So recently one of my personal training clients had come back to training with me. The main reason she stopped in the first place was she had moved to another town, taking her farther away from my personal training studio in Boonton. Generally speaking, people won’t travel further than about 8 miles to work out with someone, but I guess I’m worth the trip.

When she asked if she could come back, I replied “Of course!” And that’s when I got the rundown of what brought her back.

First it was the fun and relaxed vibe I have in my personal training studio. You see, I think there is a misconception about my training methods, and it’s not a bad assumption. Inside the studio it looks like a dungeon, with steel bars I bent during shows decorating the crown, the main colors in the gym are shades of grey. In the window, alongside amazing body transformation pics there are rolled up frying pans, and chains made out of nails I had bent in my hands.

If I were a passerby, I might assume that the trainer there was super intense, but then once you meet me you realize, I’m laid back, like to joke around, am a dad of daughters and I love animals. The clients I have are all good people, professionals in their careers and all support each other (helping my daughter surpass her girl scout cookie goal) and everyone surpasses what they previously thought themselves capable of. That vibe is part of the reason she came back. But it’s more than that.

She remembered what she had achieved training with me and remembered what I taught her. But it’s different when you are doing it on your own vs having a place to go where that’s what you do when you’re there with someone guiding you to make sure you’re doing it right. So she started working out with a personal trainer that was closer to where she lived, but once you know what’s possible for yourself, it’s hard to go back.

Now with me, I start off with the understanding that each of us has the capacity to lift a car off of a human but it’s blocked with all sorts of internal mechanisms that are there to keep us safe, but at the same time are overly conservative. And what I do, is program in such a fashion that teaches your body that it’s in fact safe. I remove the rate limiting factor by optimal design which helps people get the body they want, faster and more sustainably.

Unfortunately, a lot of what limits people are often times self imposed, or from being misguided. As an example, the other personal trainer told her that women shouldn’t lift heavy (something I’ve talked about before but wait for it). She said not to lift heavy because it’s bad for the ovaries and could damage her chances of having children. Smh.

I’ll admit, that’s a new one for me, and I’ve been training people since 03. There have been all sorts of misconceptions of weight training over the years from things like it’s only for vain people or that it will make you slow/ muscle bound, or that weight training is dangerous or only for men or young people to even making you gay. For the record, all the gay people I train were gay before training with me.

Those limiting beliefs stop people from getting the healthy strong body they deserve. I don’t normally ask questions in these articles but “What have you heard that might stop you from weight training?”

The benefits are well known, but perhaps you just don’t really know what to do. If that’s the case, I offer a free trial at my personal training studio. Just text me at 973 476 5328 and introduce yourself 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, Kinnelon, Pine Brook, Butler, and Parsippany New Jersey.