Josh Thursby
Founder & CCO · 21 May 2024 · 13 min read
Reviewed by
Adam Rhodes
Owned a gym for eight years before founding Create
For more information on our content creation process, view our Editorial Policy.
This article may seem counterintuitive given that we are in the business of personal training qualifications, but we want to paint a realistic picture of what you can expect as a personal trainer. We’ll also give you ways around some of these negatives and explain why some of them don’t actually have to be downsides at all, instead you can use them to your advantage once you’re aware of them.
So what are some of the reasons not to become a personal trainer?
Having a change of mind? Become a personal trainer in 7 steps
One of the perks you may be considering is the ability to choose your own hours and work flexibly, being your own boss. While this is true to a point, you need to be working when your clients want to see you. This is typically before and after work, and for some, at weekends.
This can mean some 5 am alarms to be up and ready for the first client at 6 am, you may then have another client from 7 – 8 am, but then everyone else is at work for the next 8-9 hours. You may have a client over lunch, but then the evening rush starts around 5 pm and you may have clients wanting to see you up to 9 pm.
This means you could have a 15-hour working day, during which you only actually see clients for around 6-7 hours. The split shift can be great if you have stuff you want to do during the day, or your family and friends are also available, however, unfortunately most people work 9-5, so while you’re off work, they’ll all be at work.
A perk of this split shift can be that it is a great opportunity to get admin and marketing work done, or maybe work on building an online coaching business if that is of interest to you. You have hours during the day that you can spend at your computer, driving your business forward or building your online coaching brand.
This is inevitable, and as uncomfortable as it might make you feel, it is important to set a clear cancellation policy from the start.
Yes, you want to be a bit flexible to keep your clients happy, but if you make it easy for people to cancel, they’re far more likely to do so.
Stuff happens, people can’t control train delays or traffic, or family emergencies, but more often than not a cancellation will come because they can’t really be bothered after a long day at work.
So to help avoid this, put a clear cancellation policy in place from the start that if a client misses a session without giving you a set period of notice, then the session is still chargeable. Most of your clients will pay for a block or a recurring monthly amount, so it is just a case of knocking it off how many sessions are owed, but for those that pay by the session, you need to stand firm and ask for payment.
We’d recommend usually going with an 8-12 hour cancellation policy, as that is enough notice for you to try and slot another client in, or make alternative plans, and it is not overly restrictive. 24 hours may feel a little too harsh to some clients, as anything can happen and giving 24 hours’ notice may not always be feasible.
You can also be as lenient as you want with your clients, once the policy is in place and they’re expecting to pay for the session, letting them off reflects well on you and is a great retention tool.
We’re in a fortunate industry where most people get into it because of a love for health and fitness. No one goes into finance (at least no one I know) because they love spreadsheets and numbers, they do it for the money.
Whereas with personal training, you get to join an industry you have a genuine passion for, you get to help other people, and if you do it right you can earn great money.
The more successful you become as a personal trainer, the more hours you work, and this can unfortunately have its downsides too. This often leads to burnout or a loss of passion for what you’re doing. In addition to losing interest in your work, it can also have a knock-on effect on what got you into the industry in the first place…training yourself.
When you’re spending 40+ hours a week in the gym training other people, it can become difficult to motivate yourself to train.
We are strong believers in putting yourself first to an extent. Make sure you prioritise fitting in your own training, or whatever it is you enjoy doing. This can feel counterproductive when the opportunity to earn another £40 arises, but in the long term it will be extremely beneficial.
There are two main options for a personal trainer, employed or self-employed.
If you go down the employed route there is an element of certainty around your earnings as you’ll have a fixed income with the opportunity to earn more from personal training on top. This can obviously still fluctuate depending on how many PT sessions you do, but at least you have the security of the basic wage.
You’ll also benefit from sick pay, holiday pay, pension contributions and other benefits of being on the payroll.
For self-employed PTs, none of the above applies. If you have a bad month for whatever reason, there is a direct hit on your bank balance. This can happen for any number of reasons, if a regular client gets sick or goes on holiday that’ll hit your income, or even worse, if you get sick, you’ll take a much bigger hit.
Holidays are something you need to plan for in advance, because not only do you have the added cost of being on holiday, you also don’t earn while you’re away.
The benefits of being self-employed can outweigh the employed route, though, and for most personal trainers this is the eventual goal. Once you’re built up a consistent client base, your earning potential is much higher, and one client getting ill is just one of many, so it doesn’t have such a significant impact on your income.
Furthermore, the flexibility that comes with being self-employed can be a great benefit. You don’t need to ask anyone for time off and you’re in control of your own destiny. Once you’re more established, you can start to dictate what times you’re available and won’t need to be at your clients’ beck and call.
This is a relatively modern phenomenon. I’m sure it has always been a thing, the feeling of not being good enough, but the name ‘imposter syndrome’ is relatively recent. It was actually originally developed as a concept in the 70s based on a study of high achieving women, who despite external validation of their achievements, lacked internal acknowledgement, feeling it was down to luck or others overestimating their achievements.
In our PT course, we discuss the phases of awareness. Stage 1 is like blissful ignorance; you don’t know what you don’t know, and this is people who don’t train or know anything about it. Stage 2 is when you start to become aware of the extent of how much there is still to learn, you realise how much you don’t know. Stage 3 is when you’re on the journey to mastering your craft and you’re starting to understand a lot of the things you previously did not know. Stage 4 is almost unattainable; it is when you achieve true mastery and know everything there is to know about your field.
Imposter syndrome tends to start setting in when you move from stage 1 to stage 2 when you start to realise how much there still is to learn. For most, this is typically soon after qualifying as a personal trainer. You’re perceived by others to be an expert because you are qualified as a personal trainer, however most Level 3 PT courses don’t prepare you fully for the real world of personal training (everything we’re discussing in this article). So you finish your qualification thinking they’ve taught you everything you need to know, and the reality is you’re only at the start of your journey as a PT.
