RX'D Radio Podcast

Start With the End

Tomorrow should be dictated by six months from now.

Abdurahmaan Saloojee is a newsletter contributor from Ottawa, Canada. He enjoys traveling, reading, and spending time with cats.

• Taking clients’ goals seriously requires planning for them long-term.
• Tracking is essential, but it must go hand in hand with reverse engineering what we need to be tracking based on the end goal.
• Give the client what they want, but give it as much structure and forethought as possible in order to deliver tangible results.

Part of responsible programming is taking our client’s goals seriously, and part of taking their goals seriously is not taking a day-by-day approach to their training. They are paying us for results, and getting there involves small daily progressions that serve the purpose of their larger goals, not coming up with something new every day. Unless their goal specifically has no end result in mind and their intention is just to move around for an hour, we must...

Defining Progressive “Overstimulus”

Distilling more accurate phraseology.

By Eric Bugera

• There is a difference between redundant redefinitions and an appropriate refining of common phrases.

• More specific language helps with rapid comprehension and application.

• Overstimulus encompasses load and all other possible variables to drive stimulation without subconsciously biasing specific stimuli.

New Word, Same Meaning, Faster Comprehension

In the world of social media “education”, buzz words develop faster than most can (or care to) keep up. There is a big difference between refining an understanding or description of a phenomenon and simply rebranding an existing premise. 

The social media landscape shifts every few months and new talking heads emerge with seemingly revolutionary sound bites. Most will fail under scrutiny because they are attempting to sneak one past the guard and lord some form of intellectual superiority over the masses by simply renaming what you ...

By Eric Bugera

• Training is unfortunately not the only factor influencing your gains.

• Acknowledging training, nutrition, sleep, and stress as intertwined influences helps guarantee greater progress over time.
• Set up a lifestyle that supports your recovery just as much as training.

Main Character Syndrome

It’s common to view oneself as the outlier. Be it from a genetic, discipline, or even simply pain tolerance perspective – many of us think that we somehow operate outside of reasonable expectations of progress. More specifically, we believe (either consciously or unconsciously) that we are not threatened by the same external variables that may halt our progress from time to time. 

Training quality and frequency can rightfully monopolize the majority of mental energy when it comes to program design – but there are still several underappreciated aspects to predicting ongoing progress. Outside of the initial wave of newbie gains, dialing in certain key components and keeping ...

By Abdurahmaan Saloojee

Abdurahmaan Saloojee is a newsletter contributor from Ottawa, Canada. He enjoys traveling, reading, and spending time with cats.

• The leg press is a very versatile tool if used correctly
• It can be used to bias more quad or more glute depending on the setup, but beware of falling into a trap and thinking more is better
• It’s a useful compound movement that can be used for output or skill depending on the population and position in the workout/program

The leg press is one of the most common pieces of exercise equipment around. Anywhere you go, if it loosely resembles a gym and has a bench press, there’s a decent chance that it has a leg press as well. And for good reason: it’s a very useful and versatile tool–so much so that it has perhaps spawned too many variations and options to a point where some people swear that moving your toes out two degrees entirely changes the muscles that are worked. This post is here to clear up your confusions regarding the le...

Training Bingo

You don’t need to blackout the whole board to make gains.

• What you learn most recently tends to ripple through the entirety of your training.

• The ability to add to a program does not necessarily mean it becomes better.
• Pick your shot, implement concepts and methods gradually over time for the best results.

Reality Check

There are a few key premises that drive most of your progress in the gym. The further along you get and the harder it is to see progress, it can be alluring to attribute more meaning to the minutia than necessary. The reality is that any single workout has a very natural limitation on how many sets, reps, or exercises you can meaningfully complete – and that limitation is fatigue. While biasing different ranges of motion, regional hypertrophy, or assistance lifts might catch your eye – trying to cram everything into one perfect program is a recipe for disaster.

Credit Where Credit is Due

The dissemination of training knowledge through the ...

