fired up again
ok so if you have read my last blog post you might know that what happened in Nashville was devastating. The city had crushing floods that were sweeping away many homes, taking families with it and if it weren’t for the strength and support of the people in that city it would have been like New Orleans all over again.

Now as I am doing a bit of snooping around on the internet, (I wanted to see how the town was doing) I came up on a blog run by Punch Gym in Nashville. You might remember a while back they had posted the grad workout vid on youtube from the Aos cert which I viewed and found no less then 8 serious errors with their form. I’m not talking semantics like my getup is better then your getup or what not but things that would compromise the safety of their clients. Well before I go on another tangent let me explain the reason behind this post. I see that they have a blog post dated May 6th entitled “what kind of music do you like to listen too?”

Really? Is that what is important? Your city was practically destroyed and that’s what you care about? Who really cares what kind of music anyone listens to when people’s lives are still in danger…not a hundred miles away or on the other side of the world but right in your home town. How is it possible that I all the way up here in the dirty Jersey has stuff trying to drum up support on my blog and you don’t? You are caring about that which does not matter.

Nobody gets into the fitness industry for the money alone. Trust me there are a lot easier ways of becoming rich. Ya normally get into fitness training because you care and want to make a difference in people’s lives. I was recently invited to attend the wedding of a bride I trained which to me is a high honor. Why? because I care.

do you care or are you faking it? If you care, show it or more importantly do something because of it.

Eric Moss out

alright
I don’t know if you have been keeping up with the news lately but if you have you may have seen what’s going on in Nashville. I’ll admit I am not normally up on current events but had followed a link from my friend Dave “the Iron Tamer” Whitley’s facebook page going to his blog and saw that his home town is basically under water.

Nashville

Now I just got off the phone with big Dave and he told me that the pictures don’t even do it justice and most people have no idea just how bad it really is. One of the rivers rose up 60ft. Think about that a second…60ft. A lot of people have basically lost everything. I want you to picture everything in your life that you hold dear, your family, your house, your possessions…now imagine it all gone… just washed away in the blink of an eye.

Terrible right?

Now hopefully that didn’t happen to you, I just wanted to illustrate just how hard its going for the people down there. One of the things I have noticed is that it takes a disaster like this to show what people are really made of. The folks of Nashville have pulled together as a team just like New York did during 9/11 but they need our help. The death toll is rising, temporary shelters are at capacity, missing people are unaccounted for, many homes are under water, there is a water conservation emergency, much of Nashville’s economic base is threatened by flood damage. You can text ‘REDCROSS’ to 90999 to donate $10 to disaster relief. I don’t ask you for much and I know that if you have been listening to anything I preach I have saved you at least $10 by preventing you from buying bullshit like the shake weight. Take that $10 and give it to someone that really needs it in Nashville. You can text ‘REDCROSS’ to 90999 to donate $10 to disaster relief and you’ll know what you are made of.

Alright
first a big congrats to comrade Doug D. for becoming a new father. Now I haven’t met personally but I have conversed with him through email and he’s a physical culturist like me that understands proper eating and exercise habits. I have no doubt that the daughter that he just welcomed to the world will grow up happy and healthy with his guidance.

but that’s more then I can say about most parents

I was watching the Jamie Olliver show over the weekend (an excellent show) and just had to rant about it. You see Jamie heard about the unhealthiest county in the US (I don’t remember which one it is off the top of my head) and was faced with just a ton of crap. Rules set in place that made it practically impossible to eat a healthy food (pizza doesn’t violate the nutrition standards but 7 vegetable lo mein does? wtf?). Much to his credit he did get the schools to change to healthy lunches…at least in the cafeteria

but that didn’t stop the kids from bringing in crap from home…and almost quite literally crap

you see most of the crap that they are bringing in are horrible for you. If you feel like you have to take a chemistry class just to read the fu_king ingredients then chances are you shouldn’t be giving it to your kids to eat. Now you might be thinking “well that’s the unhealthiest county in the nation…of course they aren’t eating correctly”

well maybe they are the unhealthiest county in the nation but it’s practically everywhere

in the schools here kids are bringing in lunchables, chicken nuggets and junk food and all sorts of crap that’s bad for you. If its happening here…its probably happening everywhere. And you know you hear the parents always making up excuses. “but this is what the kid likes”, “he screams and carrys on until i give in”. which one of you @$$holes is in charge anyways?

i think its maybe time for a bit of tough love

you can’t expect kids to make good decisions for themselves. they’re kids. they’re id controlled. it is up to you the parent (chances are if you are reading my blog you aren’t guilty of this so im not singling you out, unless you are in fact guilty which then yes i am singling you out) anyways…its up to you the parent to make the proper decisions FOR the kids. Would you let your kids play with guns? How about fire? If your kids wanted to drink the stuff you keep under the sink would you let them? Like it or not you are responsible for your children. If you let them make their own decisions all the time you are dodging your responsibilities. Hell if you want to be unhealthy thats your problem…but if you decide to let your kids eat a bunch of $hit then it isn’t your problem, its your kids but its your fault.

This is the first generation that is expected to have a shorter life span then it’s parents. That is a shame and its the parents fault, not the kids. The other thing is everything that a kid does in life programs the way they think in the future. When the kids are old enough to make decisions for themselves it will be too late because they have already been programmed to eat like a porker…and once again…its your fault.

If you want to be part of the solution not the problem then get your ass over to JamieOliver.com and sign his petition.

Eric Moss out

Alright
I was in a local bookstore the other day since being in the business I am in I have to read up to stay current. Anyways this particular bookstore is the one where I stumbled into Enter the Kettlebell and was my intro to “the party”. Well when I get a bit of time to kill I can either play ps3, or I can try to be half way productive and read up. The 2 books I have been reading lately are the new rules of lifting by Lou Schuler and Alwyn Cosgrove and the Female Body Breakthrough by Rachel Cosgrove. If you are new to my evil ways Alwyn Cosgrove is one of the fitness professionals I look up to. Many of the motto’s he preaches I have taken as my own personal slogan’s because it makes me better at what I do and I would like to be the best possible.

