RX'D Radio Podcast

Creator vs. Trainer

By Eric Bugera

A delicate balancing act.

• Marketing and promotion is an inescapable part of an independent business.

• Trainers often fall into the trap of becoming “content creators” rather than actually training.
• Strike a balance that allows you to train predominantly and content create as an adjunct – not the other way around.

An Evolving Landscape

The world of training has grown tremendously over the decades. Now, a new trainer has seemingly endless possibilities to establish and hone their craft. A lot can be learned from the commercial gym space, where the corporate entity is acutely aware of and tied to your success or failure as a trainer. Yet there are other entire wings of the fitness industry where you are solely responsible for your own performance. Being a standout trainer is only one prong of your job security, but marketing, promotion, and sales often supersede your training prowess. For a new or struggling trainer, it can be...

Only the Committed

By Eric Bugera

A branding model for client-based service.

• Branding is the first entry point for potential clients.

• Aligning your core values with your brand establishes trust.

• Living your brand streamlines your life, business, and connects you with those who would be most successful working with you.

What’s in a Name?

Choosing a brand or company name should not be taken lightly. Branding serves as a potential client’s first impression. This surface level assessment immediately acts as a front line filtering criteria for their decision to work with you. Although it's easy to get caught up in flashiness or attention grabbing clickbait – being as authentic as possible is your best strategy. It’s easier to maintain a consistent front when your branding is a literal representation of self – and “Only the Committed” embodies this flawlessly. Pre-Script® coach James Macintosh does not need to think about...

Reverse Dieting Appetite Suppressed Clients

By Devya Fluckiger

About the Author

Devya Fluckiger is a Registered Nurse & Holistic Nutrition / Wellness / Fitness Coach from Calgary, Alberta. She enjoys books, picking up and putting down heavy items, and being outside. 

• It’s common to meet clients in a prolonged caloric deficit, often with a poor appetite.
• Protein is the most satiating macronutrient. Consider this when prescribing macro ratios and reintroducing calories (reverse diet). 
• Use carbohydrates, caffeine, & food volume as tools to rehabilitate their appetite..  

45 million Americans go on a diet program annually. (1) The average intake during a deficit for women on these diets is 1500 calories, for men it's 2000. (2) 

Caloric deficits for longer durations lead to an increased risk of metabolic adaptation (3) / adaptive thermogenesis, and subsequently low appetite. Hence, the importance of reverse dieting, diet breaks and...

Identify Your Resources

Careers progress in stages, and so does your value. 

By Eric Bugera

• Stages of your career will offer distinct resources for you to leverage and provide.

• Work, knowledge, and time are resources that you accumulate, master, and give back.
• Identify where you are in your career, what resource is the most scarce? What can you reasonably give to keep advancing and helping others?

Why Are You Here?

The common thread amongst coaches, clinicians, and trainers entering the fitness space is the overarching desire to help people. Whether you aspire to inspire, want to raise the bar on the standard of training, or seek to completely revolutionize the industry – you want to help people. There are countless people to help, but the degree to which you are qualified to do so may seem disjoint. The desire is there, but the qualifications? At base you are ready, willing, and able to help those you set out to help. As your career progresses, you will develop...

Create Progression Maps

Life is easier to navigate with a map.

By Eric Bugera

• Client’s may present with similar goals but have unique challenges en route to accomplishing them.

• Training parameters and exercise selection are your tools for problem solving.
• Progression maps based upon previous experiences can help eliminate randomness and funnel clients towards their success.

Avoid Randomness

Specificity is the training principle that states your body will generate specific adaptations to the applied demand of exercise. While any movement is beneficial for a new client, randomness will only serve to confuse the issue once early gains have been exhausted. With that in mind, finding your own way to organize and standardize each next step with individual clients can be extremely powerful for future programming. Coaching can enter the elite echelons simply by eliminating randomness; however, experience and pattern recognition can help formulate repeatable and predictable...

