For threestraightforward reasons—money, disillusionment, and professional advancement—Iceased to be a personal trainer. These are the same factors that have causedthousands of personal trainers to leave the field. They become discouraged,stop believing in what they're doing, and stop seeing it as a long-term jobsince they can't generate enough money. I put in between 20 and 30 hours perweek on average, and while it sounds great, you're probably working much more thanthat.
The point is that Iwas spending much longer periods in the gym than that waiting for my nextsessions or attempting to find new clients while working 20 to 30 hours a weekfor the pay I was receiving. A 20 to 30-hour work week could translate to 45 to50 hours spent working out. Most trainers have clients in the early morning,midday, and late at night. This implies that you may wake up at 5 a.m. for yourfirst customer at 6 a.m. and stay in the gym until 9 p.m. following your finalnight session.
This isn't too bad fora few months, but after a few years it tends to overwhelm you, and you mightfeel like returning to your regular 9 to 5 routine just to have one again. Youshould begin charging all new clients £60 per hour as soon as you establish arespectable session base, such as 15 per week.
If you work anadditional 10 sessions per week to reach a (very) realistic 25 hours per week,you will have made £100 more per week than you would have if you had continuedto charge the same rate. It's a very well-known gym chain in the UK, and theycost me close to £1000 a month to use the facilities. I won't mention to whom Iwas renting the gym space out of caution.
It is ratherdiscouraging to realize that £12,000 of your money is lost each year to payingrent for the gym you use. I know they would argue that you only need to do fivesessions a week to make up for the £1000 cost of rent when you compare it tothe £50 cost of a personal training session. Even if you coach a large numberof individuals each week—say let's 25, for example—that still only amounts tofive hours of work to cover the cost of using the gym. Instead, I would adviseyou to give him everything you've got. It could be helpful to think about howmuch an annual travel card would cost a city worker—say, between £3 and $4,000.
I took the approach ofseeing how many individuals I could talk to each day, making sure to chat to atleast that many the following day, and ideally adding one or two more each day.Everything would be much simpler if you could just train folks who youcertainly needed your training. Working a typical 9 to 5-year schedule enablesyou to arrange your pension very quickly, making retirement planning evensimpler. The most important thing is to make sure you are conserving anything;most instructors, particularly those who are younger, overlook this.
Make it a habit, startearly, and be a part of your business. When you work for yourself, you are onyour own, therefore it is important to remember to look after yourself both nowand in the future. Although the sad truth is that relatively few people followyour advice, I believe that as a fitness enthusiast, you will be extremelydelighted to see people doing so and making amazing improvements in their fitness.When you discover that you can't be with your consumers all the time to makesure they always heed your recommendations, it's quite simple to becomedisappointed.
If increasing revenueis your top priority, you have a variety of choices at your disposal, likeraising your fees, attending more sessions, adding online personal trainingsessions to your 1-on-1 sessions, and more. Regardless of whether you work as atrainer an employee or a freelancer, you must keep in mind that you aremanaging your own business and shouldn't be compared to a typical 9-to-5 jobbecause it is anything but.
This will help youadvance in your career. Chris Walker spent just under 10 years working as afully certified REP level three personal trainer in the City of London. Heworked with several well-known customers, including actors, actresses,comedians, and politicians, and built and maintained a 40-person clientele.
It appears that yourenvironment is killing you rather than your job. You'll enjoy being a coachmuch more if you work in a better setting. I made a decent effort after gettingoff to a terrible start with the landlord and concentrated on keeping what Ihad. My popularity and attention expanded over time.
I had developed asolid reputation as someone who would assist you, communicate with youfrequently (rather than just to request payment or confirm the time of asession), and go above and beyond when it came to sending birthday cards,showing an interest in social activities, or planning social events. I quit myjob as a physical therapist and started expanding my online business in EVERYWAY I COULD.
