The Business Of Personal Training

The Business Of Personal Training

Looked at from a business perspective, the road to becoming a successful personal trainer is closer to the path of a professional than it is to that of a tradesperson. The 21st century personal trainer is expected to have, at a minimum, a community college diploma in a two year program covering the fundamentals of diet, exercise, kinetics, anatomy and motivation. Added to what is essentially a medical knowledge base, trainers must be familiar with professional codes of ethics and conduct, salesmanship techniques and small business basics. In the business of personal training, you must be a good business person in order to show what a good personal trainer you are.

Transitioning from the classroom, trainers typically serve the equivalent of an internship at an established facility. The usual business model is for gyms and health clubs to take on graduates from fitness programs as independent contractors who work on a commission basis, often without so much as an hourly minimum wage base income. The facility provides the personal trainer with prospective clients in the form of new members. It is up to the individual trainer to sell his/her services to the members.

The neophyte personal trainer working in a health club or gym has little chance of signing up a full roster of clients in the absence of opportunities to act as a group leader for classes offered by the facility.

Keep this in mind if you are just starting out. When applying for a non-salaried position, ask straight out what opportunities are available for you to be a group leader or class instructor, even on your own dime. If no opportunities exist beyond doing introductory training plans for new members, you should consider your options.

A possible option lies in working with continuing education programs. Many opportunities exist to run your own fitness programs at community centers, the Y and even through continuing education programs run by your local school board. These kinds of organizations depend on funding other than membership sales. Funding opportunities for non-profit enterprises are directly related to metrics related to the organization's perceived degree of community involvement. The more bodies they can run through the facility, the better the organzation appears when applying for funding renewals.

These types of organization are open to classes in areas such as Pilates, aerobic work outs, low impact exercise regimes and similar. You must be willing to work nights and weekends as well as split shifts for early morning fitness buffs and even short classes for the lunch time crowd.

Always remember that personal training clients come and go, so until you are so in demand that you have no room in your schedule for new clients, you must always be prospecting, just like any salesman in any business enterprise.

For many personal trainers, their best opportunity lies in sticking with a good establishment and working their way up through the food chain. Managers of gym and health club personal training programs are almost always personal trainers themselves. You don't have to be the next trainer to the stars to make a good living as a personal trainer, but you do have to have the opportunity to work at your profession. Trainers who simply hang out at the gym may be great trainers, but they are lousy business people and will not succeed in the business of personal training.