Club Personal Trainer Career

The Fitness Club Personal Trainer… where better to start than at the most tried and true option available when you graduate from your personal training course.

Becoming a fitness club personal trainer gives you a lot of benefits:

If you like the sound of:

• 1-1 personal training
• A fun, busy and interactive environment
• A diverse range of machines and training options
• Support and mentoring from a Personal Training Manager

… then this might be the personal training career for you!

What will I be doing as a Fitness Club Personal Trainer?

As a fitness club personal trainer you’ll be offering 1-1 training with current and new fitness club members in an environment with a lot of equipment at your disposal.  The diversity of equipment means you can offer different training options based on your client’s preferences.

Training and Administration

The 1-1 nature of personal training means that you’ll focus solely on the client in front of you to provide a specialised service based on their:

• Goals
• Injury profile
• Exercise preferences
• Personality

At full capacity, you’ll be delivering around 30 hours worth of personal training sessions per week.  With that comes 15-20 hours of:

• Program design
• Support activities
• Updating of client records
• Business admin

All up, you could be reaching the 45 hours per week mark which is reasonable considering the hours you could be working if you owned your own business in another industry.

Marketing

To reach 30 hours of personal training, you’ll be spending the first 3 months marketing to the members in the club.  And this is where the benefit of working in a club comes to fore.  All the clients you ever need to market to are in one place which allows you to have a very low marketing cost.

You’ll gain most clients from face-to-face lead generation strategies such as:

• Walking the gym floor and chatting to members
• Helping members with exercise technique
• Getting to know members goals and when they want to achieve them
• What kind of barriers stop members from exercising

While this may sound a little scary, it gets easier with practice and is extremely effective provided you’re doing it right.  You’ll learn lot of other great marketing strategies in your personal training course at NZIHF but the most important thing to remember is:

people will train with you if they know you, like you and trust you…

… so face to face in the gym is by far the best option.

What skills do I need to be a Fitness Club Personal Trainer?

So, what do you need to be good at to be a personal trainer in a fitness club?

Your capability around marketing doesn’t have to be high provided you implement the right strategies as mentioned above.  If you stick to the basics of marketing in a fitness club you’ll be able to generate interest in your personal training service without needing a degree in marketing.

Most of your strengths need to lie in sales and in the delivery your product.  You must be able to ‘sell’ to be able to use your ‘mad’ skills in designing programs and delivering training sessions.  Sales often gets a bad rap as it can bring forth images of the ‘used car sales man’ convincing some poor unsuspecting soul to buy a worn-out vehicle that’s going to cost even more money after the purchase.

Sales in personal training is about finding out:

• What the client wants
• When the client wants it
• Where they want it; and
• How they want it…

… and then offering the most suitable service to help them achieve their goals.  By training with you, the client will be fitter, healthier and happier.  As you can see, this is in stark contrast to the used car salesman scenario.

Product

To back up your marketing and sales, your ‘product’ must be also strong.  By that I mean, you must be very good at designing programs and delivering training sessions to your clients that hit their experiential ‘sweet spot’.

A client’s sweet spot can include one or more of:

Each client is unique and may want something different, so you need to be able deliver all of these.

The Personal Training Manager

A lot of fitness clubs have a dedicated Personal Training Manger who can give you advice on how to run your business.  You’ll get better at growing and shaping you business during your time on the gym floor and from having regular guidance from your Personal Training Manager.  These people have been around the block a few times, so they understand the challenges you face and can give you sound advice to overcome these challenges.

How much does it cost to start as a Fitness Club Personal Trainer?

We cover money in more depth in the Personal Trainer Salary Guide but we’ll briefly go over what it’s going to cost you to be a fitness club personal trainer.

The start-up and operating costs are low as you don’t need to buy equipment – the club has everything you need.  Add to this to your low-cost marketing strategies and you have yourself a very low cost to start up as a fitness club personal trainer.

The main costs you’ll incur will be a ‘license fee’ and your weekly club rent.  You’ll need to invest the license fee upfront which usually also covers uniform and marketing materials.

The weekly rent you pay to the gym can range from $40 – $300 depending on the club.  When starting out, clubs will often ‘staircase’ your weekly rent over the first 8-12 weeks.

It could look a bit like this:

Use your time wisely and you’ll have rent costs covered as well as some savings within the first 4 weeks.

Recap

Here’s a recap of the time, capability and money required to become a fitness club personal trainer:

Got Questions?

If you have any questions about getting qualified and starting a personal training career, feel free to contact us and one of our friendly careers team will be happy to help you out.