RX'D Radio Podcast

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...

It’s a Matter of Priority

You can’t have it all, at least not quickly.

By Eric Bugera

• Training is a long game, integrated into a lifetime and not one single training cycle.

• The body adapts quickly to what is prioritized, but a low ceiling from underdeveloped clients can undermine their ultimate goals.

• Invest early with multiple attributes and a diverse training plan – raise the ceiling of their capabilities such that when the time to prioritize comes they are ready to work.

The Long Haul

Most meaningful goals in training will take time. Thankfully, it’s becoming much more common for trainers to preach the long, sustainable path to their clients; however, there still seems to be a gap in comprehension for just how long the path might be. Although planting the seed of a lifelong pursuit of fitness is a step in the right direction, many beginner and intermediate level goals actually fall in the same boat. Things take longer than anticipated, almost...

Training with Tempo

By Eric Bugera

Time under tension misunderstood.

• Tempo is the intentional manipulation of the time spent during each phase of a repetition.

• Tempo can be applied to both strength and hypertrophy training to bring up deficits and allow skilled development of a movement.

• Assure an appropriate load is selected such that the targeted tissues are still receiving an adequate stimulus with a slower repetition speed.

What Is Tempo?

Training with tempo means that you’re intentionally employing a specific speed for each phase of a repetition. This includes a predetermined amount of time spent during the eccentric and concentric phases with the option of placing strategic pauses at the end of the eccentric phase. While there may be different annotations floating around depending on where you see tempo written, a common way of interpreting it within programming is eccentric-pause-concentric-pause/reset; for example, a tempo squat may read 3-1-1-1...

Weaponize Your Rest

Rest periods are more than just time on your phone.

By Eric Bugera

• Energy systems can help you understand the implications of your rest periods.

• Reduced rest progressively harnesses additional energy systems, which can direct muscular adaptation.

• Your rest period should reflect your goals to peak your expected results.

What Does It Matter?

Rest periods are often an afterthought within a program. Many coaches and clients can see huge progress by simply resting until they feel ready for their high-intensity set – but what might you be missing in the details of rest periods? Rest periods are intimately tied to energy systems and specific muscle fiber adaptations. Although it might seem like minuscia – the right rest period may help trigger the next phase of progress once the “going by feel” stops producing results.

Rest and Energy Systems

Fatigue is accumulated during each set of exercise (for the sake of simplicity, we’ll...

Train the Attribute First

By Eric Bugera

Training your clients the way they want.

• You will rarely encounter a client with a single goal.
• You can (and should) train multiple attributes simultaneously for a young training age client.
• Bodybuilding, powerlifting, and Olympic lifting are ways to train hypertrophy, strength or power; but, they are not the only way.

It’s Never One Goal

Personal training is an extremely individualized experience. Each intake form lays the groundwork for how you will operate on a per-person basis – but you will almost never be presented with a neatly compartmentalized set of goals. Hypertrophy, strength, power, endurance, body composition, obstacle races, you name it. While you may have the opportunity to self-select your clientele base eventually, in the early stages of your career the likelihood is less realistic. Instead, you will be confronted with an amalgamation of seemingly unrelated goals that is now your responsibility to manifest. The...

Accepting Ignorance

Wisdom is just less ignorance over time.

By Eric Bugera

• You will inevitably start your career from a place of ignorance.
• You can make significant progress while you continue to learn. 
• Be loose with your attachments in order to choose the best way to train each client on a per-person basis. 

Check Your Ego

It’s a literal impossibility to navigate life without some (often many) instances of complete ignorance – or at the very least, naivete. Neither of these qualities is inherently bad. They are simply signs of a lack of information or experience. Unless you are acting in a willfully ignorant way, embracing your lack of experience is the fast track to improving your own knowledge and client outcomes. However, how you respond to new information that may contradict your pre-existing methods is the real indicator of your desire to improve. It’s easy to call yourself a lifelong learner, but walking the walk can burn from time to...