Identify As Useful

Gains are the real bragging rights.

By Eric Bugera

• Certification hoarding is rapidly becoming the standard in the fitness industry.

• Recency bias of acquiring new qualifications can dilute the holistic potential of a trainer. 
• The desire to become a title, qualification, or certification should be secondary to actually providing value. Integrate, don’t isolate.

Letters, Acronyms, and Titles

The fitness industry yearns for credibility. It continuously searches for some form of standardization – a way to establish the good from the bad. One could argue that the incessant desire to stand out from the crowd has raised the baseline level of quality; however, upon closer inspection, has it? Stockpiling certifications, qualifications, and titles is slowly becoming the norm in absence of genuine skill and ability. The illusion of quality propped up by an overwhelming amount of new courses, techniques, and “self-investment”. The end result...

Hypertrophy Mechanisms Revisited

By Eric Bugera

Mechanical Tension, Metabolic Stress, and Muscle Damage

• Mechanical tension, metabolic stress, and muscle damage are the three commonly proposed hypertrophy triggers.

• Evidence continues to suggest that of the three, absolute tension is the primary driver with metabolic stress (and possibly muscle damage) serving as surrogate routes to tension.
• Although tension is the main goal, metabolic stress is a useful tool to tailor within programs to achieve said desired tension.

Hypertrophy Mechanisms

Underlying mechanisms serve as the north star in any walk of life – but particularly within the realm of fitness. Whether you’re into German volume training, using bro-splits, or the specialized flavor of the month protocol, your ability to critically appraise a program based upon mechanistic merit can help you make better decisions faster. There are rarely proprietary training strategies that truly break the mold of what your body...

Be Sure to Connect

By Eric Bugera

You’re having a conversation with a human. Or at least you should be.

• In-person intakes are a personality meshing experience, not a fact finding mission.

• Uncovering the best way to serve prospective clients comes from genuine connection, a long-form fleshed out conversation. 
• Practicing these skills will make it feel organic while also receiving the needed fitness details.

Perception is Everything

Training clients in the real world, be it a commercial gym or private facility, is slowly becoming a thing of the past. Although it will likely never truly go away – online training has taken a huge percentage of the potential market share to a (likely) more appropriate delivery method. Spreadsheets, text messages, and maybe even the odd voice note might be the right tool in some contexts, but in person, perception is everything. In real life, your main goal is to connect with the person in front of you – their initial read will...

Healthy (Helf) Influencing

By Eric Bugera

Choosing reality over rigidness.

• Health and fitness pursuits are not mutually exclusive.

• You provide direct influence over the habits of current and future clients.
• Leverage your influence to shine a light on the real process, not the reel process.

Controlled Influence

Your impact over clients, whether you want it to or not, gives you the distinct designation of influencer. You have become a person of influence in the lives of all those who you would work with and even those you do not (as of yet). The message(s) you deliver through social media platforms, check-ins, marketing and promotion, or any other avenue of communication are all outlets to provide an authentic representation of what fitness truly is. The fanciest and most marketable content is typically the victory laps of life. Championships, competitions, personal records, cheat meals, and on and on it goes. The true measure of influence that you wield is on the truth you...

Communication Is A Skill

Don’t fumble the ball, marble mouth.

By Eric Bugera

• Communication is a key component of every fitness industry position.

• You’re tasked with taking a physical skill the way you understand it and translating it verbally in such a way that another human can perform it.
• This takes time, trial and error, and commitment. Start practicing.

What’s Your Job, Really?

You’re a trainer, coach, or clinician. Your skill set is primarily in the realm of physical fitness, rehabilitation, or performance; but, the unifying skill that overlaps any of these vocations is the ability to deliver your scope of practice to another human. Whether teaching a squat, stabilizing the core, or learning to jump – the ability to translate your knowledge in a way that properly lands with any individual person is the most important part of your job. What you know is a powerful asset, but if you lack the capacity to articulate your knowledge to the audience...