Well it happens every 4 years or so. Here we have today to decide who is going to determine our fate, and it’s based on votes. Now today being election day, your mind is probably already racing to try to either refute or support my opinion…but I’m not actually talking about that either.

I’m talking about you.

Yesterday morning, I was chatting with one of my personal training clients during her workout. Her initial goal was simply to look better in a bikini for a Caribbean vacation she has coming up last week of November. Knowing this, I set a course to be able to progress her strength in the rep ranges associated with muscle development in the lifts that would make the biggest difference to how her physique would look in a bikini and the progress needed to be incremental but at the same time rapid.

Why? Because small increments are least likely to set off the governing mechanisms that limit progress.

Now during the conversation, I was pointing out how far her lifts have come in the short time she’s been with me. She started in September and had a goal to maximize her results by the end of November. In the hip thrust (the most direct way of loading the glutes through the longest range of motion while the max contraction is in the shortened position). She started with a calculated 1 rep max of 193lbs, and I had a goal of getting to 300lbs for at least 10 consecutive reps. Yesterday she was only 15lbs away from that goal and she’s doing it for submaximal sets of 15. She’s on track, ahead of schedule actually.

When we were reviewing how much progress she made across the lifts…bench pressing over her starting max for 102 reps in 10mins, squatting with 32lbs over her starting max submaximal sets of 15, overhead pressing with starting 1rep max + 12lbs for 98 reps in 10mins and set to romanian deadlift with her starting max for submaximal reps soon. Let’s just say that is a remarkable amount of progress for a short period of time and there is no way to get those kinds of results without dramatically improving your physique.

So during this conversation, she had joked that it felt just as challenging each time. I don’t think she realized it at the time, but that is a loaded statement that reveals a lot about effective program design.

See the thing is, we all have these governing mechanisms in our body that senses that the load is too much and thus shut the processes down. When you can progress the load, volume and density without tripping up those threat mechanisms, progress can be made not only rapidly, like hers was thus far, but also sustainably. The trick though is that it has to be in that sweet spot of challenging, but not too challenging.

In other words if you can raise the programmatic variables of volume, density and load without a proportional increase of the “discomfort” of the lift, dramatic and sustainable progress is yours for the taking. And the kicker is to work your way up incrementally. Those small changes lead up to big results in a surprisingly short period of time.

And those incremental changes, like habits can be thought of like votes. Every tiny little improvement can be thought of like a vote for your future self. Now the question I have is in 4 years regardless of which presidential candidate we end up with…will you be better than you are today?

If you need help with this, I offer a free trial at my personal training studio on Main Street in Boonton. Just text me at 973 476 5328.

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.

Here we come again. It’s that time of the year when the weather gets a bit colder, people layer up and cover up areas they aren’t exactly proud of and delicious treats during get togethers are constantly tempting us like sirens to sailors.

After the candy of Halloween comes Thanksgiving, then Christmas and then the debauchery of New Years eve. Come New Years day though they try to quit cold turkey and then “This year will be the year I get in shape” where they have to compete with every other resolutioner who is using the equipment they want to use, and taking their sweet time doing it because they have to post it on social media.

Something I see other fitness professionals preach is get started now and you’ll have a leg up on the New Year. One might think “Why bother? I don’t want to give up hanging out with friends and family and there are just too many temptations. Better to start in the New Year”

I’m not going to gatekeep by preaching to you about how you need to suck it up. That’s actually an exercise in futility since willpower is a finite resource anyway (you can only say no so much before you crack).

Instead I’m saying that with a few strategies, you can actually use this to your advantage. In other words you can have your cake and eat it too…and still lean out.

Years ago, I was training a bride for her upcoming wedding day. One of the days she came in looking upset.

What’s the matter?

“I haven’t lost any weight in the past 3 weeks”

When was the last time you cheated on your diet?

“I NEVER cheat on my diet”. And I knew she was telling me the truth so I said …”Cheat immediately“

That weekend was the Renaissance Fair and she cheated and then some. She comes back in for a weigh in now 3lbs lighter. How?

Our bodies are amazing adaptive mechanisms. It adapts to just about any stimulus you throw at it assuming it has enough frequency and time. In an effort to survive a potential starvation cycle your body can actually down regulate your metabolism to conserve its resources. This is leftover from a time when we had to compete with sabertooth tigers for survival in the ice age. And usually the way the cycle works is people create a calorie deficit, they lose a bit of weight, then when they hit the law of accommodation (when your body stops adapting to a stimulus) the weight loss slows so they cut calories further. It becomes like a dog chasing it’s tail.

Instead by throwing in a “cheat” day or a “cheat” meal every once in a while you can potentially stop it from happening. You’re still technically in a deficit because one unrestricted day isn’t going to upset the caloric balance of an entire week of eating on point. That and throwing all the rules out the window can help you from a psychological standpoint since it’s not 12 weeks without fun, it’s only a couple days till you can have that scrumptious whatever floats your boat.

So how much? When I give my one size fits most nutrition recommendations for my personal training clients who come to me for transforming their bodies, I tell them 3 unrestricted meals or 1 day unrestricted. That will help you to be able to stay on track, while also living life and enjoying the fruits of your labor. You’ll enjoy the season, and if you start now you can enjoy the way you look before new years is even here.

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 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.

Last night at my personal training studio, I was talking with one of my clients. I’m not sure how the discussion came up, we have conversations that fly from one topic to the next to the next and I don’t even know how we got down the rabbit hole, but somehow I was saying something to the effect of performance enhancement drug use was up in youth and I was disappointed by it.

This guy happened to have gained 25lbs of muscle in his first 12 weeks of training with me…drug free btw.

Anyway, I had mentioned that I know a guy that was offering me SARMS (Selective Androgen Receptor Modulators). Basically SARMS are the newest legal version of steroids and they claim its safer as well but that’s not something I’m interested in and try to get all of my people to stay away from as well.

I said to him, even if it is safe which I have significant doubts about, when you take it you won’t know how much of your gains came from you vs. the drugs. Its actually one of the benefits of training drug free is how it affects your confidence. I’ve alluded to this in a previous article about the mental health benefits but nothing proves your self efficacy like watching the numbers improve. Repping out with weights you previously couldn’t move proves to yourself, you are capable of hard things and that there is a direct correlation between hard focused work and improvement. If you were to do it with drugs you wouldn’t know for sure. How much were the drugs doing?

Second, when you gain muscle natural, it can be a slower process (but not as slow as people think) but it also sticks around longer. Some of my clients leave for the summer, or are snowbirds during the winter or are touring musicians, they train with me for a while and then they leave for significant periods of time. I can’t go with them to train and often they don’t even have time to train. But when they come back, I test where they are compared to their last session and none of the gains were lost.

Now that guy that was offering SARMS to me, back in Feb I saw him and he had told me that he had a bit of a health scare which I won’t go into here, but he said I have to quit it. When I saw him again back in September he had lost significant amounts of muscle. He hadn’t built it the holistic way. I on the other hand, maintain my level of muscle year after year.

If you are interested in getting stronger in a way you can maintain but need help, I offer a free trial at my personal training studio on Main Street in Boonton. Just text me 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.