I discovered that asizable portion of my clientele didn't speak English at all or only spoke a fewwords when I started making roughly 100 phone calls a day. This truth wasreinforced when I had to give customer tours of the gym who blatantly didn'tunderstand English, but hey, at least I had to practice my Spanish, which Ihaven't used frequently since high school.
Of course, that wasthe first time they thought to identify themselves. I would predict that just5–6 of the 25–30 people I would plan for a tour would show up. To be clear, Iwould only give a tour of the gym to 20 to 25 percent of the customers I couldtalk to about it. As a result, 80% of my job was pointless, and I feverishlytried to sell to the other 20%.
The remainder of yourcompensation was going to be covered by personal training services, and becausemy base pay was $9 per hour, it appears that I will be taking home a littlemore than $100 per day. Oh, did I mention that I frequently put in between 10and 15 hours a day?) I grew so sick of hearing a personal trainer whine abouther unreliable clients while we were dating.
In essence, she taughtthem how to exercise, and when they realized they didn't need her any longer,she came back to clean the facility. Nevertheless, having a 27-year-oldpersonal trainer for a girlfriend was enjoyable; she worked out for one tothree hours every day on average, never felt exhausted in bed, and alwayslooked great when we went out.
Providing the egoboosters and the paid public of "Chad" or "Tyrone" forpeople who can't even muster the will to go through the day, much less dedicatethemselves to enhancing their fitness. However, they adore the attention andtouches that you Chadian professionals provide them when you might otherwise gounnoticed.
What's it like to goto work every day wearing a phony smile to hide your almost-gags about youroffensive body odor and a fake smile of satisfaction on the flabbiest, mostunfit women for the wall? Sorry, I had no idea that bench pressing somethingother than my body weight was in any way amusing (weight 176, FYI). You mightalso check out the images and videos of me performing one-handed pushups, the humanflag, and other exercises.
No, man, it's theexact reverse in Canada. I estimate that these sectors will decline for 1-2years. It's preferable to be relatively healthy and indigent, Larry, thencolored, exhausted, and psychologically imprisoned by all the harpy bosses youhad to put up with. I put up with it, but I saved for 22 years (2-3 to 4), andI used the money I made over those 22 years to support myself for the remainderof my life.
17 years have beenspent partying. I'm sorry, but that level of hatred regarding steroids isstupid. I would have laughed and graduated from a genuine gym if I had set offLunk's alarm. I'm hoping they processed his 2-inch chode as well as his butt.
As a personal trainerfor Goodlifefitness in Canada, I receive an hourly salary as well as 10% ofsales. Let's get to the point: if you can't get people to pay for yoursessions, you'll fail as a personal trainer, regardless of how fantastic yoursessions are or how qualified you are. Therefore, only work as a personaltrainer if you own the facility or at the very least teach your programs.They'll be able to give you sound guidance because you're not the onlyindependent contractor wondering what their retirement alternatives are.
Never take itpersonally; there are many reasons why these folks would not want a coach, notthe least of which is that they don't know you. A new member never visits apersonal trainer or anything else after signing up for a membership. If thisenvironment isn't right for you, there are undoubtedly other gyms withwelcoming communities where you may develop as a personal trainer and fall inlove with the job. Opening your gym and hiring personal trainers to work foryou, or both of you, is the ultimate dream of any personal trainer.
My bosses are stupid;I'm not sure if this is typical, but I detest my general manager more thananyone else I've ever detested. You won't have someone else to manage yourfunds or make sure you have resources available by the time you decide it'stime to retire or in case something unfavorable occurs while you work as anindependent personal trainer, so you won't have that luxury.
I can almost promisethat if you've been to a gym that has personal trainers on staff, you've seenone of them sitting in a chair looking at their phone. There are also a fewexcellent books that I used to learn how to market personal training; I'llinclude the Amazon link for one of my favorites below. While neither expensivenor difficult, these books filled in the gaps left by the training classes.
Since most personaltrainers are gregarious by definition and having good people skills isnecessary to succeed on paper, this might be particularly difficult for them.
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