Categories: learning and living

Is this normal?

First, it’s feats of strength Friday, and here is a video for your entertainment. I bend a steel carriage bolt and my daughter is especially cute here.

Earlier this week one of my personal training clients had asked “Is this normal?”

I said “Well what is normal really?”

What she was referring to was that she had noticeable increases in strength within the session. Being someone who was already in pretty good shape before she even came to me she wasn’t used to the way I do things and seemed to enjoy the strength that she had already attained.

What I was referring to was what people normally refer to as “normal” can also be considered “ordinary”.

My wife and I are a match.com success story. The opening line in my dating profile was “if you are looking for someone ordinary, keep looking because I’m not him”. This was also followed by the next line which said “Why settle for ordinary and boring when you can have extraordinary and fun?”

And I think that’s an issue that a lot of people face.

They settle.

They settle in their health by thinking they can’t do any better. They settle by thinking that what they are doing is “good enough”.

When I set out to be a personal trainer, I was always looking for better and better ways of training both myself as well as my personal training clients. That led me to the community of steel bending strongmen where I learned a bit of what I was (and what we are) truly capable of.

My first mentor in this was New Jersey’s Superman, the late Greg Matonick. It was the slogan for his gym that I adopted and put on my door.

His other slogan was “What’s impossible for you is normal to us.”

With the one I was training this morning, she surprised herself. I wasn’t surprised because I knew she could do it. I know what she is capable of, and she is learning that too.

You won’t know what you are truly capable of, unless you set out to find out.

If you need my help with this I have a free one-week trial membership available where you can test my methods out for yourself. Send me a text at 973 476 5328.

Eric Moss is a world-record-holding modern-day professional performing strongman, author, motivational speaker, and personal trainer. 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, nonprofits, government as well as for schools and universities. His exclusive personal training studio is located on Main Street in Boonton New Jersey, is close to Mountain Lakes, Denville, Montville and Parsippany New Jersey.

Eric Moss