I’m on a number of email lists.  Half the time when my apple watch dings, I look and it’s just an email from someone who at one point might have said something that wanted me to know more.  Most of the time it’s garbage, but every once in awhile I get something good.

In this case it was Arnold Schwarzenegger’s newsletter, which is actually one I do read because I get some decent gems out of it.  In this case it was about “quitters day“.

Quitters day January 17th is the day that statistically speaking most people quit going to the gym.  Attendance to the gym spikes in the first 2 weeks and has a huge drop in days between Jan 16th and Jan 19th.  This past Saturday was January 17th.

Ironically on January 16th, I did a motivational strength performance at my kids school where right before bending a steel bar (showed above) I told them not to quit because they could be as little as 3 seconds from success.  And on January 19th I signed up a new person to start my training program.

So how does this relate to you?  Why am I encouraging you to quit?

I’m not saying to quit your goals, I’m saying that if your approach hasn’t been working (assuming you’ve given it enough time to actually take effect) then maybe it’s time to quit the approach, but stay true to the goal.

I have a quote that I say to my clients.

“If you do the right things, the right things should happen.  If they aren’t happening then the right things aren’t the right things, they’re the wrong things.”

The person I signed up previously had trainers, but the trainers in an effort to make him strong were overly aggressive at putting more weight on the bar, and he ended up hurting himself in the process.

Yes, you should strive to put to put up heavier weights.  Progressive overload is the mother of strength training but that’s not necessarily every time, that’s over time.  Some of my programs take over a year before adding load (configuring the other programmatic variables to continue to make gains without having to add load).

Every time you add weight to the bar, it should be a calculated risk.  In my training programs the addition of weight is calculated in advance by looking at the primary training variables (load, volume and density) before adding it.  Start within your limits, and expand them until your sub-maximal passes the maximal without issue.  That is key within my personal training programs.

And yes, it can be confusing, but don’t give up on your goals, give up on the ineffective approach that hasn’t been working.  If you need help I offer a free trial of my personal training program and can do the complicated part for you.  There is something highly effective about having a specific place you go where that’s what you do when you are there, plus someone waiting for you with a plan when you arrive that actually works.

All you have to do is send me a text at 973 476 5328 and introduce yourself.  Then stay committed to the process because the process works like gangbusters.

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, Kinnelon, Pine Brook, Butler, and Parsippany New Jersey.