Personal Trainer in Boonton NJ, Eric Moss Fitness

As part of the trial free trial I have at my personal training studio conveniently located on Main Street in Boonton, I try to learn about the person I’m training, about their training background and their training preferences.  Many of them are new to training, but sometimes they’ve done other methods.

My clients associate my gym with peaches, but sometimes people new to me come from another gym with a fruit in the name. This morning I was chatting with a woman who recently took my free trial who had come from one of those fruit themed franchised gyms and hadn’t built her peaches to a point she was happy with and asked me ….

“Can you build good glutes even if you don’t have good genetics for it?”

I said…

“Yes when you train them right, though some will build bigger ones than others because that’s just reality it will look right for your frame because they were built naturally.”

It’s become a bit of a running joke in my gym where we talk about home grown, non GMO, organic peaches being the best ones.  Much like the steroid fueled bodybuilders look strange sometimes having a Brazilian Butt Lift operation can be the viewed the same way.  Its not natural so sometimes it seems off even if you can’t put your finger on the exact reason why.

If you look up the side effects and dangers of Brazilian Butt Lift surgery, it’ll say pain, swelling, bruising, temporary numbness as being the common, temporary ones that are not terrible all things considered.

Fat necrosis (where the injected fat cells die) can also occur creating lumps and irregularities as well as the fat cells being absorbed unevenly which can make them look unbalanced.  Those are at least only cosmetic.  You can also get potentially deadly infections, or fat embolism where the fat enters into the blood stream possibly blocking vital vessels.

The side effects of effective glute training includes stronger glutes, stronger hip bones, less back pain, being better at various sports and having higher levels of confidence.

And the kicker is getting nice peaches isn’t as difficult as people think…when you train them right.  And results can come relatively quickly.  Jana had 2 people ask her if she had Brazilian Butt Lift surgery after just 9 weeks of training with me, and back then I was still refining my methods.

Jana had this pic taken on vacation…enjoying her life with the lean, fit, strong physique she earned through training

So then how do you build them?  Squats, Romanian deadlifts and lunges are great because they hit the glutes from the stretched position (associated with growth) but they aren’t enough.

The glutes are unique.  They are the largest of the skeletal muscles and are capable of a massive amounts of power, but they are lazy.  They only will work when forced to instead preferring your lower back and your hamstrings to do the work.

That’s one of the reasons, the hip thrust is a great exercise.  To a large extent it inhibits the hamstrings and lower back forcing the glutes to do the work instead.  And when called on and programmed effectively you can go far with it.  All of my clients who have been with me a while can do over 200lbs for volume (a lot of reps), most are moving between 300 and 400lbs for volume, one will hit 500lbs for volume before the weekend and I had one woman do 580lbs for 15 unbroken sub maximal reps.  That comes from effective progression which is very different from “go hard or go home bro.”

Then you throw in some lateral (sideways) movements like side lying hip abduction or cannonball abduction apply progressive overload to your exercises and you’ve gotten all that you need to build a shelf that you can balance a shot glass on.

And of course if you really want it to look right you should train the whole body instead of just one muscle group.  Do you really want firm glutes and soft and weak everything else?  Wouldn’t it be better if your entire body was strong, firm and toned?

If you don’t know how, don’t worry I’ve got you.  This is what I do.  I offer a free trial so you can see if you like it first.  I’ll test to see where you are and how to train you safely and effectively, teach you the exercises and I’ll also explain how the process works so you’ll know it’ll work for you regardless of where you are staring from or what you think your genetics are.  All you have to do to get started is 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.

This morning I was chatting with a colleague within the larger world of health, fitness, wellness and longevity.   I had asked her what she would do different if she had to start fresh in her career, but had all of the wisdom, knowledge and skills that she has now, kind of like in the Matrix when Neo says “whoa I know kung fu” having bypassed all of the blood, sweat and tears that comes from training in a dojo and ascending the ranks.

One of the things I had mentioned was honoring the struggle and how it was a necessary rite of passage in my career to get to where I am now, a personal trainer with a studio conveniently located on Main Street in Boonton.  Before that I bounced around a couple places, doing in home training and sleeping in my car between clients during freezing temperatures.  Not pleasant, but I wasn’t where I wanted to be… yet.

