Month: August 2024
Iron Therapy… The Mental Health Benefits from Strength Training
Yesterday morning I was telling my personal training clients about my weekly challenge to post an article relating to some aspect of health and fitness. I told them “the challenge is coming up with new things to talk about”. One of my clients suggested writing about how it affects mental health.
This particular client had recently been through a trying time, and technically is still going through it but seems to be doing much better. I like to think that either I or someone I’m networked with and sent her way had something to do with it.
About a year or two ago I did my motivational speech brought to life with a strength performance for a group of social workers and told them “You are important because mental health is the next great frontier, and you’re the ones working in the trenches. The world needs you.” That’s true, but a lot of us are also attempting to do the same thing.
I don’t pretend to be a therapist, and I recommend anyone going through a trying time to also go to therapy quite simply because I’m not qualified to handle that sort of thing.
What I am qualified to handle is what I like to call “iron therapy” as in the iron teaches you what you are truly capable of. And it’s one of the most valuable things really is knowing you’re capable of more than you realized.
As I reflect on my own personal journey of strength, I’m reminded of the fact that a little over a decade ago I started down the path of the steel bending superhuman. Before that, I was devastated when my first wife left me for my best friend in the first year of our marriage. I bounced back faster than I thought I would and I credit that to my strongman mentor making me feel good about myself again. Bending steel gave me back the confidence I lost when I was tossed aside like yesterday’s garbage. I learned that it’s possible to bend steel, and not just possible….but possible for me.
Now for those that don’t bend steel, well getting stronger with weights does the same thing. I’ve seen it happen multiple times. As great as therapy is, it’s difficult to measure. How do you measure something subjective like a general feeling that can shift by the minute? Getting stronger with weights is objective. Nothing teaches you what you are capable of like lifting weights you never thought you could. It proves to yourself, your self efficacy and that you are capable of more than you realize. Numbers are easy to compare.
It’s almost become an internal joke. I load all the weights for my personal training clients and when they ask me how much it weighs I’ll say something to the effect of “don’t worry about it” or “it’s the appropriate training load”. I wait till after they do it to tell them and sometimes they’ll be floored, like in the case of when they took something they could do only once and do it 10-15 times in a row or get around 50 reps in a 10min period after having only trained 3 or 4 months.
Something like doing their first chin up which is harder to disguise has provided numerous times for discovery of ones potential, and we can see it happen in real time as they do it. I watch their face go from doubt, to determination to “OMG… I’m doing it!” all within a matter of seconds as they get their first one. One woman who started training with me in her 50’s had never done a chin up before, despite having worked with other personal trainers over the years. She didn’t think she would be able to get there and when she did her first she had an emotional release as she cried, now realizing yes she can.
And just this morning, one of my other personal training clients is going through a bit of a stressful period in her life. Took it out on the weights and had that natural endorphin release which made her feel way better than when she walked in.
And then going back to that first one, she has a goal that she is working towards. Not a training goal though training is a critical part of the journey to get their, but she’s making meaningful process en route towards her goal and that plays a part in mental health. Knowing you’re getting closer, seeing the changes, feeling the changes, other people telling you they see the changes, seeing the numbers get higher and getting that natural endorphin hit that makes you feel better when you walked in and quiets those internal whispers that tell you you aren’t good enough. You don’t have to say anything back, you already proved it to yourself. The iron said it for you.
If you need help with this, I offer a free trial at my personal training studio on Main Street in Boonton. Just send me a text at 973 476 5328 to get started.
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.
The importance of weight training on a weight loss program
I’ve been a personal trainer for a number of years. More years than I can count on my hands anyways but that’s besides the point. In the beginning I worked at a bigger box gym and was the personal trainer that would take you around and show the machines, and back then people were afraid of bulking up and looking like a body builder. They didn’t want to look like a body builder, they just wanted to lose weight.
And the more things change, the more they stay the same. I still have to field those concerns, though it has gotten better. I think a lot of it really has to do with association. They see big jacked body builders lifting weights in all the advertisements and they just associate weights with that.
This scares some people off of using weight training as part of a fat loss program. And it’s a shame because it can be a critical component. Here’s why…
Well before we dig into why…let’s clarify something really quick. It’s not weight loss we are after. I mean, if it was, then crashing a motorcycle might be the greatest program for that. No what we really are talking about is fat loss.
