Hi LWL - I know this came up on the weekly thread before, and I wasn't the only one interested, so I thought perhaps a separate topic would be nice. I've read about the different certification options, etc. but I guess I'm wondering about more basic questions - for those of you who do this, how do you like it? What are the upsides and downsides? What kind of clients do you tend to have? What kind of person do you think makes the best PT? What do you wish you had known when you got started? Do you make a decent living (or work part-time, or....)?

Thanks for any replies!

Hi Laura! Being a personal trainer seems to mean being insanely busy so if you can give me until the weekend, I'll be happy to answer your questions (which all are GREAT questions, BTW!) I had eight appointments yesterday and six today and am home hurling groceries in general direction of the frig before I race back for the night shift. I guess I didn't know how darn BUSY I'd be before I started!!!

Back later.

Great questions, Laura. I'm looking forward to the answers, too

Actually I am too, since there is a real scarcity of, um, more life-seasoned trainers in my area. Actually, our gym has only one "real" trainer, a 30ish guy, who's very nice, but I've watched him train women and he's totally not my style. The only others we have are just employees who go around and show you how to work the machines, and hand out standard work-out sheets. Those of us who are more mature, heavier, and female, are kind of out of luck. So I guess I'm more interested in learning for myself and not with the immediate thought of becoming a trainer.

... I don't know, Pat, sounds like you have a client base ready for you ... my goal is to work with women over 40 who are obese or morbidy obese and give them their quality of life back. Want the Northern Lights branch??

I'm feeling pretty negative about what I do right now, so maybe this isn't the best time to answer...but as Meg said, I don't have much time.

I'm very busy, but never in a block of time when I want to be busy. I could easily book clients from 5am until 9am, then 4pm to 8pm every day and all Saturday morning. I have a family and don't want to work those hours. My compromise is that I work 2-3 evenings a week, my earliest client is 7:30am and I only take 2 clients on Saturday mornings.

Do I like it? Well enough that I just recertified so that I can work at this for another two years , but to be honest I'd have to say it really depends on the client. I have a few clients that I dread: I care about their fitness far more than they do, they are consistently late or don't show up at all (most of the time they get charged, but it still annoys me), they whine, complain and act like I'm forcing them to do something they don't want to do. Luckily, that's a very small minority!

The upside is the great clients- the ones who really want to be there, who look forward to their session, who want to achieve their goals. Even if those goals are as seemingly mundane as staying sane and staying in good enough shape to play with her kids and carry the dog food, as one of my favorite clients phrases it. I really look forward to working with the clients who I can help because they want to be helped, who are interesting people in general, or who I "click" with. It's also nice to have a free gym membership, access to all the toys and some say in equipment purchases, general training modalities and gym policy. Keep in mind that I work for a very small, non-chain gym.

The pay stinks. The gym gets slightly more than 50% of what my clients are charged. At this point, I could probably make it as a "home trainer" on my own, but I like the gym environment. I spend a lot more time at the gym than I get paid for. I couldn't support myself this way. Very few gyms offer benefits.

I train a range of client types, but the majority of my regulars are middle aged and older women. I do a lot of the rehab work, because the other trainers are afraid of it. I also get ALL of the overweight, menoupausal women, and most of the older men. I have one young female figure competitor who I train, and one young male wheelchair competitor. He is very hard to train, and it's a full body workout for me.

The biggest surprise for me was how much "mental health" therapy I would be providing. You need to be a good listener without taking too much home with you, because sooner or later almost every one of my clients has been in my office in tears (male and female) telling me about marriage problems, addicted children, spousal abuse, health problems, and other serious tales of woe. I really didn't expect this because when I trained with a trainer (my boss), I WORKED and we didn't get very personal in our between-set chit chat. Maybe it's just me? I dunno.

Lastly, you have to be able to sell yourself and your services without either being obnoxious or too shy. At most gyms, you only get paid if you are with a client, so if you can't sell your services you won't last very long. I've also found that to do that, I need to be in far better physical condition than just being in good shape for my age....think four to six weeks out from show ready. You also have to be able to do anything that you are going to ask a client to do. If I want a client to do a one legged squat or a one arm pushup on a stability ball, I have to be able to demo how to do it. That doesn't mean that you have to be able to do 50 chin ups- but I think you have to be able to do two and look like you could do quite a few more No matter how much a trainer knows, from what I've seen clients won't buy from someone who doesn't look like they walk the walk.

The age factor is a big question mark in my mind. I have several clients who say they never would have stuck with it if they'd initially met with a young "never been there" trainer. On the other hand, I interviewed for a job which I'm sure I didn't get because of my age.

