Eric Mayle 4/24/26 Eric Mayle 4/24/26

Is Personal Training Right For You? Four Common Reasons People Get Into the Fitness Business…

There are a ton of great reasons to become a personal trainer. And… there are some not-so-good ones. What I want to do in this article is go over some of the realities of being a working personal trainer, and help you figure out if it’s right for you.

Now, a caveat. I am speaking now from my own experience and from the experiences of dozens of trainers I’ve observed, but my word is not law. There is room in which I can be wrong. I am sure your friend/cousin/guy you went to highschool with is the exception. Or maybe you’re from LA or Schenectady or Frogballs, Arkansas, and it works differently there. I allow it is possible, and encourage you, if you think this information doesn’t apply to your situation, to disregard. But it is the advice of several dozen observations. And whether or not you think I’m on the level and more-or-less correct, don’t go making wild off-the-cuff decisions about your career based on anything you read on the internet. Take it as you will, but don’t let an article online ruin your life.

With all that said… without further ado… let’s get into it.

You Love Exercise/The Gym…

This is one of the most common answers to the question “why do you want to be a personal trainer.” Well, because I love the gym. I love working out. I’m passionate about fitness.

I get it. It makes a lot of sense on the surface. You love working out and getting in shape, why not go pro at that? The thing is, becoming a trainer because you like working out, is a lot like becoming a bartender because you like drinking. It counts, it’s not useless, but it’s not really the job.

To make it as a trainer, it’s more important to love the idea of fitness. Your personal workouts, your results, your training doesn’t really matter all that much in terms of how good or how successful you’ll be as a trainer. What matters is how much you love learning about and communicating about fitness, and how much you like using fitness as a tool to help other people make their lives better. A better metric than “I love the gym” is really “I have a contagious love of the results of exercise.”

That said, obviously, most of working as a trainer involves a fitness context. So if you don’t like the gym, or you don’t like exercise, or you’re not convinced that the right exercise program done the right way at the right time can be truly life-changing, this gig may not be for you. There’s workouts in the park, sports coaching, or online training to work around being physically i nthe gym, but by-and-large, training = the gym. Having at least a tolerance is a good thing.

You Love Helping People

This is a great reason to get into fitness. If I’m interviewing someone, this is the reason I want to hear. “I want to be a trainer because I love helping people improve their lives.” A good trainer is obsessed with helping people get the results they want and need.

BUT

That comes with a few caveats that are worth mentioning. Namely, boundaries. When you love helping people, and you get paid (sometimes very well) to help people, it’s easy to forget that you can’t just become the job. If you struggle to tell people you work during working hours, or you’re a pushover for coming in early or staying late, or you’re always looking to give a discount, you’re going to deal with a lot of burnout and frustration.

Do not read that last paragraph as discouragement. That basically describes me. But understand going in that the emotional costs of you doing business i nthat way are going to be real, and you need to guard against burnout and frustration because they’re going to come with doing your job while having your personality.

Furthermore, you must understand that the fitness business is a business. There must be some changing of money. Fairly routinely, actually. If you just want to help people, go volunteer at the library. If you’re prepared to make a living helping people, don’t think that your empathy disqualifies you because it’s absolutely an asset, not a weakness. Just don't let the reality of business crush you.

Also, natural helpers have to be cautious of overstepping professional boundaries. Trainers oftentimes get dangerously close to being therapists, life coaches, etc. We are not therapists. And if you are actually a trained and licensed therapist, while you’re acting as a personal trainer, you’re not a therapist. Same goes for massage therapy, physical therapy, sex work, religious ministry, or anything else you may have gotten into so you could help people professionally. While you’re training - especially in a gym setting - you are only a trainer. There are ways around this, but they should not be occurring to you as you think about getting into the business. If the idea of being only a trainer is insufficient for you, personal training is probably the wrong dollar to chase.

Lastly, and maybe most weirdly, you’ve got to be able to feel out and respect others’ boundaries. A lot of times, the bond people form with trainers is special. Friendships and romances have been known to happen. First of all, never date a client. If those feelings emerge and are worth exploring, move the client to another trainer immediately. If you can’t handle a lack of interest from them or if you can’t handle the tension of not reciprocating interest on their part, hand them off. Same with entrepreneurship. Eventually, someone is going to pitch an idea for a business. I'm not saying don't do it. I am saying don't do it with a client you want to keep.

But even with romantic or business partnership or whatever aside, it can be easy to just let a sense of friendship get in the way of the trainer relationship. If you can’t separate in your mind being their employee and being their friend into two separate buckets, training may not be the gig for you.

