About 10 years ago I was doing a presentation for a group of free mason’s. It was a presentation that was set up by one of my clients Neal who I helped get healthy after being hit by a bus back in the 80’s.

Anyway, he had said that getting healthy is an important part of personal and character development which is why he set that up. Now in order to make things fun and capture the attention of the attendees, I twisted open a horseshoe, just like in the pic below.

What I didn’t realize is it would make one of the people there remember me for years to come. It just wasn’t the right time because his son Josh was only around 7 or 8 at the time.

Fast forward a couple years, I move my personal training studio from Parsippany to working with Lewandowski Chiropractic and then back into my own personal training studio on Main Street and I get a call from his dad asking about training his son. I’ve trained a number of youth over the years and one thing I try to make sure is that it is something the kid wants to do, and not just something the parent is pushing them into. Josh wanted to do this, and he was focused and then some.

He wanted to get into the prestigious Westpoint. And in order to do that, he needed to build up his physical strength and conditioning as well as his all around character. Westpoint doesn’t take just anybody.

When he first started training it was in the middle of the football season, which complicates things a little bit. My first order of business was to design a program to build strength that would transfer to the game. He put in the work and very quickly got to a double body weight hex-bar deadlift to a farmers carry and it immediately showed in his sport.

After the football season was done, his dad was told me that we have 3 months to get him as strong as possible as fast as possible for lacrosse. Music to my ears. I put him through a program that took his 1 rep max barbell military press we added 15lbs to it and he did it for a sub-maximal set of 8. His single arm overhead kettlebell press 1 rep max he did 19 consecutive reps with it. Got to 15 chin ups and all that helped him get the varsity spot as a freshmen…which meant he would letter all 4 years of high school as long as he didn’t slack (not that I was worried).

But Josh isn’t just brawn, he’s got the brains too getting straight A’s all across the board. I would often joke with him by saying “Josh when are you going to do something with your life?”

Josh was thriving on the program, and the strength increases he got made him hit hard. His dad would often show me footage of him playing while laughing about him manhandling other players.

Then we had a setback. Josh had been selected to be team captain and his coach wanted him to train with the rest of the team, instead of with me. I understand doing it for camaraderie, but you also have to look at the athlete as an individual with their own goals and ambitions.

And a programs’ effectiveness can be judged by the results it produces, and Josh got weaker on his program. Having worked with Josh, I knew he works hard and never complains so I know it wasn’t Josh’s fault…it was a faulty program.

They came back and I measured him to the physical standards for Westpoint and I realized we have work to do. We needed to fix the issues created by the faulty program and it had to be quick. Luckily I know Josh would put the work in and follow the program I created for him to the T. He also took multiple AP courses in his senior year and aced them to seal the deal.

Then about a week and a half ago, his dad calls me up. I knew it would be for 1 of 3 reasons, either he wanted to send me a friend of his (maybe), they actually found something on oak island (inside joke and yeah right) or he got accepted into Westpoint. I knew what it was before I picked up the phone.

And I know they credit me as a critical component to his achievement but in truth he would have gotten there with me or without me. He’s the exact type they look for, an athlete and scholar a leader and a well rounded person. In the culture of success that I foster in my studio, he was a definite contributor to that and I was happy to be part of his journey.

Congrats Josh! But just be warned, your real journey has just begun.

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