Author: Eric Moss
The Truth About Strength Without Bulky Muscle
I was having a chat the other day with one of my personal training clients. He was telling me that a bodybuilder had explained to him that “gaining muscle is the only way to get stronger.”
Well, that’s what happens when you invest more in pre-workout supplements and tanning lotions than in furthering your knowledge. Luckily my client knows better than to take the advice of everyone and their mother when it comes to their fitness program and just come to me with questions.
In this case, though, it wasn’t really a question. It was a sarcastic quip because my guy knows it’s not true, partially because of the feats of strength he’s seen me do. (Here’s my demo reel in case you don’t know what I’m talking about)
He also knows this because he’s seen tremendous strength gains himself without having to look like a tanned moonrock to do it. As a matter of fact, I often times give very noticeable and measurable increases in strength during the first day of the one week trial membership of the personal training program that I offer. One of the reasons I offer it is because it gives me a chance to prove to my potential client that what I do works quickly.
If I can get someone stronger, during the first session, it’s not because they’ve put on muscle. At least not in the beginning.
The strength gains happen via neurological efficiency, which I initially learned about through the teachings of Pavel Tsatsouline. Basically, your brain sends a command signal through your nervous system which tells your muscle fibers to contract, which pulls on tendon which pulls on bone and that is how movement occurs. It’s illustrated wonderfully in the gif below. (Thank you to whoever created this gif, it’s a wonderful illustration)
At any given moment, your body contains enough muscle fibers to lift a car off of a human being, but there are various things called mechanoreceptors throughout the body that measure things like proprioception but can also act as strength limiters to prevent us from overdoing it and ripping ourselves apart. In muscle cars, we can think of it like making sure the torque of the engine doesn’t bend the chassis.
It’s a good thing that those mechanoreceptors are there because they keep us safe, however, they are overly conservative. The average person only has approximately 25-30% of their muscle fibers available at the moment and is reserved for those life or death instances that you read about in Reader’s Digest.
This strength deficit can be overcome mentally (which is what I had learned to overcome as I underwent the path of the steel bending strongman and became the subject matter of my motivational speech).
For people starting out though, the easier and more pain-free way of getting stronger is to simply improve the communication between your brain and your muscles and the strength of that signal that tells your muscle fibers “contract!” My first strongman mentor the late, great New Jersey’s Superman Greg Matonick once explained it to me like this;
“Think of the central nervous system being like a babbling brook. The more water that goes through, the deeper the streambed becomes until it becomes a mighty river.”
A lot of what strength training is is simply teaching your body and mind that it doesn’t need to hold back quite so much and that it’s ok to give a little bit more. You do this by not forcing the process, but by allowing it.
Changes and adaptations of the central nervous system happen very quickly. It’s why I am able to help my personal training clients get very noticeable and measurable increases in strength within the first week, often times within the first personal training session.
This is how you can get stronger without putting on a ton of bulk. If you know someone that should read this please share it with them. If you would like help, give the one week trial of my personal training studio a try.
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 in Boonton Township New Jersey with Lewandowski Chiropractic and is close to Mountain Lakes, Denville, and Parsippany New Jersey.
A Critical Eye is a Valuable Eye, Here Is Why…
When I write, I like to keep a conversational tone to my writing since I’m trying to teach, not submit things for a scholarly article or try to make myself sound smarter than I actually am.
Scholarly type stuff normally only speaks to other personal trainers and strength and conditioning coaches and a handful of others who likely already know what they are doing and those aren’t the people that are going to benefit from my writing. After all, I don’t need to preach to the choir.
This past Friday I had published an article about staying focused on the goal. I shared it on Facebook and out of the blue a friend and a fellow personal trainer had messaged me an article on using Microsoft word for correcting grammar.
Odd, I thought. But I knew that it had something to do with the article I had just written and went over it again a few more times and found some grammatical errors as well as a handful of other things that could be said differently.
A while back when I was in the process of getting my memoir published, I asked a couple authors for some advice. The one thing that seemed to get repeated across the board was;
“get an editor to look at your book, don’t try to do it yourself, just get a pro”
Why is this important and what the heck does this have to do with health, strength, and fitness?
It’s simple, we can all use an outside eye to provide objective feedback to make sure what we are doing is right. When you look at your own writing, your brain will either not notice errors or automatically correct them before the other part of your brain processes it. In other words, you won’t see what you are doing wrong.