And not everyone wants their trainer to be their friend.You can’t take that personally. If every boundary hits you in some personal-rejection soft spot, training is not for you.

But don’t let that scare you. A lot of these things are things most trainers learn the hard way. You’ll get better at not letting these things bother you. I was five years into my career before I stopped feeling compelled to answer every text or email I got at any hour of the day or night. Training is a great opportunity to help people and meet people. But if you’re all heart and you struggle with boundaries and rejection, think about whether that needs to be challenged (in which case, go for it!), or respected (in which case this may not be the avenue for you).

You Want Schedule Control and Financial Freedom

So the last one was “yes! - with an important caveat,” and this one is kind of the opposite. This one is a myth… to start with.

Look, yes, there are trainers who make all the money they want, working whenever they want, from wherever they want. But (and this is hard to hear), the truth is this: they either earned that… or they stole it.

When you start out, with few exceptions, you will work where there are clients for you to work with. You will work when the clients are around to work, and you will earn whatever rookie trainers get paid at that location. Having as much availability as you can manage, not taking a ton of time off, and working for less money than you’d like and possibly less than you think you’re worth… those all come with the turf for the first couple years. You can mitigate them - in fact I coach young trainers to mitigate these realities - but there’s gonna be some of it. Certainly, the “I work two hours a week from a beach in Fiji and rich people throw duffel bags of money at me…” that’s not a day-one trainer.

I remember when I started, my commute was over 90 minutes each way. There were days I left my house before 5am and got home after 10pm, to accommodate as many sessions as my body and mind could handle. I was working at a box gym and making like $20 a session or something, some commission, and in between sessions I was just unpaid. So, within a few years, I was able to hang my own shingle. I had people prepared to be there when I said there was an opening, and I could charge $150-$200 an hour. But don’t get it twisted… it didn’t take four years to realize that I could charge more and work less. Those first few years are where I learned the skills that enabled the latter part of my career.

There were trainers that absolutely did not go at my break-neck intensity, and they did and are doing just fine. They like the “employee” pace, and are fine with unpaid time off or limited PTO. Their work-life balance is on-point, and they love their jobs. But if you want that beachside retreat lifestyle, you have to either grind your ass off to earn the right and ability to do that, or you have to start grifting, con a bunch of folks into working with a trainer that doesn't have that skills foundation yet. Don’t be that guy. DO be prepared to pay your dues. There’s worse things than having to treat your job as a job for a few years.

You Don’t Want a “Normal Job.”

This one is an easy, unequivocal “yes!” The one thing training is definitely not, is like any other job. You’re a rock star and a scientist. You’re a friend and a motivator. You’re a businessperson, a salesperson, a facilities and equipment and subject-matter expert, and so much more. Every day is a little different, and every day brings new and fun challenges. If the idea of spending your life in a cubicle filing TPS reports makes you a little sick, then you should look into personal training. It’s not for everyone, but if it’s for you, it’s the best job in the world.

Eric Mayle 4/18/26 Eric Mayle 4/18/26

fitness for martial arts

From the first time I saw a karate/kung fu movie as a kid that I loved martial arts. From the get, I knew… I wanted to do that. After a few years of obsessing, my parents were able to find a Taekwondo school in a nearby town. I got to start learning martial arts, and I had been correct. I loved it.

That said, it did not love me back. I simply wasn’t built for it. I was, erm… hefty. And my legs were short for my torso. And I was seemingly made entirely of Type I muscle fibers. Your boy was slooooow.

Also, I was homeschooled. Socially awkward, bookish, got along better with grown-ups than kids my own age, etc etc.

Despite holding no aces, I did have one strategic advantage. I fuckin loved martial arts. So, I did what people experiencing unrequited love are prone to do. I upped the dosage. I worked harder and obsessed more. Cannot have helped my adolescent weirdness, but it kinda worked at making me better at martial arts.

I was, like most 90s karate-weirds, into martial arts magazines. One in particular focused on cross-training, the then-controversial idea that by blending styles and disciplines, improvement and innovation could be had. That one was big into the up-and-coming sport of mixed martial arts. In reading the stories and interviews about those athletes, I came to realize that solidly 90% of them were doing exercise other than just martial arts to improve and augment their skills. The rest did something other than martial arts to help them recover, whereby missing fewer practices and workouts.

30 years later, we know that a lot of them were doing stuff “wrong.” And thank god they were. Ken Shamrock needed zero additional advantages to be scary. But at the time, the message was clear - I needed to start strength and conditioning training.

There you have it. A lot of people get into martial arts to improve their health and fitness. I got into health and fitness to improve my martial arts.

