One thing about having my personal training studio on Main Street in Boonton is that I am surrounded by restaurants. I am literally walking distance from Mediterranean cuisine, Thai, sushi, Tex Mex, Jamaican, delis and more likely delicious things that happen to escape my mind at the moment. One thing that conversations with my personal training clients often times turn to is food.

Earlier today in my personal training studio, I was having a discussion about some of the various places to eat. The person I was talking to have been in Boonton for longer than I have, I was picking his brain about good places to eat. I’ve only tried a handful of places there and was looking for suggestions about others.

And he was surprised to hear about a fitness professional that eats pizza.

I think that’s part of the dogma that surrounds personal trainers. People think that we live like monks on boiled chicken and steamed broccoli, and yeah some of us do. But there is more to life than diet and exercise.

Life is for living, and your training and nutrition should be there to make it better. Plain and simple.

Actually that goes for everything.

I recently added life coaching into my services for this reason. And in life coaching (which is like half of what personal training really is) there is a thing called the wheel of life assessment tool.

The wheel of life assessment tool is a way of simplifying the life experience is really just a way of diagnosing what might be out of balance, and what needs to be worked on for improvement.

I want to point out, that health is only one aspect of the experience. It’s an important and often times overlooked one, but it is simply one. By improving it, you can vastly improve your life, but only up until a certain point.

I’ll give an example. One of my former personal training clients had been hit by a bus years and years ago. Being immobile and with the nature of his injuries it made getting healthy a more complicated task than an ordinary human. I screened him with the FMS, figured out what he could safely do, guided him with the exercises and when strength is done right, it can be therapeutic. To the point where he was able to get back onto the skis after about 30 years of not being able to.

One of my current personal training clients lives life to its fullest. In the winter she skis and shows people twenty years younger how it’s done. In the warmer months, she hikes and lives by the pool hanging with friends and eating, drinking and being merry. Thriving so to speak.

She already is healthy and looks good. If she wanted to lose more fat, she could, but she’d have to make some sacrifices. I actually recommended she just keep doing what she’s doing. To do otherwise, may throw her life out of balance and take away from the experience.

Now for me, one of the pillars of my personal training business is that I lead from the front. Essentially I walk the path, so I can help guide the path. I’ve built up my strength to the point of being able to do shows where I demonstrate my strength on stage in front of people. Strength training and fitness have transformed my life in a way that the kid in me dreamed about.

If my health started going by the wayside, I’d figure out what’s working and what isn’t and put the focus to get in back on track. In the meantime, I’m going to maintain and enjoy life to it’s fullest.

And life is more enjoyable when you are healthy enough to thrive.

Eric Moss is a world record holding professional strongman, author, speaker and personal trainer. In the tradition of the strongmen 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, and Parsippany New Jersey.