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.

This past Friday I was talking with one of my personal training clients and she had told me she was interested in starting some sort of martial art. When I enquired further as to what type she was drawn to, she had said “Anything practical”

It’s actually kind of funny, because she shares her time slot with another clients of mine who is also an instructor/practitioner of Southern Style Praying Mantis (a Chinese martial art), and I have a bit of a martial art background myself. Back in the day I had practiced Tae Kwon Do, Isshinryu and Judo. I dabbled in different arts and sports even finding myself being offered the opportunity to work with a world class boxing coach. Honored by the offer, but I really didn’t like the thought of people who train to punch me in the face…punching me in the face.

Ironic also because years later I would later set a world record in a feat that drew lots of praise from boxing legend Evander Holyfield’s coach.

But also ironic because she sought me out for strength training. And my viewpoint is that strength training is a martial art and an extremely practical one at that. Legendary strength coach Mark Rippetoe had once quipped “Strong people are harder to kill and more useful in general”

Strength training can be a stand alone martial art but can complement whatever martial art you happen to partake in (hence why my guy who practices Southern Style Praying Mantis trains with me). In sports taking performance enhancement substances is viewed as cheating. They don’t make you more skillful in the activity. What they do is make you stronger. All other attributes being equal, the stronger athlete will win.

Strength training can be considered a legal cheat code in sports.

And in terms of practicality, I can’t even tell you the number of times being strong has helped me out. Everything from carrying heavy furniture, to carrying both my daughters up the stairs at the same time, to getting yard work done, to pushing cars out of snow, to opening jars that were practically glued shut, to helping one of my clients bend a bike rack back into place after another car hit it the list goes on and on.

Many times people view lifting weights as a vanity oriented activity…and yes I like looking good to, but my real passion is helping people get stronger for the thing. What is the thing? Well you know…the thing is that thing that you happen to be passionate about that makes you happy. Whether it’s rock climbing, snowboarding, Southern Style Praying Mantiss, music, bending steel, competing in triathalons, rolling around with your grandkids or whatever. Whatever it is strength training should make it better.

Strength, for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We should all have the physique and physical capacity to do whatever it is that makes you happy.

If you need help with this, I have a free trial available. 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.

Well it happens every 4 years or so. Here we have today to decide who is going to determine our fate, and it’s based on votes. Now today being election day, your mind is probably already racing to try to either refute or support my opinion…but I’m not actually talking about that either.

I’m talking about you.

Yesterday morning, I was chatting with one of my personal training clients during her workout. Her initial goal was simply to look better in a bikini for a Caribbean vacation she has coming up last week of November. Knowing this, I set a course to be able to progress her strength in the rep ranges associated with muscle development in the lifts that would make the biggest difference to how her physique would look in a bikini and the progress needed to be incremental but at the same time rapid.

Why? Because small increments are least likely to set off the governing mechanisms that limit progress.

Now during the conversation, I was pointing out how far her lifts have come in the short time she’s been with me. She started in September and had a goal to maximize her results by the end of November. In the hip thrust (the most direct way of loading the glutes through the longest range of motion while the max contraction is in the shortened position). She started with a calculated 1 rep max of 193lbs, and I had a goal of getting to 300lbs for at least 10 consecutive reps. Yesterday she was only 15lbs away from that goal and she’s doing it for submaximal sets of 15. She’s on track, ahead of schedule actually.

When we were reviewing how much progress she made across the lifts…bench pressing over her starting max for 102 reps in 10mins, squatting with 32lbs over her starting max submaximal sets of 15, overhead pressing with starting 1rep max + 12lbs for 98 reps in 10mins and set to romanian deadlift with her starting max for submaximal reps soon. Let’s just say that is a remarkable amount of progress for a short period of time and there is no way to get those kinds of results without dramatically improving your physique.

So during this conversation, she had joked that it felt just as challenging each time. I don’t think she realized it at the time, but that is a loaded statement that reveals a lot about effective program design.

See the thing is, we all have these governing mechanisms in our body that senses that the load is too much and thus shut the processes down. When you can progress the load, volume and density without tripping up those threat mechanisms, progress can be made not only rapidly, like hers was thus far, but also sustainably. The trick though is that it has to be in that sweet spot of challenging, but not too challenging.

In other words if you can raise the programmatic variables of volume, density and load without a proportional increase of the “discomfort” of the lift, dramatic and sustainable progress is yours for the taking. And the kicker is to work your way up incrementally. Those small changes lead up to big results in a surprisingly short period of time.

And those incremental changes, like habits can be thought of like votes. Every tiny little improvement can be thought of like a vote for your future self. Now the question I have is in 4 years regardless of which presidential candidate we end up with…will you be better than you are today?

If you need help with this, I offer a free trial at my personal training studio on Main Street in Boonton. Just text me at 973 476 5328.

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.