And as luck would have it, that would serve me well outside of martial arts, too. The “fitness” world is largely comprised of two camps. “Serious” athletes, and vanity lifters. But me, I’ve always been something else. I prioritize movement improvement for recreational athletes.

It turns out that most of us can’t - and shouldn’t - train like pro fighters or movie stars. We don’t have their needs, and we usually don’t have their gifts or resources. But this doesn’t mean strength and conditioning isn’t for us.

Quite the opposite, we probably get more out of it than they do. If you’ve ever heard of Pareto’s Principle, the famed 80/20 principle, it applies here. If not, it basically posits that roughly 80% of results are caused by 20% of inputs, give or take. Imagine that. 80% of how much stronger, faster, more injury-proof you’d be if you trained for results professionally, for a couple or three workouts a week.

Now, that 20% is huge. But that last 80% of work is way huger.

Thought of differently, if you get hit less, get less sore, get fewer aches-and-pains injuries, etc., you can train more. More style-specific training improves your technique, skill, etc. There’s a reason Shaolin monks developed those rock-hard bodies. It’s the ultimate training advantage.

And training this way will improve your life outside of martial arts. (Yes, even I eventually got a life outside martial arts). You’ll feel better, sleep better, have more energy, have fewer negative health outcomes, and look a little better, too. You can train to focus on any or none of these, but I’ve never heard anyone complain about experiencing them as a by-product of work they did anyway to improve their martial arts.

You surely don’t need a trainer to get some benefits from strength training. The 80/20 seems to be fractal. You get 80% of the benefits from just doing something or other, and so on. But in terms of time and results, that last 20% becomes huge here. Working with a trainer ensures that you’re spending the time that you need to be spending on strength and conditioning, not more and not less. And it ensures that you’re making the right exercise selections for you, etc. etc.

If you’re interested in working with a trainer who focuses on martial arts-focused strength and conditioning for recreational or amateur athletes… that’s me! I take a few such clients for online-based training. Shoot me a message, and if I have available slots we’ll schedule a call to see if we’re a good fit to work together.

Or, just follow me on here. Sign up for email updates, etc., and check me out at @ericmayletrainer on Instagram or Youtube. I’ll be posting stuff, from time to time, on how to train specifically for martial arts.

Without further ado…

Eric Mayle 4/18/26 Eric Mayle 4/18/26

the three pillars

Type in “Personal Trainers” on Youtube, and the first several pages of hits fall into three categories. 1) How To Make Your First Trillion Using My Patented System as a FITNESS COACH in 202X. 2) Are Personal Trainers Even Worth It? 3) What Most PERSONAL TRAINERS Get Wrong About (Whatever).

In light of those three categories, I don’t think it’s coincidental that the average personal trainer’s career is roughly 1-1.5 years, depending on whose statistics you believe. The fact is, even if we give ourselves a 100% margin of error, that’s still a freaky-high burnout rate. And if you’ve spent enough time in any box gym paying attention, you see the results.

In my 11+ years in the industry, I have been fascinated by what makes trainers decide to spend their professional time and energy elsewhere, and YouTube effectively gives us the answers.

They’re not making enough money, or they’re working way too hard for the money they earn.
They’re not sure they’re actually making a real difference.
They’re just not that good.

And here’s the painful part: none of these are usually their fault.

Trainers become trainers when they complete a basic course of study including riveting stuff like the Krebs Cycle and sometimes Sliding Filament Theory, then a bunch of legal stuff about how far you’re allowed to push nutritional guidelines, then making sure you can name the muscles.

All important, to be sure. I am not - nor will I ever - argue that training is “too smart” or “too nerdy” or whatever. Smarter = better 100% of the time.

But the fact is, that part’s not usually weeding people out. The courses are for sale. The tests you have to pass are for sale. As gatekeeping goes, it’s roughly as tight as a nightclub on a weeknight. If you aren’t a total putz and you have a little cash, you’re good.

Then you get a job, and this can be for any reason from “you look good working out” to “you have a slick personality” to “the local gym really needed to meet headcount goals. And if you’re a young trainer or not a trainer, you would be appalled to know how often “headcount” is the actual word used to describe training staff. Not talent or experts or “staff…” headcount. Like cattle.

I digress.

Then, you’re told “go out and talk to people and get some clients.” You receive limited and highly-variable support in this endeavor. Then you train them. Again, god-only-knows how much assistance you’re going to get in this process. And the clients will either like you and/or your work and keep hiring you for more, or they won’t and you can repeat the process all over again.

That’s what you have to survive to develop skill - let alone personality or fulfilment or business savvy.

