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.