There’s a lot of factors an athlete can control to optimize performance and recovery: nutrition, programming, supplementation.  All this can be dialed, but if high-quality sleep is not there, almost none of the previous factors will even matter.  

Whether for charity, sport, or simply a hobby, 10k running races are a staple in athletic culture worldwide. It’s common to hear about someone either at your gym or workplace signing up for a race and beginning a rigorous 6-week training program in hopes of a good result. However, to truly participate in a 10k running race the training needed is a lot more rigorous. Here is how to train for a 10k running race in three phases.

Here are eight key performance indicators (KPIs) for competitive functional fitness coaches and athletes, pulled straight from James FitzGerald’s latest course Mixed Modal. Understand these KPIs and take your athlete’s performance to the next level.

The Strength Continuum is a traditional strength and conditioning philosophy upon which different kinds of strength activities are classified. The Strength Continuum was developed as strength training was compared to the force-velocity curve and it was found that different forms of strength training needed their own categorizations as they fell into different areas of the force-velocity curve. The development of the Strength Continuum led to specific training for maximum expression of the different Strength Continuum categories. At first, it was believed that that only specific sports could manifest these expressions because of the individual nature of each category.

But since we’ve begun using bodybuilding concepts to enhance functional fitness athletes specific sport performance we’ve discovered that this training methodology is incredibly effective. If not more so than many other training programs for preparing athletes for the rigors of their competitive seasons.

He held on to this goal through high school, which then led him to earn his degree in exercise science at the University of South Carolina. After that, he began a career as a personal trainer.

For some, it’s easy to write an exercise program, throw a bunch of workouts together within a certain time period and call it done. Others may spend hours on end painstakingly designing each rep and set. 

It seems like there is a new diet created every month. While all trendy new diets have good intentions, they often miss the mark for the majority of users. That is why well-educated nutritionists and fitness coaches realize there is no “one best diet.” There is only what works best for a specific individual. 

It’s 2020, we have an instantaneous internet connection, can order food with the touch of a button, and we have limitless entertainment at our fingertips. So it’s no wonder that clients walk into gyms around the world every day wanting to transform their sedentary existence into athletic prowess in just a matter of weeks.

Society places great stock in the art of measuring one’s future success. SAT, ACT scores and IQ tests are supposed to correlate with one’s ability to be successful in school. Logic holds that if you do well in one, you must do well in the other. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with these indirect measurements of success they are still an indirect method. The only way to validate these indirect measurements findings is to collect more relevant data.

Exercise and nutrition go together like peanut butter and jelly. You cannot have a conversation about health without including the two. As coaches, it is our job to educate our clients about the relationship between the two. But more importantly, we need to understand it ourselves.

Mixed Modal is James’s latest contribution to the world of functional fitness. This course provides revolutionary thought through four chapters, Sport, Energy, Practice, and Skills, along with the sample programming needed to create a podium-caliber performance. Learn more about the course here.

On the latest episode of the OPEX Podcast, James FitzGerald and Robbie Bourke sat down to discuss James’s latest course Mixed Modal, the International Functional Fitness Federation (iF3), and the Mixed Modal 3-Day Apprenticeship.

Our CEO Jim Crowell breaks down the financials of pursuing fitness as a full-time career in this blog post. You can read about the average paycheck for a fitness trainer, personal trainer, group fitness instructor, personalized fitness coach, online fitness coach, offering online training templates, teaching online group classes like Peloton or a strength and conditioning specialist to athletes.

“There were days I was coaching five or six classes a day, coaching the same stuff over and over and repeating myself over and over,” she said of her five years managing a CrossFit facility.

When you think of ‘a personalized meal plan’ what comes to mind? For most coaches, it is typically a structured program detailing the specific amounts of macronutrients the client should consume and at what time. But OPEX Fitness Founder, James FitzGerald, wants us to think beyond macronutrients and focus on the foundation of personalized nutrition.

It seems straight forward enough. Besides, we know what the word brand means, right? But year after year coaches still come to us for help. Help to build their gym’s brand into the shiny business they have been picturing for so long. So after more than 20 years of teaching coaches how to do just that through the OPEX Coaching Certificate Program (CCP), here are the three most important pillars to building your gym’s brand.

In our case, accessory work is important for building strength and for improving motor control. And it’s not as simple as programming some glute bridges and back extensions for all your clients to do after their training session. In fact, the most important aspect of accessory work is that it must be individualized.