Some Thoughts on Technique

So over the weekend, I met with and networked with a bunch of different entertainers. This past Saturday I finally got to see one of my friends from being an entertainer, a mentalist near me in action, and the night before I went to the Darress Theater on Main Street which is across the street from my personal training studio to see the magic shows there. I knew two of the magicians and had a great time.

One of the entertainers I met was unfamiliar with what I do. So I explained that I do feats of strength as part of a live show. And he said

“Oh yeah it’s all technique” yeah sure.

The technique is certainly part of it as is anything done at a high enough level. Andy Bolton wrote an entire book about the deadlift. Trust me you won’t be deadlifting over 1000lbs without proper technique. But you won’t be deadlifting that without backing that technique with a lot of power either.

As an example, one of my feats is driving a nail through a wooden board. The nail has to be straight or it’s not going through…but it also has to be slammed down with enough power to go all the way through the board too. Same thing with bending steel. Put the steel bar on your leg and push straight down with enough force to overcome it’s yielding strength.

A short while back I went to a florist who is just around the corner of my personal training studio. He saw the rolled-up frying pans in the windows, and the bent steel from my various strongman shows decorating the crowning and asked me how I do it.

“Technique, progression and a willingness to go there”

Now that’s for the feats I do but what about training for regular people? One of the reasons my personal training clients hire me is to teach them the technique to both make the exercises effective while keeping them safe. We focus heavily on treating strength as practice and that helps people progress very quickly while also keeping them safe. That’s a win in my book.

And that’s part of the value of having a personal trainer there to watch you, guide you and make necessary adjustments, to make sure you are safe and get the results you want.

As far as progression, if you were to try and climb to the top of a ladder, you first want to make sure your ladder in on firm ground. If it’s not, you go to the top and it wobbles, you’re gonna have a bad time.

So if there is something you want to accomplish, whether it’s in health and fitness, feats of strength or any other kind of skill, it pays to learn the techniques to make sure that what you are doing is effective.

---

Eric Moss is a world-record-holding professional performing strongman, author, motivational 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 located on Main Street in Boonton New Jersey, is close to Mountain Lakes, Denville, and Parsippany New Jersey.