Do you want to improve your physique? Aim for these…

Yesterday (May 31st 2026) I went to the local pond with my kids.  It’s actually quite a beautiful spot located in Rockaway where I live and hopefully the first of many beach trips.  Not quite the ocean, but hey as much as I love watching the waves crash onto the shoreline, I also love seeing the green of trees…and not having to drive an hour to get there which means we can usually squeeze something in.

Now that the weather is getting warmer, people will wear less clothing and it seems bathing suits are starting to reveal more and more.  If you feel comfortable like that, more power to you.  If you feel like you want to look better…well keep reading.  I’ll explain how to do it.

When people come to me for training, I will ask them about their goals and what they’d like to achieve.  Most of the time outside of specific performance based things the people who come to me don’t know exactly how to explain it.  They have a vague idea in their head of what they’d like to achieve (like being in shape) and I have to help them unpack it.  Round is a shape too, but I don’t think that’s what they want.

They’ll say they don’t want to look like a drugged to the gills bodybuilder, they just want to be toned. For many the visual of being in shape is probably something along the lines of a fitness model.  I’m including a general stock photo of fitness models below so you see what I’m talking about.

Great!  Now we have something to aim at.  Now that we have something to aim at, I like to use the ideas I picked up from Marty Gallagher,  a highly respected strength coach.

Create a realistic goal.

Establish a realistic timeframe.

Reverse engineer: work backwards with a calendar or computer.

Place realistic goals within a specified timeframe.

Work backwards to establish weekly poundage benchmarks.

Start off well below capacity, build momentum, and end well above capacity.

Copied and pasted from Harnessing Pure Strength: The Power of Knowing Your Strengths and Limitations by Marty Gallagher on IronCompany.com

Over the years I’ve come to question what’s actually a realistic goal and a realistic time frame.  I mean, would you have looked at a guy like me and expected me to be able to hold back a high performance motorcycle?

Then I pick exercises appropriate for the person and appropriate for the goal and reverse engineer what it would take to get there.  As an example, many of the fitness models are also bikini competitors.  Kind of like bodybuilding but more of an aim towards a lean, toned and balanced hour glass figure (lean and toned comes up a lot in the goal assessment interview).

Now to get there, I used ideas I learned from reverse engineering some of the bikini competitors out there.  Through the studies of a competition team called “The Glute Squad” I discovered that the average bikini competitor in that group weighed 142lbs and totaled 1,480lbs across 6 lifts which gives an approximate strength to body weight ratio of 10 to 1.  (The total means if you add up the 1 rep max of all 6 lifts and this was with powerlifting style rules)

Those lifts would be:

Bench press

Squat

Deadlift

Pull up

Military press

Hip Thrust

Their coach claims that as long as you are getting stronger in all of those lifts, your physique will always improve.  So I adapted and improved upon some of the ideas I got from that.

First, is I don’t want my clients to go for a 1 rep max, since you don’t actually improve strength by maxing out and I don’t want to waste my clients time with a peaking cycle that doesn’t actually improve anything.  Instead I like to improve the “proposed max” from their training numbers.  As long as that’s improving its easy to see we are making progress.  You can either use this equation (Jim Wendler equation) or just download an app that calculates it for you…that what I use.

So we have those exercises or safe and effective equivalents, now we have a goal.  Get as close to a 10 to 1 as we can as quick as we can while remaining safe and without compromising the long term sustainability of it.  I’m including some case studies below.  First is a woman in her 50’s who wanted to look better in a bikini for a beach vacation she had coming up 12 weeks from when she signed up with me.

The second was a woman in her 40’s who essentially wanted the same thing but didn’t have that vacation coming up.

Notice that their body weight didn’t change, but their strength to body weight ratio improved dramatically.  Long story short both loved the changes they saw in their physique and both were happy they chose Eric Moss Fitness for all their health and fitness needs.

For guys that want a similar thing, the same principles apply.  One of my influences is Dan John, a highly respected strength coach who’s students range from high school athletes, to people with Super Bowl rings to some members of the SEAL team that got Osama Bin Ladin.

His game changer strength standards for adult males is

Bench Press: Bodyweight for 15 reps

Pull Ups: 15 reps

Squat: Body weight for 15 reps

Deadlift: Double bodyweight for 1

Loaded Carry: ie farmer walks bodyweight each hand

Turkish getup with half filled glass of water balanced on the fist

If you can reach those numbers or just get close, if you aren’t happy with the way you look or how you perform, your problem isn’t a lack of strength.  And if you can do that, you’ll have a decent amount of muscle and a significant strength to body weight ratio.

No I don’t use those exact things, but I do use most of them just as something to aim at and something to keep you focused on the most effective exercises.

Of course if you don’t now how or where to get started, well if you’ve read my stuff before you probably already know I offer a free trial so you can see whether or not its for you.  Just send me a text at 973 476 5328 and introduce yourself to get started.  Don’t wait too long though because even though we can get fast results, the sooner you start the sooner you can enjoy the fruits of your labor.  Peaches for the beaches.

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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, Kinnelon, Pine Brook, Butler, and Parsippany New Jersey.