The ache you've had long enough to stop mentioning
The back that's stiff by three in the afternoon. The shoulder that never quite came back. Hips that complain on the stairs. Jo Strong is strength and mobility coaching for people carrying something like that, written by hand and run through an app. It isn't treatment and doesn't pretend to be. It's the strength work underneath.
- Registered Dietitian Nutritionist
- Certified FRC® Mobility Specialist
- Certified in anatomy lines
- NASM-CPT
- CrossFit Level 2 Trainer
Most of this has been going on for years
Not an injury and not an emergency. Just something that's been there long enough that you sit, stand and move around it without noticing you're doing it.
It comes and goes, so it never gets dealt with
Bad weeks and quiet weeks. Never bad enough on any particular Tuesday to do something about, and never gone long enough to forget about either.
That's the pattern that turns six months into six years.
The sore spot isn't always the part that's struggling
I'm certified in anatomy lines, so a good deal of my assessment is reading patterns that show up a long way from where you actually feel them.
One client's ankles and knees hurt for two years. The part that had never been asked to do much was her calves, quads and hamstrings.
You've tried the things that don't ask much of you
Stretching, a foam roller, a massage gun, a better chair. Those can genuinely take the edge off an afternoon, and there's nothing wrong with any of them.
What none of them do is add strength. That same client had tape, massage devices and mobility videos going for two years, and what was missing the whole time was tissue that had never been asked to carry anything.
Strength and mobility work, not treatment
Worth being plain about, because it changes what you should expect from it.
What I actually do
I'm a certified mobility specialist and a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist. I'm not a physician and I'm not a physical therapist, so I don't diagnose anything, I don't treat anything, and I won't be telling you what's wrong with your back.
What I do is watch how you move, then write strength and mobility work around what I see. Mobility here means strength through a range, not just stretching into one. That distinction is most of the job, because a range you can't control under load doesn't tend to stick around.
The honest version of what's on offer is what my clients got back. Stairs without thinking about it. Standing through a three-hour shift. Running two miles without stopping. Strength training with a barbell, at 65 years old. Nobody here is promising your pain away.
One thing worth saying out loud. If something came on suddenly, followed an injury, or feels different from your usual ache, get it looked at by a doctor before you start training it. Your program is built around whatever they tell you. Same goes if you're already in physical therapy: stay with them, and we can start when they say you're ready.
What the work is
- Watching how you actually move under load
- Strength built around the area, in order
- Mobility as strength through a range
- Months of progressive loading, not weeks
- Programming that fits whatever you've been told
What it isn't
- A diagnosis
- A treatment plan
- A substitute for medical care
- A promise about pain
- Something you finish in two weeks
What four people got back
Short versions. The full write-ups, in their own words, are on jostrong.com.
Uma had been active her whole life. Half marathons, dancing, racket sports with her husband and son. Then in her mid-40s her ankles and knees started hurting, walking downstairs turned into a decision, and two years of looking for an answer produced several that contradicted each other. She tried stretching routines, tape, massage devices, mobility videos. None of it moved much. What she'd never done was strength work, and thirteen miles of running builds enormous endurance alongside almost none of the supporting strength a joint needs. The first exercises I gave her looked too simple and she said so. Inside a month the limping got less frequent. Today she's running 5Ks, squatting with a barbell, and taking the stairs down without planning for it.
“Jo looked at how my whole body moved instead of only the parts that hurt, and told me recovery was possible. Now I wake up pain free, I run 5Ks, and I no longer worry that my most active years are behind me.”Uma
By 39 Swati had spent years quietly working around her own body. Her husband was the one who finally said something. She turned up with a sciatica diagnosis somebody had already given her, one leg measurably smaller than the other, and a shoulder that couldn't take a bar across her back. Loading a squat sent her hip sideways, hard, and she needed help to get through one. She had an hour a week to spend on this, and two days of soreness was as much as her week could absorb, so the frequency never went up. Six months passed before she felt anything shift. By eighteen months the scale was down fifteen pounds, and she'd lost closer to twenty-five pounds of fat, because she put on muscle while she did it. She says the sciatica hasn't come back in over six months. She squats unassisted with weight now, deadlifts a 45-pound bar, hangs off a pull-up bar, and gets through a three-hour standing shift where half an hour used to finish her.
