Well today is Memorial day.

Ya know just like anything people take something good, and slowly it becomes something it was never intended to be. In case you aren’t aware you have the freedom today to enjoy your 3 day weekend by boozing it up and partying your ass off but please try to remember why you are able to do these things. Memorial day is about remembering the soldiers that gave their lives (most of them younger then me and I am a mere 28 years old) to give you the freedom that we all share over here in the United States.

You are probably going to have a barbecue, or are going to a barbecue so you can eat some burned meat and drink beer and possibly go swimming. I will be but I know its the freedom I had given to me by our men in uniform. Not all of them can be here today…and for that I thank them.

I stole this from Dave Whitley’s blog which he got from someone else.
“Today, in the United States of America, we celebrate the 142nd Annual Memorial Day. It is a day to reflect on the memory of those in our Armed Forces who, through their bravery, paid the ultimate price for our freedom. Traditional observance of Memorial day has diminished over the years. Many Americans nowadays have forgotten the true meaning and traditions of Memorial Day.

At many cemeteries, the graves of the fallen are increasingly ignored or neglected. Most people no longer remember the proper flag etiquette for the day. While there are towns and cities that still hold Memorial Day parades, many have not held a parade in decades. Some people think the day is for honoring any and all dead, and not just those fallen in service to our country.

To help re-educate and remind Americans of the true meaning of Memorial Day, the National Moment of Remembrance resolution was passed on Dec 2000 which asks that at 3 p.m. local time, for all Americans “To voluntarily and informally observe in their own way a Moment of remembrance and respect, pausing from whatever they are doing for a moment of silence or listening to Taps.”

so yes enjoy your day but please remember who gave this day to you to enjoy.

Every once in awhile I’ll get a comment on my YouTube vids that so and so exercise is bad for your joints. Most of the time this comes from well intended but ill informed personal trainers or whatever enthusiasts.

Joints need strength just like the rest of our body does…and the only way to make your joints strong isn’t to continue to baby them but to train them as one part of the whole picture.

Take a look at some of the people in the 3rd world countries where they have their genitals showing because they have nothing to cover them. They spend a good part of their day in a deep squat chipping away at a piece of wood or rock or arranging various pebbles on the ground for whatever they plan on doing with those. Is this squatting below parallel completely destroying their knees? So

why should ours be any different?

As the old saying goes “use it or lose it”. If you don’t use your full range of motion in your joints you will lose it and will cease to be flexible, and to have strength from that position. To put this into context lets think about that squatting position before that I was talking about before. Now think of a young child and how they reach down to pick something up. Do they ever fear going below parallel? And notice how perfect their form is. Now compare that to an adult….one that sits at a desk for the better part of a day. The adults I have seen when I teach them to squat have atrocious form, often leading with their knees and are unable to hinge at the hips. They have lost that range of motion because they stopped using it.

Now I’ll admit you shouldn’t do ass to ankle pistol squats unless your body is ready for it. If you haven’t squatted down in over 20 years it would be foolish to try to reach the same depth that I do. However if you took a progressive approach to bring strength into your exercises and into your joints then you can get it back. I can pistol low enough to actually sit on the floor and then go back up into the pistol squat (with a counterbalance) without using momentum. Thats deep enough…and guess what…my knees have never felt better…and that is on one that was reconstructed around the same time 9/11 took place.

On the same note you have to be able to lock out under load or you will lose it. I have heard people recommending that I not lock out my elbows when pushing. When I say “why not?” they’ll typically say its bad for my joints without having any kind of reasonable explanation why. I am not looking for some scientific sounding answer like the way the uvulus muscle connects to the upper dorcimi via the ligament whose name sounds like those little dinosaurs from Jurassic Park. I am looking for an answer that simply stems from common sense.

Funny because my elbows feel a lot more stable pushing my car out of the ditch then it did not locking out on a bench press.

