The Reality Of Being A Personal Trainer…

Okay, I’ll admit it.

When I first set out to become a personal trainer I expected my days would involve strolling to the gym at 12pm, putting a bunch of supermodels through workouts, and then sitting on the beach supping a protein shake feeling cool as fuck.

Yep, all that was all fucking bullshit.

This has been my career for the last 22 years, so I figure now is a good time to peel back the curtain and reveal what it’s really like to work in the fitness industry, and perhaps offer some useful advice to newbie PTs which I wish someone had given me back in the day.

Don’t Believe The Hype

You see the advert above?

This is how personal trainer courses are typically marketed.

It does a great job of making life as a PT sound easy, but it’s also drawing people into the ultra-competitive world of self-employment without giving them a proper “heads up!” about the sheer amount of work involved in running a successful business.

I think these fake promises of “easy money” are a key reason why statistics show us that 80% of newly qualified personal trainers quit the fitness industry in less than one year, so please don’t fall for it.

The Hours Are Non-Negotiable

Make no mistake; you have to put in the hours.

People often think that the hard work is over now that they’ve finally achieved their fitness qualification certificate, but in fact it’s just starting.

Because now you face the altogether different challenge of persuading “Joe Public” to “Joe Public” to let you put your newly acquired skills to the test, and this is where the wheels come off for most new PTs.

Heck, it happened to me.

It was late 2002, Linkin Park were #1 in the charts, and Sir Bobby Robson was manager of my beloved Newcastle United. Good times. But in terms of my career, the thing I remember most is the uneasy feeling sitting in the pit of my stomach as I walked the gym floor for the first time as a newly qualified personal trainer. I guess I’d spent so long sitting in the classroom learning about all things fitness and nutrition, but now that I was actually inside the gym I felt like a lost little bunny rabbit!

Here’s some context…

You see those gym bros over there? They don’t give a fuck about you or you piece of paper. Oh, and those “normal people” in the cardio section? They also don’t care about you, in fact they respect the gym bros more (because they may be ‘roided outta their minds but at least they’re jacked!).

That walk from one end of the gym to the other is when I realized that turning my fitness hobby into a fully fledged business was going to be tougher than I had imagined it to be.

So here’s what I did.

I’ve always believed that the most effective way to get better at doing something is to actually do it, so after about three weeks with zero clients I decided to put up a sign in the gym reception which explained that I’m a new PT looking for three people to train for free so that I can build my experience and get the ball rolling on my new business.

All of my classmates from the course laughed in my face for doing this.

“Why the fuck would you work for free?!”, they said.

Well, after another couple of weeks all those guys had closed their PT businesses down as a result of having no work and the spark fizzling out, whereas I had been training these three people almost daily and by simply being present in the gym and doing the job this encouraged others to approach me and ask about my personal training spaces.

You see, it wasn’t that they didn’t want any help, but rather that they wanted to see whether I could do it, and they didn’t want to be the first.

Holy fuck, the ball was rolling, and it was all just because I was putting in the work.

My life was no picnic, of course. I woke up at 4:30 a.m. and headed to the gym to open up with the owner, then I trained my first client before she went to work, before heading off to my part-time job at a local supermarket to fill the hours while my other clients were at work, and then I returned to the gym at 6pm to my other two original clients and the handful of people who had since bought packages.

This was my life for nine whole months, and my friends thought I was fucking nuts for leaving a steady 9-5 to chase down this dream which seemed to offer very little financial reward.

Tired isn’t the word, mate.

However, while it certainly wasn’t a glamourous experience (especially on those cold winter mornings where your hands would get stuck to the fucking barbells), I honestly felt like I was living the fucking dream. After all, this is the job I’d wanted to do since I was a little boy.

And you know what?

When I look back now I believe those early hours (even the unpaid ones!) were among the most important hours I ever put into my business, because they taught me the level of discipline and hard work which is necessary to be a successful business owner.

So don’t buy into all of this “strolling into work at 12pm” malarkey.

It Can Be A Financially Unstable Job

The best thing about traditional jobs is knowing exactly how much you’re going to be pad at the end of the month, without fail.

That’s a luxury we give up when we decide to become our own boss.

Many PTs struggle with this aspect of the job, because they’ve been sold on false promises of “easy money” and haven’t been prepared for the “feast or famine” nature which the PT industry is known for.

You see, you’ll typically see a boom around January due to the public’s increased appetite for getting in shape, and another just before summer, but these are offset by lulls at other times of the year.

My advice is to get a handle on this by a) learning how to master the art of saving money, and b) maybe taking on a part-time job while you get your business off the ground.

Those two steps will ease any financial pressure on you, and let you build your business at your own pace.

Also, sometimes the problem of financial instability arises not as a result of being unable to find customers, but as a result of finding what I would describe as “the wrong type of customers”.