Harry's goals were simple enough: get stronger, lose some weight. Underneath them was a body that had barely been asked to move. He couldn't touch his toes, couldn't grab his own foot for a quad stretch, and five minutes of jogging made him nauseous. He trained twice a week with me and put in a third or fourth session on his own. He now runs two miles without stopping, gets through 100 burpees in ten minutes, squats over 200 pounds and benches 135 for reps. The flexibility took longer than the strength, because he wanted to force through ranges instead of slowing down enough to feel them. He gets close to flat hands on the floor these days.
Jason came in at 65 with nothing hurting and nothing to fix. Years of tuna fishing and summer road biking had left him functionally strong and not much else, and he'd never touched a heavy barbell or done any flexibility work. Two and a half years on, his bench has gone from 95 pounds for five reps to 135, and that old five-rep weight is now a set of fifteen. He pulls 200 off the floor with limited soreness. He does Jefferson curls holding 75 pounds, hands dropping below his toes, and he can do a reverse burpee. He asked not to get bigger, because his suits had to keep fitting. Same suits.
Nothing to book. It starts when you do.
Get the app
It's free. Everything runs through it, so there's no call to schedule and nothing sitting in someone's inbox for three days.
Answer the onboarding questions
This is your intake. What aches and when, what makes it worse, what you've already tried, what you can train on, and how many days you've realistically got. It's the consultation without the phone tag, and twenty unhurried minutes here is what your first program gets written from.
Your first week shows up
Written by hand, session by session, with video on every movement. If the equipment you listed can't cover something, it isn't in there. You shouldn't spend week one hunting for substitutions.
Train it and log it
Sets, reps, loads, and how it felt. That log is what the next block gets written from, so the honest version is far more useful than the flattering one. A rough week is information, not a confession.
An hour with me each month, to start
Your first two months include a full hour, in every tier. In person if you're in New Jersey, on video if you're not. I want to see how you get into a position, because that's the part a logged number can't tell me.
It keeps moving
Loads go up, movements change, and whatever isn't earning its place comes out. The measure is what you can do and how you feel doing it.
Where the conversation actually happens
There's no consult form on this page and nothing to book before you can start. Here's every point where you're talking to me rather than to an app.
The onboarding intake
The questions in the app are the consultation. What hurts and when, what you've already tried, what you can train on, and what you'd like to be doing again.
Nothing gets written for you until you've answered them. It takes about twenty minutes.
One hour a month, to start
Your first two months include a full hour with me each month, at all three training frequencies. In New Jersey that hour is in person. Anywhere else it's on video, and your opening rate is $15 lower.
If you'd rather keep meeting in person past the first two months, you can. That's arranged directly and it isn't priced on this page.
Nutrition consults
Booked by the hour with a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist, at $100. Never bundled into a training tier and never assumed.
New Jersey clients in network with Aetna or Blue Cross Blue Shield may have it covered by insurance instead. More on nutrition below.
Two months to get it right, then a lower rate
Pick how often you want to train. The opening rate is higher because every tier includes an hour with me each month, and that hour is what makes the writing accurate. Carry on online only after that and the price comes down. Outside New Jersey the hour happens on video and your opening rate is $15 lower.
- A program written by hand for you
- The full Jo Strong app
- Video guidance on every movement
- Nutrition tracker with AI food log
- Loads and movements adjusted from what you log
- A program written by hand for you
- The full Jo Strong app
- Video guidance on every movement
- Nutrition tracker with AI food log
- Loads and movements adjusted from what you log
- A program written by hand for you
- The full Jo Strong app
- Video guidance on every movement
- Nutrition tracker with AI food log
- Loads and movements adjusted from what you log
Nutrition isn't part of any of these. It's a separate service, and it's described just below. Moving up or down a tier later is fine, just say so. And if you'd rather keep meeting in person past the first two months, that's available too, it just isn't priced on this page.
Nutrition is its own thing
Training and nutrition are charged separately here. Add nutrition now, add it a year in, or never add it. Your program doesn't depend on it either way, and plenty of clients handle food themselves.