As you further your knowledge and help more people on their fitness journeys, the lack of self-confidence tends to become less of a problem, and rightly so. Although in the beginning, you may not have been the expert you were perceived to be, if you continue your learning you are working your way towards mastery.
This applies to many industries and professions and is not a reason not to do something. Imagine every coffee shop owner decided not to open a coffee shop because there was already a load of coffee shops, we’d be stuck with Costa and Starbucks as the only options.
Yes, there are a lot of personal trainers, and the number of people qualifying is continuing to increase, but this does not mean there are too many. If there was no demand for personal trainers then people would not be pursuing it as a career. The reason so many people are going into it is because the fitness industry is growing so rapidly. More people than ever are focussing on their health and therefore the demand for gyms and personal trainers is increasing too.
Most gyms will not want to take on too many personal trainers, there will be a rough limit of how many trainers they want relative to how many members they have. So even though there are lots of PTs out there, you should be fairly confident that your place of work will not become overcrowded with competition.
Additionally, competition is what drives us to be better. Back to the coffee shop analogy, if Starbucks had a complete monopoly they could serve awful coffee and people would still go because it’s the only option. However, the rise of independent coffee shops forces them to be better and raises the standard of the industry as a whole. The same applies to personal training, if your competition is doing better than you then arguably you could be doing something better!
Your clients are paying a fairly hefty hourly rate to be trained by you, so to deliver a good service and provide value for money you need to be on form. Bringing your problems to work or being low on energy isn’t really good enough, you need to bring positivity and motivate your clients while you’re with them.
This makes it a fun and engaging job but can be very tiring. If you have had a bad day or you are tired, which happens to everyone, then motivating yourself to be upbeat and full of energy can be hard work. If you generate a great client base and have 5+ hours of coaching a day, it can become really tiring. As above, make sure you get the balance of work and “me-time” right, so you don’t burn yourself out.
Most people go into personal training because they love fitness and/or coaching. This is obviously essential and is still the biggest part of being a PT, however in order to coach lots of people, you first need to convince them to pay you for your services.
As a personal trainer, you’re effectively running your own business, even if you are working in an employed role. As a self-employed PT, there is more to do; finance, sales, marketing, admin and more. In an employed role, some of these are taken care of for you but you’ll still be responsible for building your own client base.
This is where the sales and marketing come in. From lead generation to consultations to retention strategies, you’ll need to master it all to do well as a PT.
Although this may sound daunting, it can also be very exciting, and furthermore, if you get good at it then the sky is the limit in terms of earning potential.
Before starting out you may not have heard of gym rent or splits on PT income, but you’ll get very accustomed to them. We’ve certainly had learners go through our courses that have had a nasty shock when they found out they have to give a cut of their earnings to the gym.
While this might sound unfair, you’re paying for 2 main things: access to their facilities and their members. The facilities cost a lot to install and maintain and by training your clients you’re adding to the wear and tear on the kit, so it’s only fair you pay a contribution towards that.
Secondly, access to the members is the key to your success. You could run your PT business out of your own garage and pay no rent, but then where would your customers come from? You’d have to grow your business through word of mouth, online advertising and any other means. However, with a gym you have a huge captive audience of your exact target demographic. Typically, at least 1000 members, all there to get fitter and healthier. Obviously, they will not all be interested in PT, but a percentage of them will be and you’re paying a cut to the gym to have access to those members so you can earn from them.
You probably have your own exercise preferences such as powerlifting, bodybuilding, running or whatever it may be. When you get qualified, you probably have dreams of helping others do what you do, pushing motivated athletes to reach new levels of athletic performance.
Unfortunately, the reality is that most people interested in PT are either beginners or have weight loss goals. Sure, there are those that have performance goals, but they’re probably going to gravitate towards more experienced coaches. So it’s important to adjust your expectations that you’ll be working mostly with “gen-pop” clients with pretty generic health and fitness goals.
This can still be super rewarding, helping someone achieve their goals is great regardless of whether they’re aiming for a sub 14-hour Ironman or losing a few pounds. As you gain experience and help more people achieve their goals, you’ll grow as a coach and start to attract more experienced athletes if that’s what you want to do.
This is one of the toughest things to get to grips with as a PT. You can only control the 1, 2 or maybe 3 hours a week that your client spends with you. Outside that time, for the other 165 hours a week, there is very little you can do to control what they do.
You can try to instil good habits with food diaries, exercise programmes, accountability tools and more, but at the end of the day, it is down to them if they stick to it.
This can make reaching their goals very challenging, which can be frustrating for a PT. You may feel it reflects on your ability as a coach if your clients aren’t achieving their goals, but ultimately there is only so much you can do. As you gain experience, you’ll become more adept at coaching behavioural change and adjusting lifestyle and exercise habits to help your clients stick to their goals, but this takes time to develop.
The purpose of this article was not to put you off becoming a personal trainer, quite the opposite. The intention was to give you a well-rounded and honest view of all the challenges of personal training and provide you with potential solutions and ways around these challenges that can help you turn it into the rewarding career you’re looking for.
Like any career, it has its challenges, but if you can deal with the irregular work hours and financial hurdle,s it can be a flexible and lucrative career choice doing something you love. If you need help deciding if it is the right career choice for you, you can WhatsApp us here to have a chat with our team.
Josh Thursby
Founder & CCO
Josh qualified as a personal trainer in 2008 and spent twelve and a half years training clients face to face, delivering 45 to 55 sessions a week at his peak. He co-founded Create and writes about the commercial side of the job.
Reviewed by Adam Rhodes, Owned a gym for eight years before founding Create.
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