The fact of the matter is our joints are supposed to lock out under load. Thats why our bodies naturally do that when we are trying to push something with max effort (like pushing a car)… and I’m not likely to take advice on joints from someone who is unable to lock out their arms.

So take your joints through the full ranges of motion, top to bottom, when your body is ready. Your joints will thank you, your muscles will thank your for being stimulated along their full length…and no you don’t need to thank me.

you know i am always seemingly trying to get people to quit asking for variety and stick to the plan.  Most of the time for most people this is sound advice.  When it comes to training people have the attention span of a gnat and yeah that includes athletes as well.  They have been blitzed with things like muscle confusion and “blast your bi’s into submission” (what did bi’s ever do to you?  they are just fun lovin)

a little while ago fellow RKC Boris Bachman had asked if we thought the internet has made us weaker or stronger.  I said stronger because it allows me to find all sorts of great training methods.  If i hadn’t found them i would probably still be in the gym still doing the 3 sets of 10 and doing preacher curls but i have the discipline to buckle down to a program.  Trying to mix and match and confuse your muscles will just confuse you into thinking that you have progressed which is the reason people would be weaker.  Where are your markers of progress?  and does that mean you should never have fun with your training?

I don’t think so.  Every once in awhile I’ll do something I hadn’t done before just to see if I can.  This is one of the things that puts fun back into training.  Most of  the time it doesn’t have any real purpose other then to prevent burn out and just to see if I can.  And believe it or not most of the time when I do these its after I have finished training for the day.  Here are some examples.

I wasn’t sure I would be able to do this so I tried it out.


I saw a dude that’s known for picking people up over his head with 1 hand do this with kettlebells only 9 lbs heavier then this…and he’s twice my size. I wanted to see if I could do it with this weight…and well I can.


Same kind of goes with this. I wanted to take 2 of the more difficult exercises, put them together in some form of mutant exercise and see if I could do it. I was almost able to do it with the 20kg but kept losing balance.

Now keep in mind I don’t train any of these lifts (well I do the pistol and I do the sots, but not together). I stick to the basics, pretty much all the time. These I just did to see if I can, and knowing I can helps me stick to my training programs.

So every once in awhile leave your comfort zone and see if you can come up with something difficult and try and achieve it without training for it. That sort of thing is fun and can keep your head sane. Just don’t make it the bulk of your training because you’ll veer off course, but taking a pit stop every once in awhile and racing a bit can help you out in the long run.

Eric Moss… over and out.

This post isn’t going to have that annoyed, angry or sarcastic overtone like many on my blog do.

Well this past weekend was a bit of a roller coaster ride. Knowing my grandmother was in the hospital with a bad prognosis had that bit of threat and worry that hangs over your head when you know a loved one was in trouble. A lot of trainer friends from out of town (Vince Delmonte, Mike Mahon and Liz Orozco) came in for my cousin, friend, training partner and business mentor Arnel and Sara’s wedding which was awesome. The wedding itself was beautiful and leading up to the wedding we were worried that we would be sweating like crazy since it was in the middle of July. Luckily it didn’t rain on us like we thought it might. I was worried I was going to have to tough it out if something were to happen but it didn’t. My fiance and I had hosted the after party in our hotel room after the wedding where we all had more drinks and ate things that was not conducive to keeping a six pack.

That was Saturday night going into Sunday.

Sunday we had a nice day of swimming and volleyball ahead of us to hang with the bride and groom a bit more. It was a beautiful day but it felt like a punch in the gut when I got that dreaded phone call from my dad. The up was about to go down. My grandmother wasn’t going to make it.

The best strength program in the world can’t prepare you for that.

Right now what I want you to do is promise to see your grandparents if you are blessed enough to have them. And don’t just promise…fulfill that and go see them. When people start getting up there in age you never know when it is going to be your last time seeing them. I saw my Grandmother pretty often so I don’t hold a lot of regret but I know many who do. Don’t be one of them.