You know the ones.

Trust me, there’s no worse feeling for a PT than working with a client who disappears off the grid when it’s time to pay for his/her package, or who cancels workouts at the last moment so you can’t re-fill the slot!

The good news is you can avoid this type of thing by laying out some “ground rules” before you start working with new customers.

Most new PTs are frightened to do this type of stuff because they think it sounds overly pushy, but honestly it’ll save you stacks of time and energy in the long run. Having clients adhere to a set of easy rules from the beginning of your partnership (e.g. “payments must be on XX day of the month”, and “sessions cancelled with less than XX hours of notice must still be paid for”) protects both the integrity of your business and the stability of your income.

You’re Gonna Need Thicker Skin

The fitness industry can be a very bitchy place to work, and you’ll meet several PTs who believe that the fastest way to make their candle shine brighter is to blow yours out.

A few of my old buddies used to get caught up in ridiculous social media “dick measuring contests” with other trainers all the time (e.g. arguing about whose methods are more effective, who had greater qualifications, or made more money), and I’ve always believed this looks unprofessional as fuck

Remember, the vast majority of personal trainers are struggling to make ends meet, so bitchy behaviour is nothing personal. My advice is to grow some thicker skin, distance yourself from the nonsense, and focus on being the best PT you can be.

Learning New Business Skills > Learning New Training Methods

First and foremost, you’re a business owner.

Many PTs seem to forget that, and fall they fall into the trap of thinking they’re some kind of athlete or bodybuilder when that’s not the case.

This often leads them down a path of endless fitness-related courses which they believe will bring a higher income (e.g. learning how to teach CrossFit, or Bootcamps, etc), but that’s not really how this works at all.

Instead you need to learn how to sell.

If your primary target audience is the general public then your basic personal trainer qualification is more than enough to provide them with the help they’re looking for, and they really don’t give a fuck how many thing you’ve added on top of it.

What’s missing is that they cannot see the benefits of hiring you, and this isn’t a bad reflection on the quality of the service you’re offering, but rather your ability to sell it.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of the personal trainers I have met over the years are very poor at selling because they haven’t got any interest in being a salesman and they were never told how big of a role it plays in the job. This information gap prevents them from reaching the levels they’d hoped to reach, because they can’t attract any customers.

Honestly, the fundamental pieces of advice which helped me to create and maintain my business for all these years were taught on sales courses, not fitness courses. Do you think I already knew how to build a membership website? Or how to attract customers from all over the world? Or how to persuade over 100k people to join my e-mail newsletter?

Of course not, yet here we are.

You Might Get Sick of The Gym

Sure, you love the gym, but that might change when you spend all day there.

Much of your energy will go into motivating people who do not share your enthusiasm for training, and this can sometimes leave you feeling zonked for your own workouts – or you just get tired of being “at work” and want to leave when your shift is over.

I experienced this in 2015, when I was going through a bit of a mental “burn out” due to the number of hours I was working and the additional time I spent creating this monstrous website you’re reading right now.

Believe me, there were weeks during that year where I didn’t even want to look at a dumbbell, and times where I felt like delivering a top rope super-plex to the next guy signalling for me to take out my earphones during my own workout so he could chew my ear off for weight loss advice and then ignore all of it!

So don’t worry if you hit one of these slumps along the way, it’s quite normal in any job.

For example, one of my childhood friends was obsessed with pizza when we were kids, and last year she opened her own Pizza Hut franchise. It seemed like a perfect scenario for her, but at our last catch-up she explained that nowadays she looks at her once favourite food with the same level of contempt you’d show a waiter if they proudly lifted their cloche to reveal a chunk of lightly warmed dog dump.

NOTE: While looking for real-world examples to use here I almost went with the story of how one of my clients dated a self-professed nymphomaniac – you can guess the ending!

If You Read This Far, Take It As A Sign

The fact that you’re still here shows me that you’re very serious about becoming a personal trainer.

That’s a great thing!

As a fitness professional you have the unique opportunity to have a positive impact on the everyday life of everyone you meet, and that’s an incredibly satisfying feeling.

And sure, while I’ve made many jokes in this blog post about all of the little things which have pissed me off, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that being a personal trainer is a wonderful career choice, and I’ve had the absolute best time doing it for the last 22 years.

So the next step for you right now is to achieve your PT qualifications (seriously, don’t be one of those ass-hats who just puts “fit” into their social media handle and fakes it until they get caught out!), and then you can begin putting the foundations of your brand new personal training business into place.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this read, and if you need any advice which isn’t covered here you can reach out to me via my contact page whenever you like.

Further Reading:

If you enjoyed this blog, then you’ll probably also like reading these.

>> 6 Things I Wish My Personal Trainer Courses Taught Me
>> 10 Ways To Tell If Your PT Sucks
>> Workout Programs Now Available!