About The Author
This is typically the place in a book where you might expect to find the credentials that validate the credibility of an author’s story, and in no place is it more relevant to refer to the storyteller as an author than when it is a nonfiction story. This is because then, it is based on the person’s authority to present technical information; his or her expertise, based on their special training. The specialty in Strength Beyond the Horizon is resistance training, thus, Resistance Training Specialists®.
But going back to typical expectations, the letters at the end of the author’s name, like B.S. or M.B.A., or PhD, etc., represent his or her educational accomplishments that validate their authority. In this case, the only nominals following Eric’s last name are RTSm®, which stands for mastery level Resistance Training Specialists®. The word, “mastery” refers to a lifetime commitment to the study of “Resistance Training”. That is the kind of commitment required to transform an aspiring non-specific fitness trainer into a legitimately personal strength training “Specialist” which is the kind of professional validation that no traditional source of exercise education will ever equal. However, if that is not enough, there are other ways to validate the credibility of this author.
Eric is a strength training child prodigy. By the time he was eight, he had created his own kinds of exercises and variably challenging workouts to build his body. By the time he was 17, he knew that he was going to devote the remainder of his life to sharing with other people what came naturally to him, but during the first decade of his development, between 1962 and 1972, there were no certification courses or exercise science classes to attend, so he concentrated on the most relevant educational resources that were available to him then.
He learned how to build his body in a weight room from Sergio Oliva, the first Mr. Olympia in the world. He learned how to help people to gain strength and muscle for conditioning purposes from Sergio Oliva’s training partner and rival, Dr. Bob Gajda and later, from Dr. Paul Ward, PhD. Then, in recognition of Eric’s special training skills, Ron Johnson, the head coach of the Arizona State University swim team, hired him as the conditioning coach for the men’s swim team in 1979, where he compiled enough data for future reference to support an idea that came to mind while he was training athletes there.
Later, in the early establishment of the health and fitness industry, he referred to that information to develop the first computerized resistance training program in the world, recognized by Dr. Robert Goldman, the founder of the National Academy of Sports Medicine. Dr. Goldman acknowledged Eric’s prodigious exercise talent by inviting him to be a guest speaker at the inaugural National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM) certification course, where he had the fortune and opportunity to meet the person that Dr. Goldman recruited as the lead instructor of biomechanics for NASM, Tom Purvis.
Tom Purvis also recognized this same innate talent and offered Eric an assignment as a hands-on instructor at NASM. That was the first of two opportunities that enabled Eric to envision exercise, training, and performance through the eyes of the literal progenitor of genuine personal training. Eventually, after taking other certification courses, like the National Strength and Conditioning Association via the National Personal Training Institute, and the American College of Sports Medicine, etc., Sabrena Merrill, M.S. in physical education and biomechanics from the University of Kansas and a faculty member of the American Council on Exercise (ACE), recognized Eric’s natural talents and so appointed him as an instructor for the ACE certification course, even though he did not graduate from or even take that course.
It was during this same time that Eric enrolled in RTS®, the only institution of higher learning that he ever had the chance or ambition to attend. Shortly after graduating in 2015, Tom acknowledged Eric’s talents for the second time when he appointed him as one of his “hands on” instructors for the “Practical” application of the fundamental portion of Resistance Training Specialists® education known as RTS Foundations and Practical Labs®. That appointment eventually led to Eric’s first publication called “The Sarcomatrix of Exercise (2024) Hawes and Jenkins, and that is also responsible for this book, “Strength Beyond the Horizon”.