RX'D Radio Podcast

Complaints Aren’t Conversation

By Eric Bugera

Leave negativity at the door.

• Being a good trainer or coach expands beyond sets and reps.

• Soft skills are an often intangible and overlooked piece of the puzzle.
• Managing the session’s mood plays a massive role in the success of your clients.

Full Service

Running a personal training or coaching business is predominately viewed through the lens of sets and reps. You’re tasked with constructing the perfect workout to meet the needs or goals of a client – ideally faster than they would with another trainer and certainly on their own. However, the totality of your responsibility extends well beyond just a spreadsheet or clipboard. How the client receives your content is just as important as the content itself. One full hour of training should be one full hour of service. This means you’re responsible for not only the exercise, but the environment and energy of the session too.

Controlling All Variables

Getting the most out of y...

What Is A “Niche”

When, where, and why are they valuable to your career.

By Devya Fluckiger

Devya Fluckiger is a Registered Nurse and a full time online Holistic Nutrition & Wellness Coach / Trainer. Her main areas of interest pertain to general population clients as well more complex client populations with hormone imbalances and gut health issues. 

Select a Target

The market for online coaching has exponentially increased since the pandemic surge of 2020. From the trainer’s perspective, the perception of needing a client “niche” has similarly surged. The definition of the term “niche” can be open for interpretation and may vary in an individual coach’s underlying intention. 

A niche, in business terms, stipulates targeting a specific audience to attract to a product or service. Anecdotally speaking, it’s common for a coach to undergo a journey in finding who that target audience is. 

Discover Your Audience

When determining a target audience, some coaches may consider, “how mu...

Rejection, Conversations and Individualism

By Dane Hitchon

About the Author

I'm Dane Hitchon, a personal trainer with 15 years of expertise. Throughout my career, I've had the privilege of working closely with a diverse range of clients, from premier league footballers, international powerlifting athletes, world record holders, to clients facing profound and multiple learning disabilities (PMLD). Becoming acknowledged for my skills and expertise, consideration, and inclusive approach, I am recognised for being committed to tailoring fitness results that meet the unique needs of each client.

An Evolving World

It occurred to me that in-person coaching is becoming less prevalent for some individuals, potentially evolving across the industry, due to societal changes. When I began my journey as a Trainer, Facebook had only been accessible to the general public for about three years, and primarily used for light-hearted activities like throwing virtual sheep or poking someone you had a ...

Stay Involved

Spreadsheets lack personal touch.

By Eric Bugera

• The effort involved in finding a client is often disproportionate to the effort of keeping a client.

• High client turnover may be indicative of a lack of engagement.
• Treat every active client like they are still in the prospecting phase and not as a sure thing the moment they sign up.

The Honeymoon Phase

The first few interactions with a prospective client are always the most engaging. You’re on your best behavior, highly responsive, and usually as forthcoming as you’ll ever be. The main goal is to be attractive enough to entice a prospect to invest – to choose you amongst the masses of trainers inundating their inbox. What separates you from the pack is not the promise of  goals, gains, or championships, but the connection you’ve made with the human behind the screen.

Where It All Goes Wrong

The internet is a funny place. While it is the most powerful form of communication in the modern world – it is also q...

Sales Aren’t The Problem

By Eric Bugera

You don’t need to be a salesman to succeed.

• Securing sales is a necessary step in being a successful trainer.

• You don’t need to be a “salesman” to secure sales.

• Be product and people first. The barrier to sales will drop dramatically.

Training vs. Selling

Making a sale is what stands between you and delivering the training that drew you to the fitness space to begin with. Of all the moving parts that create a successful business, selling your product is an inescapable task. It’s important to come to terms with whatever discomfort this may bring you – and quick. Without sales, there are no clients. Without clients, you cannot support yourself as a trainer. Your industry lifespan will be on a short fuse if you don’t get over this hurdle. Here’s how to do it.

Always Be Closing

While a catchy line, “always be closing” actually holds true in the fitness industry. Everything you produce is a proof-of-concept tool that can be ...

