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Archive for ripped abs

Sep

Is it in you?

Posted by: Eric Moss | Comments (1)

Do you have the willingness to stay the course?

Every day I hear about people making excuses about their training. I hear people making other things a priority constantly. They’ll say anything to justify it to themselves. It’s very easy to come up with something.

Here is a short list.
_____tv show is on.
There isn’t enough variety.
It’s raining
It’s too early
It’s too late.
I’m too old.
I’m too young.
I am hungry.
My food is getting cold.
But I don’t have a kettlebell.
I’m going out to dinner with friends.
blah blah blah

Now I am all for balancing your training along with the rest of your life. Sometimes you do need time off where you don’t even look at a weight for a week.

And sometimes you just need to shut the f’ up and do the work.

It isn’t always fun. It isn’t always convenient but if it was everyone would be doing it.

To get your goals you have to have a laser focus. I like to call it the “terminator mentality”. A terminator doesn’t allow anything to get in it’s way. The only thing that matter’s to a terminator is it’s mission. Try taking a terminator off it’s task and you might get a response like

“That is not one of my mission parameters.” That is if it doesn’t just ignore you completely.
Or you might get this as a response.

The point is the terminator doesn’t make excuses, doesn’t try to justify ways out in it’s head. The mission is the mission and that is the only thing that matters.

My mission is to get stronger. It sometimes means that my dinner will get cold while it waits for me to get my necessary repetitions in. It sometimes means I won’t go out for lunch. It sometimes means that I can’t play video games or go do something that doesn’t take priority. Very few things take priority over my strength practice.

Like I said it might not always be fun but I love achieving new feats and it allows me to do this.

Can you do that? The fun is in continuing to get better. The fun is knowing you are accomplishing something. The end justifies the means.

Get a laser focus. Have a die hard terminator mentality and achieve what you previously thought impossible. It isn’t in everybody which is why people rarely achieve their results. The question is….

Is it in you?

Categories : off the top of my head

Comments (1)

Jun

Here is why running for fat loss sucks

Posted by: Eric Moss | Comments (4)

Alright so not that long ago someone commented on my blog here asking why I said running sucks for fat loss. Well here is why.

The basic premise behind just about every exercise program for every goal one can think of is that our bodies are all adaptive mechanisms. We adapt to every single thing we do to become more efficient at it. You do things that require strength, your body responds by fortifying it’s nervous system, increasing muscle mass, increasing tendon strength and that sort of thing. It adapts to become more efficient for the given task.

Well running works along the same lines. You run a certain distance at a certain speed and your body adapts to it by making your body more efficient. Once your body becomes more efficient at it it ends up taking less calories to run the same distance. Think of it like trading in a car with bad gas mileage for a car with good gas mileage. I know that sounds good except for the fact that our bodies don’t store the gas that isn’t used up in the form of six pack diminishing body fat.

So in order to burn the same amount of calories you would have to run either longer, faster or both. Then once again your body picks up the slack and adapts to it and you are right back where you started. It’s just like a dog chasing it’s tail. Run as you might you will never catch it.

So if you are trying to burn fat the best strategy is to try to replace it with muscle via resistance training at a fast pace and couple that with a proper nutrition program. My preferred tool is the kettlebell. Muscle itself takes up a lot of calories just to maintain itself and hey it looks cool too.

What do you think?

Categories : off the top of my head

Comments (4)

Jun

“Gaining Strength vs. Getting Ripped”

Posted by: Eric Moss | Comments (1)

So a week or two ago I was a bit curious so I decided to post a simple little question on facebook
“Which would you rather be, strong or ripped if you had to choose one?” and I have to say I was very surprised by the responses.

2 would rather be ripped.
12 would rather be strong.

I really thought it was going to be the other way around and I was very surprised that a lot of the girls wanted to be strong. I get a lot of email from people that are asking me how I got ripped abs. Lately I have been posting some of my strength stunts where I just turn on the camera and try and do something I haven’t really done before that requires a bit of strength. I tend to get a lot of positive feedback from that but nobody really asking me how (well to be honest some of them are strength coaches that already know the answer).

Now even though the question required that you choose one I have good news for you and no I didn’t save a ton of money on car insurance by switching to Geico. The good news is you don’t have to choose one and if you did in fact prefer to get ripped you should choose both. To get ripped you should strength train.

Take a look at the muscular definition of the weak man.

Now take a look at the muscular definition of this old time strongman Eugen Sandow.

Which has better definition?

“To get strong I must do things that require strength. To get ripped I must eat healthy nutritious food.” Say that out loud to yourself ten times in a row, memorize them and get the best of both worlds.

Time to hear your comments.

Categories : off the top of my head