Last night as you know was Thanksgiving and as we are all sitting down to over-stuff ourselves we decide to announce out loud to the family the things that we are thankful for. Now when it came my turn I had told them “I am thankful for my true friends and family and for having the opportunity to spend this dinner with them.” I want it to be known that when you are good to me…don’t think I don’t notice it.

Now the one before me is the one that I would like to point out. His first thing that he mentioned was that he was thankful for his health. It leads me to wonder…how many are thankful for their health? Health goes under the radar for many people…that is until it’s too late. Others simply don’t have health to be thankful for (it’s a shame really) and yet others have it and take it for granted by doing things like smoking, eating bad foods all the time and that sort of thing.

Now for me I know I’m healthy because I spend my life teaching people how to be healthy through things like exercise and nutrition and balancing those things into their life. I am thankful that I have a job that I genuinely enjoy and my clients are the best in the world (I just wish I had a hundred more like them). I am thankful that I have this medium (my blog) where my voice isn’t limited to my immediate area but for anyone that knows how to use google to search for things I talk about. I am thankful that some people that read my words might even listen and pass it on or even better actually apply what I am talking about.

And as I tend to do when I sign off…I am thankful that you read this…thanks for reading and being awesome.

Eric J. Moss

alright I know it’s been a long time since I’ve blogged because of the stuff I had going on but now is as good a time as any to jump back on the horse and since I’ve just completed the tough mudder just a couple hours ago I’d give a couple thoughts and insights that I had from it. I also know I am backed up on my blog posts and I had some very cool experiences despite what I had been going through and I’ll write about them soon. I promise.

First thing is first. Tough Mudder is great at testing your grit. From a fitness standpoint I was great and I consider myself somewhat of a tough guy and this was a great way to see if I was full of $hit or not. With the joke of me not ever wearing a shirt flying around the internet I chose not to disappoint and went through the course shirtless which got this response from a girl running the course “If I looked as good without a shirt as you do, I’d be topless also.” If only there were more girls like her . And I guess there is some truth to the Adonis Effect after all.

What I regret is the fact that I even CONSIDERED dropping out of it. You see I pride myself as being a guy who leads by example and the fact that I nearly wimped out is disappointing to me. Let me say this for the record so if I ever show a weakness again I want YOU to call me on it. When the going gets tough Eric J Moss does not quit. Quitting is for wimps and I am no wimp. Thank goodness for my friends on team Mantivities for calling me on it. I guess we all have our moments of weakness and it takes an outside eye to catch it.

Another take away I had was that no matter how bad you think you got it…there is always someone that has it worse and is more of a badass. I remember specifically thinking about how cold my feet were after having just been in the water and looking over and seeing 2 dudes with prosthetic legs that were running the course…BADASS! There are a lot of people that would say “I can’t do this.” or “I can’t do that.” and the fact of the matter is they can’t because their head isn’t strong enough. Those guys with no legs below the knee were doing it, and not complaining either because their head was what carried them through…not their muscular endurance.

Speaking of endurance. I wanted to kind of test the Voropayev study a little bit and pretty much did kettlebell training exclusively (there was running in there too but not all that much). Training for this I did my own variations of the 15:15 protocol in Viking Warrior Conditioning and it was pretty effective because the only thing that seemed to make me breathe heavy was the sheer coldness of the water. No matter how much I ran (and I whipped by a couple that train to…forge elite fitness and wore it proudly on their shirts) I never breathed heavy. I guess that whole gaining the endurance of an ancient warrior has something to it. Pretty cool huh?

well that’s it for today. Power and awesomeness to ya!
Eric J. Moss

The other day I was perusing a popular training forum when I saw
somebody complaining about a lack of strength gains. While a bunch
of people tried to help I offered something completely different that
nobody seemed to get. Let’s see if you can see what’s going on
in this post.

Quote Originally Posted by (name removed)
“I’ve always been weak and am a poor natural athlete. I’m also small,
as men go.”

And this was my response to him.

This my (clever poke at his name) friend may be the start of the
problem here. One of the things that I picked up from Slim the
Hammerman Farmin a couple years ago (if you don’t know who that is
he is a legendary performing strongman) was that everything starts
with the belief that you can do something and that there was no way
in hell that you couldn’t do something and in fact failure is not
an option. He told me (and I’m not a big guy either) that within me
was a power equal to every single person in that room (I might point
out that the Iron Tamer was standing next to me at the time). You
just need to have the belief and needed to learn to tap into our
inner monster. Training that belief has gotten others to bend wrenches,
prevent Air Force T-34s from taking off and held Harley’s back that
were running at full throttle, all by a student of his that is maybe
a 170lbs…that used to be scrawny and weak until he realized that
he was strong after all.

What a lot of people don’t realize is that negative self talk can
actually ruin your strength. it sets a foundation of failure that
can take awhile to get rid of.

Here try this now. first make sure there are no power leakages in
your press (a video would help us here). also walk into your bathroom,
look your reflection in the eye and call yourself a badass. Do that
everyday.

It seems strange, it might even generate a weird look from the wife
(mine doesn’t ask questions anymore) but it can do wonders for your
confidence…which can do wonders for your strength…which can also
do wonders for your confidence which can also do wonders for your
strength (it’s a cool spiral). belief that I could and would, led me
to a 3/4 body weight bent press, a 24kg in each hand crucifix, 50
consecutive pistol squats as well as a bunch of other stuff which
ended up as could and did.

Let me point out the important part here. If you believe that you
will always be weak no matter what you do…you will be weak no
matter what you do. Believe in yourself and you just might convince
yourself that you are a badass that can do anything after all.

That’s it for today. Badassery and physical awesomeness to you.

Eric Moss