getting stronger is the key to whatever your goal is. Here’s why
The other day I was having a conversation with my wife. She was telling me she wants to grow her glutes and put on 3lbs of muscle over the next 6 months. I told her I could get her there in 3months by getting her stronger.
Now I’m a strength guy, getting stronger has been my focus for a long time and even got to the point of setting a world record and flying across the country and showing off from the stage. Get paid pretty well to do it too.
Now she was probably under the assumption that if all you have is a hammer, you treat everything like a nail. And yes that’s partially true, but when it comes to strength training, yes its a hammer, but its also a key. The key to just about any goal you wish to attain…at least from a physical standpoint.
Ken hexbar deadlifting around 185lbs and taking it for a walk.
If you’re one of the more “life experienced” people, getting stronger is the key to longevity. There is a correlation between grip strength and needing assisted living. When people lose the ability to get in and out of a chair easily that’s when things tend to take a turn for the worse. The key to longevity is get stronger.
Josh made the varsity team as a freshmen, went on to become team captain and achieved his dream of going to Westpoint Academy. Getting stronger helped.
If you want to get better at sports…assuming your technique is halfway solid, getting stronger will help you relax into it. I once helped someone add 20 yards to her golf drive in a month. I’m no expert in golf, but I’ve seen the Happy Gilmore movies and I know that if the numbers that are supposed to go up go up, good things are happening. All other things being equal, the stronger athlete will win. The key is get stronger.
2 people asked her if she had a butt lift operation. Nope, she simply got stronger in the exercises optimal for her.
And for someone who wants to look better in a bikini (and yes I have a vested interest in my wife looking even better), the key is get stronger at the optimal exercises associated with looking good in a bikini in the reps and volume ranges associated with building muscle and burning fat. I’m training a woman for a beach vacation coming up in January, and assuming everything goes according to plan, she’ll be doing hip thrusts with 480lbs for about 60 sub-maximal reps in a workout. How do you think her glutes are going to look when she’s doing that? How do you think the rest of her is going to look when she’s gotten stronger across multiple lifts? Let’s just say, she’ll be thankful she chose Eric Moss Fitness for all her health and fitness needs.
Hopefully I have you convinced that you should get stronger. We’ve covered some of the “why” (in actuality, there are so many more examples, but I’m trying to keep these somewhat short.). The next question is now the “how?” Well, there are many progression patterns you can try to find on your own, and many of them are pretty good too.
But if you want the simplest answer, let me do it for you. There is an art and science to optimal program design and much of it has a bit more complexity than “go hard or go home bro.” But don’t worry about that, just show up ready to go. I have a free trial available so you can see if you like it first. Just text me direct 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, Kinnelon, Pine Brook, Butler, and Parsippany New Jersey.
Strength Training for the Skeleton
Earlier today, a woman I train had come across a video from Peter Attia, an expert in longevity and advocate for weight training for people who have more life experience…so they can continue to experience quality of life.
In the video he was discussing that not only could weight training slow down the loss of bone, but can even sometimes reverse it. I already knew this because one of my personal training clients had shown me her bone density numbers before training with me and during training and there was a substantial positive increase.
Why? Well it’s relatively simple. When you weight train, your body adapts to the stimulus by making things stronger in anticipation of the stimulus happening again. This comes in the form of the myelin sheathe that incases the neural signal which tells which motor units to fire which muscle fibers, thickening muscle fibers, thickening tendons and thickening bone via remodeling. All of that complicated sounding mumbo jumbo can be summed up as “gains bro”.
Without that stimulus, the body has no reason to keep it around.
“Wolff’s Law states that bones adapt to the degree of mechanical loading, such that an increase in loading causes the architecture of the internal, spongy bone to strengthen, followed by the strengthening of the cortical layer. Furthermore, a decrease in stress on the bone causes these bone layers to weaken.”
In other words, use it or lose it.
One of the exercises that has come into popularity lately due to the efforts of Bret Contreras is the hip thrust.