And I thought about how that relates to health and fitness.  You see, I walk around lean and muscular all year around.  When people see what I look like, they assume that I eat like a monk surviving on boiled chicken and steamed broccoli.  I don’t do that, at least not anymore because I’m happy with where I am.

this pic was taken around my 44th bday. No edit

If I want pizza, I’ll eat pizza.  If I want the Al Hara Shwarma sandwich I’ll have the Al Hara Shwarma Sandwich.  If I want dessert, I’ll eat dessert.  Before I do it though, I figure out “Which is more important right now? My health and fitness goals? Or the pleasure of this moment?”

The only wrong answer here is the dishonest one.

You see, I’ve got the best of both worlds, because I got to a point where I’m happy with my strength and my physique so I can enjoy the fruits of my labor without feeling guilty.  If I wasn’t where I wanted to be, well I’d have do duck my head down a bit, tighten up my nutrition and training and get to that point then I can relax a bit.

If you are happy with your strength and health, awesome!  Power to you!  But if you aren’t and you really should be honest with yourself about this, then maybe you’ll have to tighten it up a bit.  Good news is you don’t have to struggle more than necessary since I’ve figured out the direct path for you (refined from over 20 years of training people).  I also offer a free trial so you can test drive my coaching for yourself.  Just 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.

When people find out that I’m a personal trainer, they’re often surprised to find that I don’t really watch sports. When the Super Bowl is on, I’m typically joking around with all the other stragglers at the party since I usually don’t even know who’s playing until the week of the game.

This past weekend though, I knew it would be momentous, and my wife’s favorite team is the Knicks so we watched it. While it was on in the earlier quarter though I was scrolling through my phone on YouTube and caught this bit of, well an opinion from a fitness influencer.

“Stop deadlifting, it is an absolute wasted effort”

His reasoning is when trying to build muscle it’s not a good exercise because it’s dangerous when you are training close to failure.

Well yeah, but that’s if you are training close to failure, which is actually NOT a great way to train.

Here’s why. Though training close to failure has been studied heavily and shown to produce a growth stimulus, it’s not absolutely necessary and can even be counter productive. Trying to force yourself through limits invites injury and that’s true for just about every exercise, not just the deadlift. It also signals to your body after a few weeks to put the breaks on in fear of hurting itself.

A better way to train is to progressively overload the muscles with some of the things that are associated with building muscle (ie mechanical tension, and the pump) without training close to failure. Think of it this way, progressive overload is the mother of strength training and muscle building. Progressive overload in it’s simplest term means adding more than before.

Is it easier to add to something that you can barely do?

OR…

… is it easier to add to something you can do without issue?

And if you can add to it without issue, you can moonwalk past your previous capabilities casually and as that happens your body grants you the gains and does it safer.

As an example, I have a woman who started with me 7 weeks ago.

In that time, with the bench press she did 56 reps in 10mins with a weight that was 5lbs heavier than what she could originally do for just 1 rep (I’d guess she could now do somewhere between 8 and 15 reps in a row if asked, that’s the rep range associated with muscle development).

She wouldn’t have been able to put up those numbers without having gained muscle. With Romanian deadlifts she did 6 sets of 6 with a weight heavier than her starting max and she is set to take her squat and do 2 sets of 15 reps with a weight heavier than her starting 1 rep max. Just to put it into perspective the calculated max on her squat (which is considered the top exercise for building muscle) is 50lbs heavier than it was 7 weeks ago when she started. Her deadlift is 20 something pounds heaver.

Those gains wouldn’t have been possible if we tried to force her through her limits. We did it by deliberately avoiding failure though a carefully restrained method that works quickly and sustainably across multiple exercises simultaneously that has her casually stroll past her previous limits without her even realizing it till I told her.

And just in time for her trip to Aruba. Boom!

Deadlifting isn’t a wasted effort, trying to force the limits is.

Now if you want fast and sustainable results, don’t force the limit. Stay within the limit in order to expand the limit. It’s a bit more strategic than go hard or go home bro but the good news is you don’t have to figure this out for yourself. I do it for you and I offer a free trial so you can see if its right for you. Just send me a text at 973 476 5328 and introduce yourself. Easy right?

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.