Author: Eric Moss
Vacation workout or not? My thoughts
Last week my wife and I flew out to Aruba for a nice vacation. A little pricey yeah but I’m doing around 55 hours a week of personal training in Boonton, and simultaneously promoting my motivational speaking modern day performing strongman business. With my modern day performing strongman business, it sometimes involves me having to wait till my kids go to bed to create a custom proposal for the corporate shows I do.
My wife works a lot of hours too, sometimes to the point that I have to tell her to hang it up and go to bed. In other words, we were both due for a vacation where we can kick back and relax.

Now a question I’m often times asked when I have a personal training client that is about to take a trip…”What should I do? What should I eat when I’m on vacation?”
My answer is “enjoy yourself”
Here’s the thing, a week of enjoying yourself isn’t doomsday on your results. Any weight you put on is mostly water, and it can be beneficial to your metabolism. Your lean muscle isn’t going anywhere either…in fact in powerlifting there is a strategy of ‘softening up’ so you can reignite your gains. Taking it easy can give you a mental reprieve as well and when you get back, you go back in hell bent for leather and ready to rock.

Even me, being in shape is part of the job. It’s my job to be strong, and it’s my job to look the part. I’ve gained personal training clients because I walk the walk. And being a modern day performing strongman...I have to be strong for the stage. But the only thing I lift on vacation is 12oz if you catch my drift.
Now my wife on the other hand, also doubles as a BeachBody accountability coach. She wanted to exercise on vacation…because she feels good when she does. There’s nothing wrong with that.
So if you want to workout when you’re on vacation, that’s cool. If you want to take it easy, that’s cool too.
But what you should do, is get into shape beforehand. Yeah, the best time to start would have been years or even just a couple weeks ago…but the next best time to start is today. Trust me it feels good to be in shape, to look good and feel good, not just on vacation but every other time of the year.
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 and introduce yourself.

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 strongmen more common 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, 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.
Does creatine work? My thoughts…
The other day one of my personal training clients came into my studio and asked me a question. Does creatine work?
My answer, it varies from person to person but it’s one of the few supplements out there that actually does work. It’s known in the trenches, and it’s been backed in scientific studies. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3407788/
Having said that though I believe it to be majoring in the minors, and is a common mistake a lot of people make in the gym. If you walk into the locker room at a standard gym and talk to some of the guys you might think you need a degree in pharmaceuticals just to understand what they’re talking about. And yet many of these people come in day in and day out without making meaningful progress.
In fact, I once had a booth at a health fair held within a supplement store. More than one walked right past me in hopes of buying strength and muscle in a bottle. It might help them squeeze out a few more reps, but it pails in comparison to effective programming.
How so?
Because if there was a supplement that could transform a 1 rep max into a 10+ rep max within 12-16 weeks it would be illegal…or soon to be illegal. However, I’ve coached many of my personal training clients to do that… drug-free.
You can see it for yourself on my personal training success stories page.
So in my opinion, don’t waste your time on supplements until your training program has been optimized to get the best out of you. If you want my help I offer a free trial. Just text me at 973 476 5328 and introduce yourself to get started. If you can’t afford it, that’s fine. At least let me teach you something and maybe point out some books you can read to help you out.
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 strongmen more common 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, 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 Confidence Competence Loop applied to Fitness
Part of what I do in my personal training business is life/business coaching. I do this with my personal training clients because all sorts of various topics come up, and it just seems like such an obvious way to make my clients’ lives better. Inevitably it ends up improving my life/career as well.
Recently I was talking with one of my clients, the president of a healthy snack food company, a guy full of challenging insights and a really good guy to boot. I had mentioned that promoting my motivational speaking/modern-day performing strongman business at the corporate level through email just wasn’t panning out. All the corporate stuff I’ve done found me which isn’t being proactive.
You know part of successfully achieving goals is being proactive and assessing whether or not the plan is working. In my case, emailing events wasn’t panning out. And from some conversations with a magician over in Vancouver…I knew I had to pick up the phone.
I hate making cold calls.
So I said to my guy…”I hate, it but I know what I have to do, I just need to get a couple under my belt and it won’t be so bad”
It can be explained in the confidence competence loop, something I first heard about from Brendon Burchard. In essence, when you first start out with something, you don’t really know what you’re doing, so you don’t feel that confidence. But then you take some action, you learn from it and you gain a bit of competence. That competence gives you a little bit more confidence so you do a little more. Then you gain a little more competence so on and so forth. That’s how you start to gain momentum. The key is to get started.
In training, it can be much the same way. You want to get in shape, but you don’t really know what to do. So you do something, it could be running, it could be joining a gym. It’s overwhelming but you start anyways and kind of figure it out as you go. Sooner or later you get a bit of success under your belt, your friends start noticing, you’re able to do things you couldn’t do before and that success compounds itself.
Nobody is expected to know it all when they first start out. As a personal trainer, there was no way I could have possibly known everything I know now with almost 20 years of accumulated knowledge. But I learned as I went and you can too.
Of course, you could also shortcut the process by having a coach that knows what works and what doesn’t. Btw, I had a coach that told me to pick up the phone…I just didn’t listen…but I learn from my mistakes.
If you’re ready to take charge of your health…and life, I offer a free trial membership at my personal training studio in Boonton. Pick up the phone and text me (like I said not a fan of phone calls…but I’ll still take them) at 973 476 5328 and just introduce yourself.
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 strongmen more common 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, 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, and Parsippany New Jersey.