Now when I am reading these books I am never able to read them through in one sitting, so I leave my business card as a bookmark in those pages. When I come back if someone hasn’t bought my book I’ll be able to pick up where I left off. If someone buys my book, well maybe they’ll find my business card, realize I stay current with proper training knowledge and hey maybe I’ll get a new client.

Well as I am reading the Female Body Breakthrough by Rachel Cosgrove (a book I think all women NEED to read) I place my business card/bookmark on the arm of the chair plainly visible by anyone who is anywhere near me. So I am reading, and learning and learning and reading when a severely overweight gentlemen waddles over breathing heavy and sits down next to me. As he sits down next to me breathing heavy because of how out of shape he was I start planning his training program in my head on autopilot because that’s kind of how my brain operates.

Now if you don’t really know me and the majority of you don’t, as loudmouthed as I am, I am not the guy who tells everyone he knows that they need to start exercising. If you haven’t read my post about the birds of a feather flocking together then let me just tell you I don’t normally hang out with all fitness people. I normally only hang out with them at seminars when I see them but that’s normally it. Well anyways I am not the type to go pushing my methods on someone that isn’t going to be willing to receive them (kind of like religion). If you come to me for advice that’s different, but if you are there minding your own business I am not going to stick my business in your face.

So anyways I am sitting there minding my own business and he is sitting there minding his own business. I started thinking about the different things I would do to try and help him out but since I don’t want to go pushing my $hit on anybody I kept my mouth shut. When I got home I actually had regrets about it.

“If I said something, would that possibly have changed or saved his life?” chances are no but what if I did? Is it my responsibility to help those who need help whether they know I am the guy to do it or not?

so the question is…should I have said something?

Alright I guess it is time that I do a follow up to probably my most highly commented on post…my response to the shake weight.

The fact of the matter is I thought this would have been dead a long time ago. I thought people would watch the video, have a good laugh and be done with it as many have a very short attention span when it comes to things internet related (myspace or aim instant messenger anyone?). I had no idea I would still get people complaining as comments on my blog about how terrible their customer service was and I had no idea people would still be defending them….anonymous people which makes me wonder who they really are. oh yeah and by the way my comrade Steve challenged them to show us the studies they are based on and I challenged them to show us real people with real results…we haven’t heard back.

There are more reasons to laugh at this pathetic excuse of exercise equipment then simply because it looks like someone is training for a pearl necklace. That fact is what made the thing so damn popular because it was so ridiculous looking that it went viral. One person claimed they put 2 on their order (an order they did as a joke) because customer service said some people like to use 2 at once. Well hell why stop there let’s go full body like Southpark’s Mr. Garrison did with the Entity Are they going to come up with a shake weight meant to tone your glutes as well? I’d like to see how that one is marketed; I have a feeling it would be a completely different demographic.

Well before I go off on yet another tangent let me explain why it wouldn’t be good for females other then the fact that they are paying to do something that has been going on in brothel’s for years. The fact of the matter is that they are going up the wrong tree when it comes to generating the kind of results they want.

The promises are vague in what they say it accomplishes. Long lean defined arms? Huh? If women are unhappy with the “floppiness” of their arm it isn’t normally just because it isn’t “toned” or “defined”. According to the textbook on the American Council of Exercise as it was when I was going though school a couple years back one of the 3 sites for using the skinfold caliper for measuring body fat on women was on the skin around the triceps muscle. For most women the reduction of body fat would be what shows the long, lean, defined arms. Spot reduction of body fat (the theory that body fat is reduced in the area that is being worked) has been shown to be vastly ineffective. Just think about how many people you see crunching away and have pot bellies to show for it.

Next the amount of time that that “dynamic inertia” (which is the term they use to market their hand job exercise), just simply doesn’t give the muscle long enough to develop any reasonable amount of tension. What muscle “tone” really is, is residual tension within a relaxed muscle (read power to the people if you want to learn more about it). Ever notice how crappy muscle looks when you first take your cast off of it and it has lost its “tone” and atrophied? Get the muscles “ready” in a half contracted state and you will have that toned look assuming you are lean enough to pull it off. Do that by building up and mastering the use of tension and you do that with heavy weights. Don’t give me any of that crap about not wanting to be strong and only wanting to be toned. That is akin to saying to me “I want to graduate college but I don’t want to learn anything.” Flirting with the professor won’t work with this one so there is no getting around it.

Next, “machines are designed to produce bulk.” Uhm…maybe. The thing is unless you are some genetic anomaly you won’t get bulky. And if you are after that defined whatever I would guess that a little bit of bulk would be involved. The fear of bulkiness is probably the highest one I have amongst my female clients and its because they have been blitzed by this kind of crap over the years. It isn’t going to happen. To get big you need to be lifting heavy with enough volume, have the appropriate recovery mechanisms in place and you have to be in a caloric surplus. The caloric surplus is when you are taking in more calories then burning off…which I told you not to do when you are after a lean look. Also I have told you repeatedly not to use machines because they undertrain the stabilizing muscles and put you in an unnatural movement plane.

If you really want to get that look you have been looking for try giving kettlebells a go…but only if you are really willing to work hard. The shake weight is for lazy people to waste their money. Kettlebells are for the serious person after serious results. Take a look at 2 of my female comrades’ physiques….Neghar Fonooni and Delaine Ross. Is that the look you are looking for? Good…get to work, real work…not that perverted looking device designed to rip off ill informed or lazy people.

Eric Moss over and out