Now normally, this exercise is used by people that want to have a nicer booty, and yeah it’s a goto when a woman comes to me and wants to look better in a bikini. But its something I also recommend for my more life experienced clients who have no desire to post booty pics on the instagram.
First, glutes are the fountain of youth. In some of the research conducted by Robin Mckenzie, he discovered that as people age, certain muscles get tight, and certain muscles get loose. The ones that get loose need to be strengthened and they tend to be the ones involved with keeping people upright, which is why being hunched over is associated with age. Glutes are part of what extend the body, and also prevent back pain, make it easier to get in and out of a chair and continue to live life on your own terms.
But fairly unique to the hip thrust is where the barbell is actually positioned on your thigh. Now in gymnasts they found that the bones around the ribs tend to be extra strong, right where the parallel bar hits. The bone remodeled the specific area in anticipation of it happening again. With the hip thrust that region is your thigh bone, which also happens to be one of the sites where they test for bone density.
We’ve all heard of someone falling and breaking a hip. Doesn’t it make sense to strengthen the hip?
Now of course, you’d want all of you to be strong, not just for the bone health but in order to live the basic demands of life. Very few of us will be completing an Ironman at 80 years old (a phenomenal accomplishment by Mountain Lakes local Natalie Grabow). Most things like picking up your grandkids, carrying groceries, your entire skeletal frame etc. can all benefit from a customized to you progressive strength program. And if you think you’re too old, you’re not…unless you’re a ghost.
One of my clients who came to me in her late 70’s is bench pressing nearly double her starting max, as a submaximal weight. You can still make gains with the right program in place.
Now if all of this stuff is “spooky” to you (I had to, tomorrow is Halloween), don’t worry, I got this. The complicated part I’ll handle, all you have to do is start the free trial at my personal training studio conveniently located on Main Street in Boonton. Simply 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, Kinnelon, Pine Brook, Butler, and Parsippany New Jersey.
Are you training too hard? A simple test
We are officially in the misinformation age. With deepfakes being created in seconds with AI and improving its going to get harder and harder to be able to spot the difference. And when it comes to misinformation the fitness industry is a frequent offender, so unless you have a trusted guide (like having a personal trainer such as myself conveniently located on Main Street in Boonton) you’ll have to kind of figure things out on your own.
But worry not, I’m here to help.
One piece of misinformation I’ll help clear up is the notion of “go hard or go home bro” and “pain is just weakness leaving the body”. Yes you have to train in a way that challenges you, but not go overboard with it. There is a sweet spot between too much and not enough and knowing the sweet spot is key to not only fast progress, but continual progress.
One client who I’ve been working with for sometime has been struggling with what may be left over from when she had covid a while back or it could be something to do with chronic fatigue syndrome. She also happens to be an avid runner and has some races coming up.
The challenge she faced was that even though her strength training is tightly restrained in order to keep her progressing, she also needed a way to do that with her runs. With having a race coming down the pipeline. Skipping the runs wasn’t an option.
So she needed a plan to still get the mileage in but also a way to track when she might be going to hard. I came up with a plan for her that used time as a metric (easy to track), have her doing nasal breathing (purposefully limits her speed) and also to track her resting heart rate and a unique test called that tap touch test.
If you look up cns tap test it’s a downloadable app. Not sure if it costs anything since I got it years ago. And the way it works is you tap it as fast as you can in 10 seconds. It tally’s up the number and you just keep track of it. If the numbers start dropping, maybe time to take it easy.
The reason this works is because when you central nervous system is starting to over do it, your fine motor control is one of the first indicators. This test is the canary in the coal mine. You can also just be observant if you start typing clumsily or have issues signing your name. Those all operate along the same principle, but the app is easier to track.
So if you are possibly overdoing it, try giving that a go or you can also have me take care of the complicated part for you. For me it’s simple to progress the things you can while staying in that sweet spot of training. All you would have to do is show up and work the plan, while I guide you through it. Simple as that.
And luckily I also offer a free trial so you can see if you like it first. Just text me 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, Kinnelon, Pine Brook, Butler, and Parsippany New Jersey.