This morning as I was training my clients, a woman popped in asking if I had a card. I don’t tend to carry cards anymore since it can’t really show what I have to offer past the alphabet soup under my name so I handed her a brochure instead. She then went on to tell me that Blink Fitness in Parsippany was closing and her son was now looking for a new place to workout, preferably with guidance. According to the 1440 news without the fluff emails I get in the morning the whole franchise filed for bankruptcy.

I was surprised. I was under the impression it was a popular gym in the area, and one of the girls who used to workout there told me she wasn’t surprised because they didn’t have a lot of equipment there.

The reality is, if you know what you’re doing, you don’t actually need a lot of equipment. In my personal training studio in Boonton, I’ve collected many different pieces of equipment over the years. I’ve even had some equipment custom ordered and even made some of it myself (such as the isometrics equipment for training the specific application of my strength performances I do across the country).

As much equipment as I have, only a small handful of it gets used on a regular basis. When people come to me to “get in shape” or “get fit” I have to enquire further so I understand what they mean by that. And usually they just have a general idea of what it means to be in shape. Even when they have a specific idea of what it means to be in shape, I still stick to the basics. I categorize it into a handful of basics, sometimes doubling up on some of them depending on what we can safely perform (based on the assessments that come during the free trial).

Upper body push

Upper body pull

Knee dominant

Hip dominant

As long as you have at least one exercise in all 4 of those categories, it should be relatively balanced. then you simply pick a progression strategy for each of them. At 4 exercises, at most it would be 4 pieces of equipment, which isn’t much. All 4 of those exercise categories can be performed with 1 barbell, some plates and a power cage.

The problem comes from the fact that a lot of people don’t really know what they’re doing…and big gyms like Blink Fitness bank on this. The standard business model for gyms is get a bunch of people to sign up for a promotion, promise to be open and grant them access to equipment during business hours and hope people don’t take advantage of their gym membership.

And it was common too. Drop out rate for big gyms like Blink and Planet fitness is around 75% in the first 6 weeks.

I on the other hand take the exact opposite approach. I keep people consistently coming in, with a plan of action when they arrive to make both rapid progress in the beginning, and sustainable progress moving forward after that. In fact the one that told me Blink Fitness didn’t have much equipment just started training with me in late May, has lost 12lbs while simultaneously developing muscle (as in replacing fat with muscle which often times makes your weight not change much). She’s currently training for a bikini competition and showed me her progress pic…and I’ll just say…nice job.

My job was to get her to what’s considered advanced progress, but do it in a short period of time…and she did.

All of my people make very rapid progress in the beginning then taper off to continually get stronger in a sustainable way and you can see it on my personal training success stories page. Some have been with me for years…just because they like it.

But each one of them started with a free trial. If you’re interested in taking my free trial simply text me at 973 476 5328 and we’ll take it from there. Simple as that.

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.