The Toxic Search for Perfection

The roadblock to gains is all in your head.

By Eric Bugera

• Paralysis by analysis is incredibly pervasive.

• Nothing starts as the finished product, everything is iterative.

• Don’t be afraid to start your process, it never ends but most people never begin.

Perfectionism is Procrastination

As a disclaimer, genuine mental health issues are outside of the scope of this article’s consideration and should be addressed through professional resources.

The devil is in the details, or at least the procrastination is. Perfectionism in the fitness space leads to countless dead ideas and lost potential. This silent and paralyzing attachment to flawlessness – whether it be presenting skills, creative design, or even programming – sidelines coaches and limits genuine contribution to the field. In a space that desperately needs new ideas and diversification of perspective, don’t let unchecked neuroticism prevent you from getting involved.

Pick Your ...

The New Years Cliché

Rewrite fitness culture.

By Eric Bugera

• January is always going to be a peak period for fitness.

• Capitalizing on motivation can ultimately lead to long term commitments, when engaged properly.
• Meet the January surge where they are at, building them towards the routines and habits necessary for success.

New Year, New Me.

There are few dates that provide more of a predictable boon to gym memberships and prospective client gain than January 1st. While pop culture has created a near caricature of the January blitz at your gym, the opportunity is still very real. New members flock to their local fitness center – be it social media influence, peer pressure, or a genuine desire to start fresh, now is the “time for change”. On the fitness professional side of things, there is a tendency to salivate at the potential for low barrier sales or the polar opposite. A bitter, often satirical or contrarian viewpoint on the matter that serves no one.

Ride the Wave

Glory to the Grind

By: Eric Bugera

Secrets to Success.

• Suffering is often conflated with success.

• Sustainable suffering is the true key to success.
• Sustainable suffering is just  a stretching of your comfort zone without actually sacrificing critical components for your own health and well-being.

No Pain, No Gain

Living the motto is one way to get the job done. 

There are many unspoken rules about being a trainer. Looking the part helps. Competing in a fitness related sport is handy for marketing. In the online space – normalizing daily routine, habits, and grind culture now permeates seemingly every content drip. Early wake-ups, nauseating adherence to training or diet, and the all too common “sacrifice” for success. It’s slowly devolving into who can suffer more for some non-existent prize, or in reality, subconscious (and self-destructive) pride. What can be a genuine tool for productivity looks more like curated content filler.

Suffering is a Skill

Doing what need...

The Value in Spinning Plates

Once you’re a mile deep, branch out a little.

By Eric Bugera

• Depth before breadth in the fitness industry – master one thing before chasing many things.

• Once you have established yourself, diversification breeds sustainability.
• Multiple well-oiled product and service offerings helps you weather times of feast and famine.

Longevity Breeds Opportunity

The first several years can be very challenging as a new trainer. In this age of online and in-person hybrid offerings, there’s a strong allure to turn over every rock possible. In order to get established (and in some cases, feed yourself), it can be hard to stay committed to just a single product or service. However, until you have mastery over the skills, administration, and business practices to keep you afloat – it’s highly recommended that you do. Once you’ve “gone a mile deep” and refined your craft to the point of sustainability, you can then expand your model and draw greater revenue from...

Skilled Output

By Eric Bugera

Are you as accurate as you think you are?

• Skill influences how effectively exercise delivers stimulus. 

• Effort influences the magnitude of stimulus a set of exercise potentially delivers.
• The goal of training is to merge skill and output into a single “skilled-output” quality.

Skill vs. Output

Working towards a goal involves several potential challenges. The skill of an individual at any given exercise dictates a massive majority of programming decisions. Even some of the more meta-concepts such as individual effort can influence (or potentially confound) the right choice moving forward. Compartmentalization of exercises into neat categories may seem like a useful practice to reduce ambiguity and improve results – but that doesn’t always pan out. The true aim of training is to blend all exercises into a single category, “stimulus”. Neither skill nor output, but simply skilled output.

One in the Same

Skill is a phrase that gets applied seem...