We see it all the time: a young man who likes working out will get a cert, get a job, have a few great months on the back of having a great physique and a charming smile. He will get promoted to management on the back of those months, and then he will have a few bad months telling other trainers to just do what he did. This advice works as well as Henry Cavill telling you “if you like her, just ask her out.” He will scare off five or six trainers, before eventually deciding his true calling is in selling houses or insurance or whatever.

And honestly… whatever. I’m not trying to change that guy. I’m trying to help those five or six trainers he scared off. Because the reason his schtik didn’t work for them is that they’re either 1) unwilling or unable to work sleazy sales scripts, 2) not possessed of a great look or otherworldly charisma, or 3) trying to develop their skills instead of just selling out for numbers every time. Or some combination of the three.

I am here to tell you… you can succeed as a trainer, get great results for your clients and not work yourself to the bone, all while helping people you care about achieve results that matter (however you define those terms). I’ve seen trainers do it. It’s a road fraught with peril, but I’ve been fortunate enough to survive it and fascinated enough to see others survive it. I know what works, what doens’t work, and often why.

There are a few things you need to avoid, and a few things to make sure you do.

You need to avoid “niching down” by focus.

It’s fine to like working with powerlifters or new moms or whatever, but that’s still a huge niche and also weirdly specific for any one gym during the (maybe) 35 hours a week you see clients.

You need to niche down by becoming the niche.

That’s right, you are the niche. You are the common denominator. You have unique experiences, insights, abilities, weaknesses, etc., etc., that nobody else can copy. This doens’t help you as a “trainer,” but it gives you a crazy edge on the “personal,” which you’ll find is what people really pay for anyway.

You need to avoid sales systems.

There’s nothing directly wrong with many of them, except that they’re by definition impersonal (see above note), and unusually prone to having been developed by slick-talking con-men. We don’t want to be them. They don’t need systems because slick-talking cons come naturally to them. Those exist to con money out of you.

You need to develop your own sales process.

I could give you my exact sales “script.” It reads more like a flow chart. I can talk you through why I say what I say at every juncture, and why I believe it works. In fact maybe I will. But here’s the thing… it won’t work for you. Some of the principles might, and I would encourage you to take them and incorporate them. But if you try to be me, you’ll fail. Same as if I try to be you, I’ll fail. Again, “personal” is the game. What do you look for in a client? How do you approach demonstrating that you’re a good fit? How do you get them on your side? I was fortunate early-on that my bosses put up with a lot of experimenting on this front. My first year on the job, I had a two month period where I went 0-45 on converting sales opportunities. They straight-up told me, if that was 0-30, they’d have fired me. What kept me around was my tenacity, and the fact that I was trying hard when nobody else was.

Well, I had to, didn’t I? I wasn’t going to work to fuck spiders, as they say.

Regardless, I developed an understanding for the key points of a process. LEarned them so well, in fact, that I now struggle to even try to implement different processes. Mine closes at something like 70%. I’ll take that.

You need to avoid treating training like a job.

It’s a great job, I get it. Wear sweats to work, set your own hours, etc. etc…

You need to treat training like a career.

You’ll be shocked how far a little professionalism will take you. Dress neatly. Keep learning. Keep studying your craft. I don’t just mean exercise science (although certainly that, too). Take cues from the entertainment business, communications fields, psychology… everywhere. It sounds exhausting, but it’s actually fun after a while.

This whole screed has revolved around three points: good business, good skills, and a good sense of purpose. If you have them, you can have a lot of fun, make a ton of money, and do untold amounts of good in the fitness industry. If you don’t, you will be struggling to get by, struggling to get results, or struggling to understand what the hell you’re doing.

And you don’t deserve that from your career. Nobody does.

If you’d like more help figuring out how to have a great career as a trainer, be sure to subscribe to my email list, follow me here, on Instagram (@ericmayletrainer), on YouTube (@ericmayletrainer), or if you really want to go deep, message me for more information about my small-group mastermind where we dig deep and improve ourselves across all of these fields.

Eric Mayle 4/18/26 Eric Mayle 4/18/26

Allow me to introduce myself…

My name is Eric, and I’ve been a personal trainer for over 11 years now. 11+ years is a minute in many fields, but in fitness - where like 90% of careers don’t go two years - it’s really saying something.

Especially because at the most basic level, I don’t have a ton of the obvious advantages. I don’t have a killer physique, I’m not movie-star charismatic, I’m smart but not god-tier genius, and I started older than most people are when they quit.