The same can be said for your training program and the things you are doing with it. The one arm overhead press is a fantastic exercise when it’s done right. If you look it up on youtube, you might even see some great instructional material on it but what you might not see is your shoulder hiking up ever so slightly or yourself leaning back and essentially doing a standing version of a one arm bench press, both of which put you in unnecessary danger.
You don’t notice this because you don’t have objective feedback from an eye that is trained to see this sort of thing. It’s one of the biggest reasons why people need coaches.
Using myself as an example, I have a pretty good analytical eye when it comes to training movements. I also have pretty good proprioceptive awareness. (that’s your body’s awareness when it comes to positioning and movement). Basically, I’m pretty good at seeing something and doing it myself the right way.
But when I wanted to learn to do some of the old-time feats of strength (a bit of a unique animal), I bought books, DVDs, watched youtube videos and had very limited success. Does this sound familiar?
It wasn’t until I met my first mentor New Jersey’s Superman, the late, great Greg Matonick that I started making progress, and I made rapid progress under his watchful eye. Greg taught technique, body mechanics, materials and getting out of my own way.
After he passed away, my feats of strength continued based on the things he taught me, but progress was much slower because I didn’t have his feedback. I still had so much to learn from him.
Luckily for me, I met my current feats of strength coach Chris Rider and with his guidance, support and encouragement progress came rapidly yet again. The value of having a trained and watchful eye can be key to making sure you are able to make progress while keeping safe. There are no shortcuts in life, with the exception of having a coach with a trained eye that can redirect you from making mistakes.
If you are looking for a personal trainer in Boonton Township give my one week trial membership a try and we can see if you enjoy having me as a personal trainer, and I can see if you are a good fit for continuing as a regular member.
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 in Boonton Township New Jersey with Lewandowski Chiropractic and is close to Mountain Lakes, Denville, and Parsippany New Jersey.
The question you need to ask yourself
I enjoy writing. I found my voice as an author years ago with my original fitness blog and recently decided to start one up again. As I find myself snowed in today, I found a bit of extra time to be able to write another article, but had no clue what to write about.
Ironic really because the topics of health, strength and fitness is a never ending sea of possibilities, which itself presented a challenge.
You see, in a never ending sea of possibilities, it can be hard to see clearly (see what I did there?). In other words, it’s hard to remain focused on the important things, and the things that provide the most bang for the buck.
In the world of strength and fitness training there are literally thousands of exercises to choose from. This poses a dilemma in that all of them work to an extent. Personally for me, I stick to the basics, and ask my personal training clients to do the same thing.
Why? Because the basics, are what truly works. It’s easy to get sidetracked, especially because other things work too. When that happens, simply ask yourself;
“What is the main thing I can do that will help me reach my goals?”
And the answer will reveal itself after just a little bit of digging. An example of this is if someone wanted to drop body fat, and they aren’t making progress, they can ask themselves what they can do to change their situation. One thing might be to hire an expert to help. And that expert might ask them what they are doing that isn’t in alignment with their goals. If they don’t know, then find out.
A game changer might be simply journaling your food and what else you are doing. Or it might be fasting or giving up sugar, it varies by the person. Simple right? Something complex is accomplished by simplifying it to one actionable step that you can take that provides a high bang for the buck.
My daughter Aurora in her newborn shoot. Photo credit Lynda Renee Photography.
When my daughter was born I knew I wanted to be a great father to her. I figure I’ve got about 10 years to put a good head on her shoulders before the preteen years hit and I become an idiot in her eyes.
Having two businesses (a personal training business and an inspirational speaker/strongman business) and all the craziness that comes with them, it can be very easy to lose sight of what is truly important.
When you watch shows like “Teenage and Pregnant” it often boils down to lack of attention from the father. I prefer to avoid this if I can.
A goal should be quantifiable, so I set a very simple goal for myself to make sure this doesn’t happen…whatever it is find a way to make her laugh every day. I’m not always successful (sometimes I’m out of town giving an inspirational strongman performance, or my wife has her on a trip and I have obligations which prevent me from going), but I think it’s the fact that I am trying that really makes the difference.
So whether it’s your health, strength and fitness, your career or your life goals…to make sure your time is well spent, ask yourself “What is the main thing I can do that will help me reach my goals?”
And last but not least, DO IT. It might be that simple.
If you want to see if I can help with this test drive my personal training services with my one week trial membership. You’ll see gains in useable strength within the week, often times within the first session.
Eric Moss is a world record holding professional strongman, author, speaker and personal trainer. His personal training studio is in Boonton Township New Jersey with Lewandowski Chiropractic and is close to Mountain Lakes, Denville and Parsippany New Jersey.