Everything is an Ad

You are the product.

• Being a trainer immediately makes you a business of sorts – meaning all eyes are on you as the “product”.

• Everything fitness related can be leveraged to represent your skills and personality.
• Let your personality lead, but don’t forget to present in a professional manner.

Reality Check

As much as we’d like to think that we are altruistically spreading the good fitness word – we are also running a business. These two things don’t have to be mutually exclusive, nor is running a business a dirty word – but it does help to be honest with oneself in terms of what this means for our presentation to potential clients. Every time you interact with a client on the gym floor, make a post on social media, or even train yourself – there will be eyeballs on the perceived product that you may one day offer that observer. Your credibility and personality are two overarching factors that influence whether or not someone wants to work with you; the...

Collaborative Coaching

Program a machine but coach a human.

• The client is ultimately responsible for their own success; however, you are responsible for their willingness to act.

• The client is your greatest asset for programming. Allow them to literally tell you what to do.

• Design customized programs using a collaborative approach – a principles-driven perspective married to the uniqueness of the client.

Who Is Really In Control?

Personal training and online coaching can feel very transactional at times – especially when there is a preconceived power imbalance between the coach and client. The reality is that despite you being paid money to tell someone what to do – they can ultimately say no, however rare that may occur. While you appear to be in the driver’s seat, the client truly holds all the cards when it comes to the coach-client relationship. They pay your bills, they are responsible for lifting the weights or performing the cardio, and they are responsible ...

Constraints are the Cure:

Overcoming paralysis by analysis for new trainers.

By Abdurahmaan Saloojee 

Abdurahmaan Saloojee is a personal trainer from Ottawa, Canada. He enjoys traveling, reading, and spending time with cats.

Summary Points:

• One of the best cures for paralysis by analysis is constraints

• Understand programming concepts like frequency, exercise order, and exercise selection makes it a lot easier to program

• Knowing how to ask good questions in order to arrive at what constraints to use is a valuable skill for any coach to have

Everyone has likely experienced some form of paralysis by analysis at some point in their education or career: the sheer plethora of options available for any given task can be daunting, especially when the outcome is largely subjective (ie in coaching, how a person feels). The good news (or part of it) is that if you feel paralysis by analysis, it means that you care enough about the problem and the person to worry about ch...

Volume vs. Effective Repetitions

Reconciling Two Sides of the Same Coin.

By: Eric Bugera

• Mechanical tension appears to be the main driver of muscle hypertrophy.

• Challenging sets that generate high degrees of mechanical tension can be accomplished using many repetition ranges.

• Use moderate to higher repetition sets (or a greater number of sets) to generate the required mechanical tension until skill or strength enable you to use higher load with less repetitions.

Confused?

Building muscle is one of the most common goals a client will bring you. Luckily, the literature on hypertrophy has expanded enormously over the last few decades – providing numerous strategies, clarifications, and mechanistic underpinnings to guide your decisions in the gym. 

Two seemingly rival themes have emerged amongst most successful muscle building philosophies. First, a set must be meaningfully challenging to assure a reasonable hypertrophy stimulus was delivered to the muscle – high eff...

Balancing Wants and Needs

Giving clients what they want by giving them what they need.

Abdurahmaan Saloojee is a personal trainer from Ottawa, Canada. He enjoys traveling, reading, and spending time with cats.

• People often don’t know what they need when you first talk to them.
• Our job as trainers isn’t to tell them what they need, but to help them uncover it.
• Our job then becomes to provide them with what they need while giving them enough of what they want in order for them to remain interested. 

When people sit down with a personal trainer they usually are not sure what they want, let alone how to get it. If they did, they wouldn’t be asking for a trainer. That often becomes muddied by what they need – sometimes, those can be two different things (in some cases, two opposing things). By asking better questions and listening more, we can gain a better understanding of wants and needs, thus providing a better service  and improving client retention. 

When you sit down wit...