My Story
Hey everyone!
My name is Joe and I started Mejor Strength in 2016. Mejor is Spanish for “better” or “the best.” After years of wading through a multitude of methodologies, I believe there is a better way to address pain, solve movement dysfunction, and help people reach their movement goals.
You can learn more about what it’s like to work with me HERE
But let me back up, I’ve always been drawn to understanding how things work. Growing up I fell in love with Bruce Lee movies, fascinated not only by the moves themselves but also his articulation of principles versus techniques. For Bruce, it wasn’t just about what he was doing, but why.
My insatiable curiosity for understanding the principle behind the technique led me to MIT where I graduated with a degree in Mechanical Engineering.
Needless to say, getting into MIT and going to the gym are often mutually exclusive. Despite my armchair curiosity with martial arts, I never stepped foot in a gym. I was lucky enough to find a classmate who could help. Over the course of a few years I got stronger and slowly started to feel better.
I dropped 60 lbs and followed my curiosity–reading everything I could from the best minds in kinesiology, strength training, nutrition, and physiology.
But my body still felt awkward. Sure, I could pick heavy things up and put them back down, but moving gracefully and with precision was a foreign concept to me. Compounding my physical awkwardness came the emotional awkwardness of graduating without a job. So, I moved back home to New York City and found a martial arts school to help me understand how to use my body better. I even started participating in martial arts competitions (and wasn’t half bad). But competitive martial arts couldn’t pay my rent.
I already liked the gym and working with people so I studied to get my personal training certification.
You know, “just until I find a real job.” I quickly realized the learnings I collected over the last few years trumped the required material for passing the test. The word overprepared comes to mind. Shortly thereafter I was offered a personal training job at Crunch.
After a few short months, they promoted me to Head of Trainer Education.
About a year into my time as a personal trainer, one of my clients came in with back pain. He once loved hiking upstate with his wife but now a simple jog would get his lower back to act up. Every time he did an exercise in the gym, I observed him arching his back. Turns out, he was using his back for everything. I showed him how to rely on his hamstrings while walking and how to breathe without reliance on his lower back. Three months later he was swinging kettlebells and telling me he was hiking again. I’d never seen him happier. Once I started noticing patterns like this, not only was I able to help clients meet and beat their fitness goals, but also started fixing the problems they brought with them.
And I was helping them faster than their clinicians.
After several years of helping people with their body issues it was my turn to be the one in pain. I injured myself kickboxing. Much like the experience my clients had with their aches and pains, my specialist was stumped. As were the next seven I went to see. I had had imaging done and saw my fair share of medical doctors and practitioners look at the chart and shrug their shoulders. I eventually found someone that was able to make sense of the situation. I asked him how he did it. What had everyone else missed? He handed me a copy of Kandel’s “Principles of Neural Science” 5th edition and told me to get to work.
Something clicked during those late night study sessions.
I dedicated my life to studying movement but somehow missed the most fundamental aspect of our bodies – the brain. I started to recall my more difficult client cases. Suddenly, I could see why their training stalled, pain persisted, and the reason behind their bodies feeling perpetually awkward. All things I could relate to now more than ever.
The more I learned about the brain and its relationship to the body, the more I recognized complicated patterns in all my clients.
Even the “healthy” ones. I furiously consumed information on disciplines outside of kinesiology. Neuroscience. Memory Systems. Psychoanalysis. I combined these varied disciplines to solve problems that had never been solved before. When I approached a physical issue with a physical solution the results would often vary. But when I walked people through how their brain and their body organizes itself, and showed them how to interrupt that organization to produce a different outcome, clients started fixing their own issues and even preventing them from coming back.
Put simply, if someone just waves their hands and you’re magically better, how does that empower you to take care of yourself?
The more you understand what’s happening in your brain and your body, the higher the likelihood you are to dig yourself out of the hole you’re in. That’s when I realized, there are thousands of amazing personal trainers in NYC, but there are not that many genuine problem solvers.
So, I decided “leave” the fitness world and dedicate my life to teaching people how to teach themselves. To become the practitioner I needed most. And I’m here to do the same for you.
To schedule a free consultation, click HERE
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