And in order to create fat loss, we need to be in a caloric deficit. As in calories in vs. calories out. When it is in a caloric deficit, your body needs to use calories to maintain basic functions, and instead of getting them from food, it uses up stored energy in the form of body fat…or at least that’s the hope.
The reality is, it can burn up stored body fat…but it can also burn up stored sugar in the form of glycogen or it can even burn up your muscle tissue.
The importance of weight training, is that it signals to your body “hey…we need the muscles, see we use them…don’t burn them up…burn the body fat instead.”
In addition to that, it improves metabolism and insulin sensitivity (both good things btw) and last but not least, it makes you stronger more muscular. I know that might not be something you’re interested in but bare with me.
When you go through a body transformation program there are a number of things that happen. Yes people get leaner and their bio markers of health improve, but what also changes is their sense of self effectiveness. They walk down the street with confidence knowing that if something comes up, they got this. If they need to move a couch or something, they got this. They want to go to the beach, they have a body they feel more comfortable putting on display.
No they won’t look like a body builder, but they’ll have the strength, the physique and the physical capacity to live life on their own terms. If this is something that sounds good to you and you’re looking for help, I offer a free trial at my personal training studio on Main Street in Boonton. Just send me a text at 973 476 5328 to get started.
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.
Blink Fitness in Parsippany is closing?
This morning as I was training my clients, a woman popped in asking if I had a card. I don’t tend to carry cards anymore since it can’t really show what I have to offer past the alphabet soup under my name so I handed her a brochure instead. She then went on to tell me that Blink Fitness in Parsippany was closing and her son was now looking for a new place to workout, preferably with guidance. According to the 1440 news without the fluff emails I get in the morning the whole franchise filed for bankruptcy.
I was surprised. I was under the impression it was a popular gym in the area, and one of the girls who used to workout there told me she wasn’t surprised because they didn’t have a lot of equipment there.
The reality is, if you know what you’re doing, you don’t actually need a lot of equipment. In my personal training studio in Boonton, I’ve collected many different pieces of equipment over the years. I’ve even had some equipment custom ordered and even made some of it myself (such as the isometrics equipment for training the specific application of my strength performances I do across the country).
As much equipment as I have, only a small handful of it gets used on a regular basis. When people come to me to “get in shape” or “get fit” I have to enquire further so I understand what they mean by that. And usually they just have a general idea of what it means to be in shape. Even when they have a specific idea of what it means to be in shape, I still stick to the basics. I categorize it into a handful of basics, sometimes doubling up on some of them depending on what we can safely perform (based on the assessments that come during the free trial).
Upper body push
Upper body pull
Knee dominant
Hip dominant
As long as you have at least one exercise in all 4 of those categories, it should be relatively balanced. then you simply pick a progression strategy for each of them. At 4 exercises, at most it would be 4 pieces of equipment, which isn’t much. All 4 of those exercise categories can be performed with 1 barbell, some plates and a power cage.
The problem comes from the fact that a lot of people don’t really know what they’re doing…and big gyms like Blink Fitness bank on this. The standard business model for gyms is get a bunch of people to sign up for a promotion, promise to be open and grant them access to equipment during business hours and hope people don’t take advantage of their gym membership.
And it was common too. Drop out rate for big gyms like Blink and Planet fitness is around 75% in the first 6 weeks.
I on the other hand take the exact opposite approach. I keep people consistently coming in, with a plan of action when they arrive to make both rapid progress in the beginning, and sustainable progress moving forward after that. In fact the one that told me Blink Fitness didn’t have much equipment just started training with me in late May, has lost 12lbs while simultaneously developing muscle (as in replacing fat with muscle which often times makes your weight not change much). She’s currently training for a bikini competition and showed me her progress pic…and I’ll just say…nice job.
My job was to get her to what’s considered advanced progress, but do it in a short period of time…and she did.
All of my people make very rapid progress in the beginning then taper off to continually get stronger in a sustainable way and you can see it on my personal training success stories page. Some have been with me for years…just because they like it.
But each one of them started with a free trial. If you’re interested in taking my free trial simply text me at 973 476 5328 and we’ll take it from there. Simple as that.
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.