Category: lifting
Why You Should Get Strong
Yesterday after my motivational strongman performance I did a questions and answers segment. Generally speaking, people always have questions and I’m more than happy to answer them, though I don’t reveal my personal numbers in the gym (I like some things to remain a mystery).
One question I got yesterday is;
“What do you train people to do?”
“Uhm, I train people to do what they want to do.”
I know it’s kind of a weird way to answer a question but upon some digging to understand the question better, they asked if I helped people learn to get stronger ie general strength or if I also helped people lose weight.
The answer is I train people to accomplish the goal, whatever that goal may happen to be, but sometimes the goal changes.
As an example, years ago before Jill became my substitute teacher of strength and awesomeness, she had hired me to help her lose weight for her wedding. Prior to me, she didn’t know that she could get stronger without putting on muscle and nowhere in her stated goals did she ever mention anything about strength.
However, strength was part of the strategy to help her lose weight, which yes she lost the weight but got much stronger in the process and when a video featurette was being done about me, I asked her to say a few words on camera.
With tears starting to well up in her eyes on camera, she talked about how getting stronger made her feel, without once mentioning weight loss.
I found with her, and with many others that though they initially want one thing, they become excited by another thing altogether. I understand this myself.
Years ago, I embarked on a program to get really ripped. I did and kettlebell training was part of the process. Being ripped wasn’t fulfilling to me, but when I got stronger that was exciting and it opened doors to a world that I would never have thought possible.
yes this is me
And many people come to me because they feel something is missing in their life, and they think that getting in shape will fill in that gap.
Many times it does.I digress though.
One of the reasons they had asked me that particular question is because many fitness programs have a cookie cutter approach and lump you into their goal for you.
I don’t do this. I dig deep to figure out what your goal is, even if you don’t really know. And when I know the destination I can provide the path to get there. Sometimes your goal will stop being important to you and your goal changes. That’s ok too.
I do have a system in place to make everybody stronger though. I make people stronger to accomplish whatever it is they want to accomplish because strength is the foundational quality that makes everything else easier.
And even if you don’t even really have a reason, it’s good to get strong because as Mark Rippetoe famously said;
“Strong people are harder to kill and more useful in general.”
Would you like my help getting strong? I have a one-week trial membership of my personal training services available.
Eric Moss is a world record holding professional strongman, author, speaker and personal trainer. In the tradition of the strongmen during the turn of the century, he performs feats of strength such as bending steel and breaking chains as part of a show and speaks on goal achievement for corporations, nonprofits, government as well as for schools and universities. His exclusive personal training studio is in Boonton Township New Jersey with Lewandowski Chiropractic and is close to Mountain Lakes, Denville, and Parsippany New Jersey.
The 10 Commandments of health, strength, and fitness
On Monday I got a phone call. This particular person had mentioned my autobiography/memoir as one of the books that their scout had picked up and had planned on showcasing it at some book fair.
Now I knew it was likely a scam because of the telltale signs. You may know them;
- Asking for the owner or manager even though I introduce myself by name and the name of my business’ have my name in the title. (My personal training studio is called Eric Moss Fitness, and my entertainment/inspirational speaking business is called Eric Moss: The Strongman Experience) This wasn’t the case this time though.
- Heavy praise in an effort to stroke my ego and “build rapport”
- Saying my name way more often than anybody should in a normal conversation.
- And asking only questions that will generate a “yes” response.
- Telling me things that obviously come from a rehearsed script.
It works the same way in health, strength, and fitness as well. It often comes in the form of;
“new discovery of the something or other from deep within the forests of the blah blah blah that will help you burn belly fat fast.”
but can also appear in many forms, usually promising big results without doing the work. Something for nothing rarely works out.
Here’s the cold hard truth. There aren’t really any shortcuts. There are better strategies for sure, but nothing out there that will generate results without the requisite amount of effort. The closest thing there is to a shortcut is a coach, and that is really only a shortcut because they simplify the process, prevent you from making common mistakes, like seeking shortcuts and falling for scams and give you a tried and true process. It works if you work.
In my personal training studio, I have to give some uncomfortable truths and give a set of rules to follow, much like Moses gave the people of Israel according to legend. And even though I don’t consider myself a higher power, I do have about 15 years of experience doing this sort of thing so I’ll list here the “10 commandments of health, strength, and fitness” for you to follow for fitness success.
- Though shalt get thine head on straight (you need to be committed to your own goals or else no strategy I can do will do anything)
- Thou shalt keep it simple and stick to the basics most of the time.
- Thou shalt address diet (for fat loss this is ABsolutely critical)
- Thou shalt be honest with thine-self (don’t b.s. yourself, if you aren’t achieving your goals look at why and be honest)
- Thou shalt be consistent in putting in the work. (consistency outperforms intensity)
- Thou shalt seek to be stronger through progressive resistance.