Mel

Wow, Mel, that was a very interesting point of vue, I can't wait for Meg to get some time, I want to hear her view too... I have a feeling that they won't be too much different. You just gotta love what you do ...

Mel, thanks for the great post, very informative. I appreciate any input from anyone whenever they get around to it!

Yes that was informative. I have been toying with the idea of becoming a PT myself. I sitll have a ways to go in my own journey but I'm starting to look into the material to help me pass the certification. After reading your post Mel I'm not sure that I would make a good trainer as I do have limits with a bad back. I will just have to play it by ear and see how I progress with my own training. Thanks for your time.

I like this thread too. As some of you know, I have been thinking about becoming a PT for some time now too, or working with obese people as a dietician. I haven't decided yet, because here in France the idea of hiring a PT hasn't caught on yet so I would probably starve...

Lieke

Sure Ellen - like the Northern Lights analogy too. Sounds like Mel's gym is very busy overall. None of the ones I've been to here are that busy - or maybe it's just the time of day I'm there. In Anchorage I did have to sign up for and such, and some of the classes got pretty full, but I've never seen many trainers with clients, even at the bigger ones. Anchorage does have a couple of Gold's which I've never been in, and maybe they're different.

My gym is actually very small compared to Gold's or Balley's where Meg works. The classes are never full, except for the evening spinning classes, and I've never seen all the cardio equipment in use at the same time, ever. We get a different population flow throughout the day, as do most gyms. 5-8am are the gung-ho, before work crowd. Some lifters, lots of cardio folks. Two trainers book solid during those hours. From 8 until 3ish we get the stay at home moms, lots of retired people, and the self-employeed. There is a huge, wealthy over-55 community near here and they tend to use the gym from about 9-1. 3pm is "testosterone time" Our head trainer and his buddies workout from 3-4, along with the unemployeed highschool and college athletes who are home for the summer. I usually start my afternoon sessions at 3, or train with the big guys At 4, the afterwork crowd arrives, and it's truly a mixed bag: from teenagers doing 5 minutes on the elliptical, 1 set of curls and a hundred crunches, to overly juiced bodybuilders. And everyone in between! All sizes, conditions, outfits, genders (we aren't sure about a few ) and smells
I have no idea who is there from 8pm to 11 because I'm NOT!

There are times during the day when there may only be two or three people there and two of them are trainers. That's usually when I'm doing my workout and frantically looking for someone to spot me on a bench press.

Mel

Ah, maybe I should check out the gym during work hours sometime. I'm usually there after work, 5 ish. Occasionally early mornings, 6 ish, and sometimes Saturdays at all times. They're closed on Sunday, holidays and school snow days It's a family run business and to give them credit, they are way better than the last people who owned it as to cleanliness and upkeep of the machines. But, when I ask about trainers, I only get referred to the guy, Brian, or one of young gals saying "what do you need, I can show you how to use the whatever." I'm thinking that the next time I get to the states, I'll try to fit in a session or two (depending what I have for time) with a trainer. I was feeling a lot of gym envy until I was at my BIL's in central Maine and went to theirs. OMG - holes in the carpet, cheap and worn out equipment, and scary locker rooms.

I've always enjoyed the gym I go to but I'm starting to think that I am really lucky. It is female only and has certified trainers who are employees of the gym and available at no charge the members. I change my program every 4-6 weeks and always have about a 20 minutes session explaining my goals, time restraints, etc. and then they create a routine specfically for me. They stay with you the entire first workout, and are available as needed for all subsequent workouts. There are a couple who have been hired as personal trainers by a few of the members but I haven't had an instance yet when I needed that kind of attention.

Best of all, the facilities are well kept, we have plenty of equipment that is specifically sized for women, a great variety of classes, free childcare, etc. Plus, they've just broken ground on their newest location which is supposed to be the largest women's only gym in the country (of course, I don't know that there are a lot of women's only gyms to begin with but it looked good on flyer!).

Not that any of this has anything at all to do with becoming a persnal trainer. LOL

I’m finally able to sit down and give your questions the attention they deserve, Laura. They’re all insightful questions and I give you a lot of credit for wanting to take a realistic look at the job instead of being dazzled by the ‘glamour’ of being a personal trainer. Sadly, we have a steady stream of trainers who last about three weeks due to unrealistic job expectations.

OK, I’ve worked for a Ballys for about six months now, so my gym is very different from Mel’s –- big corporation, huge membership, multiple layers of management -- but our experiences are remarkably alike, so perhaps it’s like this throughout the personal training industry?

