lakes, Denville, Montville and Parsippany New Jersey.