And yet I’ve stuck around a dozen years while younger, slicker, better-looking, more athletic trainers have fanned out, flamed out, burned out, crashed out, or just otherwise gotten out..

It’s become sort of an obsession of mine. What puts a trainer on-track to make a career out of training, or what makes them less likely to get the results they need to feel like their time isn’ better-spent somewhere else?

It’s dovetailed nicely into another obsession… how to become the best-possible personal trainer I can be.

I’m an obsessive type, if you can’t tell. It’s my gift, it’s my curse…

As a kid, I was obsessed with martial arts. I watched movies, read books, trained and practiced every day, swapped VHS tapes with other karate-nerds (if you know, you know), and I read the magazines. That was actually where I started learning strength and conditioning techniques.

See, I wasn’t really born for martial arts, either. I was what they’d call a “chubby kid,” if they were polite. My legs were too short. I was slow. Slllooooooooow.

But hard work beats talent when talent don’t work hard, and if there was a harder-worker adolescent in my area, he wasn’t working on martial arts. So, I did the magazine exercises.

I joke that a lot of people get into martial arts to improve their health and fitness, but I got into health and fitness to improve my martial arts. It’s okay if you don’t laugh, it’s not a great joke. I didn’t care about aesthetics, really. I cared about moving better, recovering faster, and getting injured less.

In life, things don’t always go your way. For various reasons, making a career out of martial arts wasn’t in the stars. I went to school, joined the ministry, worked in politics, sold cars, did a little of this, a little of that. But the whole time, I stayed very interested in combat sports and combat arts, and I stayed fascinated by the role exercise could play in how I moved, felt, recovered… lived.

So when I got into the fitness business, I took to it pretty quickly because 1) I was used to playing from behind and making up ground with work ethic, and 2) It was fun! So I pored my time and energy into it, and am fortunate that I met the right people at the right times to enable me to make training a career. Or six. And counting.

Now, while I love being a trainer… it can be an embarrassing space to work in. We attract grifters, con-men, egomaniacs, divas, etc. Which is easy enough to ignore, except for this: they make it harder for good people who want to help people and make an honest living being decent human beings.

The cats and kittens that come in with a great look and a slick smile and a canned sales pitch all too often have a great six months swindling half their gym. Then they get into management, have a terrible six months telling their trainers “just do like I did, bro,” then crash out and go sell houses or tend bar or whatever. And look… I don’t care. But I do care that in those six months, they dishearten, take business from, and create stigma that has to be overcome by good trainers or potentially good trainers… the kind of trainers I want to help, the kind of trainer I’m fortunate to have become. People who love the art, craft, and science of training, not just the sales and marketing (or lack of regulation thereof).

I got to work with people who helped me find myself and be authentic in a profitable and beneficial way. Now, I want to be that for others.

Good trainers leave for 3 reasons. 1) they can’t develop their skills enough to become “good” at their job. 2) they can’t make enough money to justify the hours they’re dedicating to the job. Or 3) they don’t feel like they’re doing work that matters. It can be any combination of those 3, but I have yet to meet anyone who quits because of protein farts or wearing sweats to work. It’s almost always one or more of those three things.

I’m here to tell you, all that can be overcome. Even if you’re not the most ripped or charismatic. Especially if you’re not the most ripped or charismatic. Because the people who hire trainers don’t want to look at your abs or enjoy your smile. I mean you’ll get some of those but they’re not the ones you build a career on. The people you build a career on care if you can understand and empathize with their problems, and if you can help them get what they want out of their bodies - and their lives. If you can do that, you can have the career you want in fitness.

You can make a bunch of money and have control of your own schedule. You can put your head o nthe pillow every night knowing you made the world a better, healthier, happier place. And you can do it in a way that feels authentic and personal and fun.

If memorizing scripts and pushing cookie-cutter programs or weird pills and potions feels sleazy and fake, that's because it probably is! I’ve been you. I can help you.

If you’re certain your head will explode if one more frat boy tells you “your body is your billboard,” I have been you, and I can help you.

If selling 90-day “booty transformation” contests to would-be influencers seems like two full-time jobs' worth of work for zero emotional satisfaction… I have been you. I can help you.

That’s what I obsess over. How can each person become the best-possible version of the fitness professional they can be? How can we develop skills and make money doing work we believe matters?

If you want that… stick around! I’m working on severalformats to help put these ideas out into the world where they can help people. And if you want some personalized help from me… click the link wherever links usually are on whatever platform you’re seeing this on. If the link is active, I have slots available. I keep this limited so we can go deep, because I don’t want to put more useless tools in people’s pockets… I want to change their lives. My name is Eric Mayle… without further ado… let’s get started.