- Thou shalt understand that the fundamentals are fundamental.
- Thou shalt understand that health, strength, and fitness are supposed to enrich your life, not take it over completely. (what we do in the studio is intended to make your life better not worse)
- Thou shalt compare thine-self to previous self, not to others except to use as an inspiration of what can be achieved, not to measure thine self-worth.
- Thou shalt understand that the answer to everything in health, strength, and fitness is “it depends” (every case is slightly different and for every hard and fast rule there is always an exception)
And yes there are more, but I’d like to stick to 10 for now. Regardless of your goal, you stick to these and you’ll do well. The individual strategies for specific goals are different which goes outside the scope of this post.
Need more help? Give my one-week personal training trial membership a go.
Eric Moss is a world record holding professional strongman, author, speaker and personal trainer. In the tradition of the strongmen during the turn of the century, he performs feats of strength such as bending steel and breaking chains as part of a show and speaks on goal achievement for corporations, nonprofits, government as well as for schools and universities. His exclusive personal training studio is in Boonton Township New Jersey with Lewandowski Chiropractic and is close to Mountain Lakes, Denville, and Parsippany New Jersey.
The Truth About Strength Without Bulky Muscle
I was having a chat the other day with one of my personal training clients. He was telling me that a bodybuilder had explained to him that “gaining muscle is the only way to get stronger.”
Well, that’s what happens when you invest more in pre-workout supplements and tanning lotions than in furthering your knowledge. Luckily my client knows better than to take the advice of everyone and their mother when it comes to their fitness program and just come to me with questions.
In this case, though, it wasn’t really a question. It was a sarcastic quip because my guy knows it’s not true, partially because of the feats of strength he’s seen me do. (Here’s my demo reel in case you don’t know what I’m talking about)
He also knows this because he’s seen tremendous strength gains himself without having to look like a tanned moonrock to do it. As a matter of fact, I often times give very noticeable and measurable increases in strength during the first day of the one week trial membership of the personal training program that I offer. One of the reasons I offer it is because it gives me a chance to prove to my potential client that what I do works quickly.
If I can get someone stronger, during the first session, it’s not because they’ve put on muscle. At least not in the beginning.
The strength gains happen via neurological efficiency, which I initially learned about through the teachings of Pavel Tsatsouline. Basically, your brain sends a command signal through your nervous system which tells your muscle fibers to contract, which pulls on tendon which pulls on bone and that is how movement occurs. It’s illustrated wonderfully in the gif below. (Thank you to whoever created this gif, it’s a wonderful illustration)
At any given moment, your body contains enough muscle fibers to lift a car off of a human being, but there are various things called mechanoreceptors throughout the body that measure things like proprioception but can also act as strength limiters to prevent us from overdoing it and ripping ourselves apart. In muscle cars, we can think of it like making sure the torque of the engine doesn’t bend the chassis.
It’s a good thing that those mechanoreceptors are there because they keep us safe, however, they are overly conservative. The average person only has approximately 25-30% of their muscle fibers available at the moment and is reserved for those life or death instances that you read about in Reader’s Digest.
This strength deficit can be overcome mentally (which is what I had learned to overcome as I underwent the path of the steel bending strongman and became the subject matter of my motivational speech).
For people starting out though, the easier and more pain-free way of getting stronger is to simply improve the communication between your brain and your muscles and the strength of that signal that tells your muscle fibers “contract!” My first strongman mentor the late, great New Jersey’s Superman Greg Matonick once explained it to me like this;
“Think of the central nervous system being like a babbling brook. The more water that goes through, the deeper the streambed becomes until it becomes a mighty river.”
A lot of what strength training is is simply teaching your body and mind that it doesn’t need to hold back quite so much and that it’s ok to give a little bit more. You do this by not forcing the process, but by allowing it.
Changes and adaptations of the central nervous system happen very quickly. It’s why I am able to help my personal training clients get very noticeable and measurable increases in strength within the first week, often times within the first personal training session.
This is how you can get stronger without putting on a ton of bulk. If you know someone that should read this please share it with them. If you would like help, give the one week trial of my personal training studio a try.
Eric Moss is a world record holding professional strongman, author, speaker and personal trainer. In the tradition of the strongmen during the turn of the century, he performs feats of strength such as bending steel and breaking chains as part of a show and speaks on goal achievement for corporations, nonprofits, government as well as for schools and universities. His exclusive personal training studio is in Boonton Township New Jersey with Lewandowski Chiropractic and is close to Mountain Lakes, Denville, and Parsippany New Jersey.