A dietitian, not a trainer with opinions about food
Joelle is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist, licensed in New Jersey. That's a clinical, board-issued credential, which is a different animal from a weekend nutrition certificate. The work starts with what you're already eating and improving the quality of it. Foods come off the list when there's a medical reason to take them off, and not otherwise.
The app's nutrition tracker ships with every training tier, AI food log and all. That's the part that makes adding a dietitian easy later, because she's reading the same log you are. Nobody's reconstructing Wednesday's lunch from memory.
Booked by the hour, whenever it's useful.
You're hiring Joelle Eberhart
Not an agency, and not whoever's free this month.
Joelle is the only coach at Jo Strong. The program, the feedback and the replies all come from one person.
She's a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist licensed in New Jersey, a certified FRC® Mobility Specialist, a CrossFit Level 2 Trainer, and a NASM Certified Personal Trainer. She's also certified in anatomy lines, which is what lets her work the whole pattern instead of the sore spot.
She trains the way she coaches. In 2024 she competed in the top three percent of CrossFit worldwide. She trained through pregnancy until the day before labor and was back to eighty-five percent of her peak strength a month postpartum. She's spent time in the slow, unglamorous middle of a rebuild herself, which is the part most people quit in.
Credentials
- Registered Dietitian Nutritionist (RDN) Commission on Dietetic Registration
- Licensed Dietitian-Nutritionist, New Jersey
- Certified FRC® Mobility Specialist (FRCms) Functional Anatomy Seminars
- Certified in anatomy lines
- NASM Certified Personal Trainer
- CrossFit Level 2 Trainer
- Mobility Essentials for Personal Trainers, Level 2
- CPR & AED certified
The ones people ask first
I've never had this looked at by anyone. Is that a problem?
Not for starting. If it came on suddenly, followed an injury, or feels different from your usual ache, see a doctor first. Otherwise the onboarding asks what's going on, what makes it worse and what you've already tried, and the program gets built from your answers.
Will training make it worse?
That's the right thing to worry about. Knowing how much load a body will take, and in what order, is most of the job. It goes up gradually and on purpose, and the first weeks usually look simpler than people expect. If something doesn't feel right, you say so and that week changes.
Is a person really writing this, or is it software?
A person. I write the programs in this practice myself. The app is where it gets delivered, where the videos live, and where you log, but nothing in your week was generated for you.
I'm in my sixties. Is it too late?
Jason started at 65 having never touched a heavy barbell. Two and a half years later he pulls 200 pounds off the floor and can do a reverse burpee. His flexibility changed more than his strength did.
Do I need a gym?
No. The program gets written around whatever you've got. If that's two dumbbells and a doorway, that's what gets programmed. Tell the onboarding the truth about your equipment and you won't spend the first week improvising substitutions.
What if something flares up?
You stop the thing that flared it and tell me, and the week changes shape or pauses. If it doesn't settle down, or it's the kind of thing that wants looking at, that's a doctor's call and the program works around what they say.
What if I'm not in New Jersey?
Then the monthly hour moves to video and your opening rate drops by $15. Nothing else changes. Plenty of the practice already works this way.
Is nutrition included?
No. Nutrition is booked separately at $100 an hour, and only if you want it. The tracker in the app comes with training either way, so you can log food without ever booking a nutrition session. New Jersey clients in network with Aetna or Blue Cross Blue Shield may have the consults covered by insurance instead.
How long before I notice anything?
Uma noticed the first signs inside a month. Changes in how you move tend to turn up first. Strength that stays takes longer, and you should hear that now rather than in week five. Swati's first real change showed up around month six.
Start with the onboarding
Download the app, answer the questions properly, and your first program gets written from your answers. There's no call to book and no form on this page to fill in.
What onboarding asks
- What aches, when it started, and what makes it worse
- Anything a doctor has already told you
- What you've tried so far
- The equipment you'll actually have
- How many days a week you can genuinely commit
- What you'd like to be doing again
Twenty minutes here beats any consult call, because it's the whole input. Rush it and the first program has to guess.