This morning as I was training my clients, a woman popped in asking if I had a card. I don’t tend to carry cards anymore since it can’t really show what I have to offer past the alphabet soup under my name so I handed her a brochure instead. She then went on to tell me that Blink Fitness in Parsippany was closing and her son was now looking for a new place to workout, preferably with guidance. According to the 1440 news without the fluff emails I get in the morning the whole franchise filed for bankruptcy.

I was surprised. I was under the impression it was a popular gym in the area, and one of the girls who used to workout there told me she wasn’t surprised because they didn’t have a lot of equipment there.

The reality is, if you know what you’re doing, you don’t actually need a lot of equipment. In my personal training studio in Boonton, I’ve collected many different pieces of equipment over the years. I’ve even had some equipment custom ordered and even made some of it myself (such as the isometrics equipment for training the specific application of my strength performances I do across the country).

As much equipment as I have, only a small handful of it gets used on a regular basis. When people come to me to “get in shape” or “get fit” I have to enquire further so I understand what they mean by that. And usually they just have a general idea of what it means to be in shape. Even when they have a specific idea of what it means to be in shape, I still stick to the basics. I categorize it into a handful of basics, sometimes doubling up on some of them depending on what we can safely perform (based on the assessments that come during the free trial).

Upper body push

Upper body pull

Knee dominant

Hip dominant

As long as you have at least one exercise in all 4 of those categories, it should be relatively balanced. then you simply pick a progression strategy for each of them. At 4 exercises, at most it would be 4 pieces of equipment, which isn’t much. All 4 of those exercise categories can be performed with 1 barbell, some plates and a power cage.

The problem comes from the fact that a lot of people don’t really know what they’re doing…and big gyms like Blink Fitness bank on this. The standard business model for gyms is get a bunch of people to sign up for a promotion, promise to be open and grant them access to equipment during business hours and hope people don’t take advantage of their gym membership.

And it was common too. Drop out rate for big gyms like Blink and Planet fitness is around 75% in the first 6 weeks.

I on the other hand take the exact opposite approach. I keep people consistently coming in, with a plan of action when they arrive to make both rapid progress in the beginning, and sustainable progress moving forward after that. In fact the one that told me Blink Fitness didn’t have much equipment just started training with me in late May, has lost 12lbs while simultaneously developing muscle (as in replacing fat with muscle which often times makes your weight not change much). She’s currently training for a bikini competition and showed me her progress pic…and I’ll just say…nice job.

My job was to get her to what’s considered advanced progress, but do it in a short period of time…and she did.

All of my people make very rapid progress in the beginning then taper off to continually get stronger in a sustainable way and you can see it on my personal training success stories page. Some have been with me for years…just because they like it.

But each one of them started with a free trial. If you’re interested in taking my free trial simply text me at 973 476 5328 and we’ll take it from there. Simple as that.

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.

About 10 years ago I was doing a presentation for a group of free mason’s. It was a presentation that was set up by one of my clients Neal who I helped get healthy after being hit by a bus back in the 80’s.

Anyway, he had said that getting healthy is an important part of personal and character development which is why he set that up. Now in order to make things fun and capture the attention of the attendees, I twisted open a horseshoe, just like in the pic below.

What I didn’t realize is it would make one of the people there remember me for years to come. It just wasn’t the right time because his son Josh was only around 7 or 8 at the time.

Fast forward a couple years, I move my personal training studio from Parsippany to working with Lewandowski Chiropractic and then back into my own personal training studio on Main Street and I get a call from his dad asking about training his son. I’ve trained a number of youth over the years and one thing I try to make sure is that it is something the kid wants to do, and not just something the parent is pushing them into. Josh wanted to do this, and he was focused and then some.

He wanted to get into the prestigious Westpoint. And in order to do that, he needed to build up his physical strength and conditioning as well as his all around character. Westpoint doesn’t take just anybody.

When he first started training it was in the middle of the football season, which complicates things a little bit. My first order of business was to design a program to build strength that would transfer to the game. He put in the work and very quickly got to a double body weight hex-bar deadlift to a farmers carry and it immediately showed in his sport.

After the football season was done, his dad was told me that we have 3 months to get him as strong as possible as fast as possible for lacrosse. Music to my ears. I put him through a program that took his 1 rep max barbell military press we added 15lbs to it and he did it for a sub-maximal set of 8. His single arm overhead kettlebell press 1 rep max he did 19 consecutive reps with it. Got to 15 chin ups and all that helped him get the varsity spot as a freshmen…which meant he would letter all 4 years of high school as long as he didn’t slack (not that I was worried).

But Josh isn’t just brawn, he’s got the brains too getting straight A’s all across the board. I would often joke with him by saying “Josh when are you going to do something with your life?”

Josh was thriving on the program, and the strength increases he got made him hit hard. His dad would often show me footage of him playing while laughing about him manhandling other players.

Then we had a setback. Josh had been selected to be team captain and his coach wanted him to train with the rest of the team, instead of with me. I understand doing it for camaraderie, but you also have to look at the athlete as an individual with their own goals and ambitions.

And a programs’ effectiveness can be judged by the results it produces, and Josh got weaker on his program. Having worked with Josh, I knew he works hard and never complains so I know it wasn’t Josh’s fault…it was a faulty program.

They came back and I measured him to the physical standards for Westpoint and I realized we have work to do. We needed to fix the issues created by the faulty program and it had to be quick. Luckily I know Josh would put the work in and follow the program I created for him to the T. He also took multiple AP courses in his senior year and aced them to seal the deal.

Then about a week and a half ago, his dad calls me up. I knew it would be for 1 of 3 reasons, either he wanted to send me a friend of his (maybe), they actually found something on oak island (inside joke and yeah right) or he got accepted into Westpoint. I knew what it was before I picked up the phone.

And I know they credit me as a critical component to his achievement but in truth he would have gotten there with me or without me. He’s the exact type they look for, an athlete and scholar a leader and a well rounded person. In the culture of success that I foster in my studio, he was a definite contributor to that and I was happy to be part of his journey.

Congrats Josh! But just be warned, your real journey has just begun.

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.

Ah yes, it’s that lovely time of the year for gyms when the doors get flooded with new comers hoping this will be the year they finally do what they resolved to do 3 years ago.

I read a statistic that 90% of new year’s resolutions will be abandoned within the first couple months. Having been a personal trainer for a minute to two, I can tell you this is likely the case. People flood the gyms in January and February, then in March and April it’s much less people. And no it’s not because they achieved their goal that quickly like in my 12 week transformations.

No usually it’s because people get frustrated or overwhelmed, life gets in the way, you name it.

A lot of times I think people kind of have an idea of what to do, but it’s vague and vagueness leads to paralysis by analysis. One of the key things is to have an actionable plan in place.

In my personal training studio in Boonton, we train more than just the body. We train the mind via life coaching which I build into the sessions. When I ask about resolutions (not relating to training, because I have that part taken care of) I’ll follow it up with “What’s a framework you can put into place that can ensure success?”

A framework should have actionable steps and a lot of times the first one can be simple. As an example, one person said they want a better relationship with one of their parents. Complicated goal, simple actionable step. Find a qualified therapist who can help resolve past trauma.

In the case of learning to play guitar, you could download Yousician and simply follow the steps consistently.

And of course the only shortcut to the top is to hire a coach that can guide you, make real time corrections to make sure you stay on course until your dream becomes you new reality.

If you need my help, I offer a free trial at my personal training studio in Boonton. Right now early afternoons and Thursday mornings have availability. 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 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 live show and travels across the country doing presentations on goal achievement for 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.