New Year’s Resolutions are a waste of time?
Last night at my personal training studio, I was talking with one of my clients about new years resolutions. She had told me that she was reading an article that had mentioned that a lot of experts are recommending against having new years resolutions because they were ineffective and in doing so damages people’s confidence. This happens whenever you break a promise to yourself.
Consequently you can achieve the opposite by keeping promises to yourself.
It’s actually one of the reasons I call weight training “iron therapy”. Nothing builds confidence quite like a pile of concrete evidence proving you can do hard things. In punk rock legend Henry Rollins essays on weight training he mentioned that the weights are like your best friend. They won’t bs you and tell you you’re something your not, and it won’t belittle you into thinking you can’t. It’s honest, because 200lbs is always 200lbs.
So then whats the deal with resolutions not being effective? Well it’a probably from not having a solid plan in place with easily actionable steps.
As an example, one of the dog moms I talk to had remarked that she was surprised I wasn’t over run with new years resolutioners. I explained I won’t get a bump in that will around March, and it will likely only be a slight bump.
Why? Here’s the order of events that typically happen.
Person says they want to get in shape and thrive in 2025, they see that some big box gym is running a promotion so they sign up, they walk out onto the gym floor but don’t really know what to do, they try out some of the weight machines, but are unsure of the proper form or how much weight to start with, they look around to see what others are doing, but the gym is filled with people just as lost as they are, they get in a workout but think they could do better so they go home and research different programs. They find a whole lot of info, but even that overwhelming. How on earth do I figure this out?
This goes on till about March, then they either give up, keep doing the same thing or they think to themselves “Maybe I should get a personal trainer”
That’s when some of them would come to me.
If they had come to me in the beginning they would already be well on their way to their goals. I already have the plan, I know where they should start (this happens during my free trial, is I assess where their current capabilities are within the exercises appropriate for their goals).
And the plan works and over and over again. Had they started with my plan they would much stronger, leaner, more confident and in better cardiovascular health. They’d be confident in themselves and they would have actually achieved their goals. And that easy actionable step that can bypass the planning and trying to make sense of it all can come in the form of taking my free trial by sending me a text and introducing yourself.
You don’t have to figure it all out. I already did that.
Oh and that client I was talking about she’s more than doubled her strength on the tested lifts and will probably be hip thrusting (an amazing exercise for your glutes) 500lbs for 15 consecutive reps by the end of the month.
If you need help with this and actually want to achieve your resolutions, I offer a free trial at my personal training studio in Boonton. 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, Butler, and Parsippany New Jersey.
The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing
In addition to being a personal trainer with a personal training studio located on Main Street in Boonton, I’m also a motivational speaker/modern day performing strongman (ie I perform feats of strength like bending steel bars, breaking chains, rolling up frying pans etc. as part of a motivational speech)
Anyways, last week I was in Fort Lauderdale for a motivational strength performance for a pharmaceutical company and was checking in at the front desk when I saw a quote that inspired this article.
‘The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.’ – Walt Disney
I agree. You see, I can’t tell you the number of people who I’ve spoken to over the years that will say things like “I really should get in shape” or something to that effect, many times while they’re standing in my doorway. I usually will tell them I offer a free trial for when they are ready and rarely do I get “I’m ready now”
You see people will say what they want, but it’s not what you say what you want, it’s doing what it takes to get there. There are plenty of people that do sub optimal programs that still get great results because they got to work and adjusted as they go. For me personally I got my ideas from body building magazines before realizing they were just big advertisements for supplements and didn’t have good info.
I still got pretty good results because I was young and worked hard. I’ve learned a lot since then, partially from various certs, attending workshops, reading a lot of books, hiring coaches and some of it just from plain ole trial and error while learning from my successes and mistakes.
Talking about something is fun to do, but the actual doing something is what makes it work. If you don’t know what to do, that’s ok just do something because something will always be better than nothing.
What is that something? Well you could pick up a book about the subject or better yet, take my free trial. Just text 973 476 5328. You don’t have to make the same mistakes I did, or try to figure it out on your own. I take care of all the planning for you. All you have to do, is do your best.
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.
It’s all relative
About a week ago, I was working in my personal training studio with one of my clients. I sometimes joke around telling people she’s a cyborg because at the young age of late 50’s early 60’s I had coached her to doing a pull up with 56lbs hanging from her waist. She was telling me a friend of hers who is extremely active was told by her doctor she has osteoporosis so no heavy lifting.
That particular phrase drives me nuts. What is heavy anyway? What constitutes as heavy is going to be relative to the individual AND relative to the lift itself. As an example, a 53lb deadlift is not an extremely impressive lift. Holding a 53lb kettlebell iron crucifix style is way harder. And what’s heavy for you may not be heavy for me. It’s all relative.
And also when they screen for bone density, they compare it to when bone density peaks in their 30’s. They don’t compare you to the rest of the population unless I’m mistaken. Like I said, it’s all relative.
Consequently, I’m also networked with other personal trainers on social media, and literally later that same day someone posted a similar story. Only their client had improved their bone density and yet their doctor told them not to lift anything over 10lbs.
That is fine to start, but never anything over 10lbs ever? That’s a recipe for disaster.
Before I include an exercise with someone’s personal training program, I like to ask myself “Where do we go from here?” As in, how can I use it to progress someone towards their goals? It’s sort of like the idea of the fixed state mindset and the growth based mindset. I don’t want to include things that don’t allow for growth.
And what do I mean by growth? Well, when you train appropriately, your muscles grow, your bones grow ie thicken, the myelin sheathe that encases that transmissions of neural flow to activate your motor units also grow (sorry to get a bit geeky, but I like to throw things like that in there to let people know I’m not just a pretty face). That growth makes you harder to kill.
So yeah, no heavy lifting relative to the individual to start with but avoiding it forever is only going to make bone density worse. Like anything, start within your capabilities and progress them from there. Every single woman who has sought me out to offset the weakening of their bones has made remarkable progress relative to where they started from…no bones about it.
If you need help training, I offer a free trial at my personal training studio on Main Street in Boonton. Just text me at 973 476 5328 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, Butler, and Parsippany New Jersey.