First of all, despite any comments that I may make in this post, I love my job and probably would do it for free (but don’t tell my boss ). So I don’t have any regrets about becoming a PT and plan on doing it for a long time. But the realities of personal training are very different than what I imagined, even though I had worked with a PT for a year, am friends with a bunch, spend lots of time around them before I got certified, and thought I knew what I was getting into. I’m going to highlight several areas of ‘things I wish I have realized’ …

Selling – Personal training is a business. The bottom line is selling your services and making money for your employer. My gym doesn’t care who’s the best trainer – what they care about is who sells the most training each month. My boss has a white board on the wall in his office with all our names listed and monthly quotas of units and dollars for each of us and a running total of how much we’ve sold that month. The pressure to sell and generate income is omnipresent and stressful.

We aren’t handed clients – we have to go out and find our own or else we’re very quickly out of a job. Consequently, you have to be a salesman for yourself, which was very difficult at first for me. I thought being a PT would be all about training, but to a large extent it’s all about selling. I don’t have any prior experience with sales and felt really weird at first but am becoming more confident now that I feel that I can truly offer value for my services. But it took me a good two months to even begin to develop a technique and generate sales. I’m still extremely low key compared to some of the guys but it’s working for me now. So be prepared to be a salesman.

Pay – as Mel says, it stinks. More than half of what we charge a client goes to Ballys. The corporation gets its money up front but we trainers are only paid per session redeemed. So if someone cancels at the last minute, you’re not paid. You’re also not paid for all the gaps in your schedule or the work you need to do outside of the gym to prepare. It’s disheartening when I get my paycheck and I realize how hard I’ve worked for so little money. Honestly, I’m not in it for the money, so I’ll continue but you definitely couldn’t support a family as a PT, at least in my gym.

Erratic Scheduling – People want to work out when they’re not working, so the prime times for training are the early morning shift and after work that Mel was talking about. As a result, when you’re a PT, you’ll be working when everyone else isn’t because it’s awfully hard to find those lovely middle of the day clients we all dream of. My schedule is pretty much bits and pieces throughout the day – here’s a typical day from this past week: appointments at 7:30 am, 9:00 am, 1 pm, 2 pm, 4:00 pm, 5:00 pm, 6:30 pm, and 7:30 pm. Keep in mind that I’m only paid for sessions, so the hour and half hour gaps are unpaid but there’s not enough time to go home.

But that’s not a bad day – a bad day is four hours of appointments in a row with no breaks. I can do three hours without a rest, but four is really pushing it. A client gets an hour session, so there’s barely time to run to the bathroom between clients, let alone eat or sit down. It’s tough to do that for more than three hours at a time.

Appearance – I wish it weren’t this way, but being a PT means being judged on how you look. I was surprised to discover that clients don’t care much about your credentials, brains, or experience – they evaluate you based on your appearance. They want to look like you and will tell you that. So you are a walking billboard for your services and, as Mel says, you’re expected to personally walk the walk.

In my gym, all the PTs are in fantastic shape – many are bodybuilding or figure competitors. None are even remotely overweight. I’m 5’4”, around 140 pounds, in the teens in BF% and wear size 4 and am still the chunkiest female trainer by far. I probably get away with it only because I’m 50. Our uniform shirts are skimpy little red T shirts that wouldn’t work for someone who was even a little chubby. Being extremely fit is a prerequisite for the job, at least in my gym, and an overweight or out of shape trainer would never be hired. I’m not defending it, but that’s the reality, at least where I work.

Odds and Ends – this is getting long, so just me just add a few more things that I was surprised at –

* I spend a lot of time outside the gym prepping for workouts. I do them all in advance on my computer and spend most of Sunday getting ready for the week.

* It’s an exhausting and physical job. Think about all the exercise demo’s and changing weights and being on your feet for hours, plus I do abs and some shoulders along with my clients (hey, it’s a sneaky way to get my abs done and they like it!)

* Ditto on the counselor function. Many of my clients are quite emotionally needy and that can really suck the energy out of you.

* The job is draining. It takes a lot of energy to completely focus on someone for an hour, then bam! here comes the next appointment and it’s time to regroup and totally focus on someone else. Remember, there aren’t breaks between clients.

* In my gym, being a PT is like running your own business. My boss doesn’t care what I do so long as I’m generating $$$. I make my own schedule and can do things my way, which I really like. So I can do things like my own weight loss journal and handouts for clients. I like the independence but it could be hard for someone looking for a little more direction or guidance about what to do. It’s very much sink or swim where I work - many are hired but few survive.

Whew – sorry this turned out to be so long! I could go on and on but will stop but please feel free to ask questions if any of this wasn’t clear.