Top Tips For Becoming A Personal Trainer

Top Tips For Becoming A Personal Trainer : Stuck in a 9-5 rut? Want to combine your passion for fitness with making a real difference in people’s lives? Then completing your certification for personal training and becoming a personal trainer is a great career choice for you!

As a fitness enthusiast, you may have already undergone a personal training course and are now wondering how to make a successful business out of your personal training. Setting yourself up for success in this field requires determination and dedication. As a personal trainer, you’re essentially working for yourself and will need to combine your skills as a PT with some business and marketing know-how.

In this article, we’ll cover everything you need to become a successful personal trainer.

Finding a niche

One of the downsides of the fitness industry is that there is a lot of competition, particularly when it comes to personal trainers. If you want to make a successful business, you may want to consider specialising in a particular area of fitness to stand out from other PT’s in your area.

Finding a niche as a personal trainer depends on your interests and the type of clientele you want to work with. For example, do you have a keen interest in health & nutrition? Then you may want to specialise in helping people to lose weight. Or perhaps you enjoy working with older people and can look at helping them to increase their fitness and mobility? Other niche areas include:

Training professional athletes
Working with people with disabilties
Training young children or teens
Training new mums or prenatal clients
Group fitness training

Specialist personal trainers may stand a better chance of gaining clients and helping them to achieve their goals than PT’s who have a more general approach to their training.

Getting work as a personal trainer

As a registered personal trainer, you can get work as an employee of a business or as an independent contractor. You can also run your own independent business. This opens up a lot of opportunities and broadens your chances of gaining a steady client list as a personal trainer.

If you’re just starting out, then you can find opportunities to grow experience and success as a personal trainer by getting work at:

A commercial gym: Popular gym franchises such as Planet Fitness, Snap, Anytime and Gold’s Gym are always hiring personal trainers.
Corporate gyms: You can find work as a personal trainer at a business that offers corporate wellness packages.
Sporting clubs: Local and professional sporting clubs often hire personal trainers to train their athletes.
Wellness centres: Many allied health centres offer personal training for clients who are undergoing rehabilitation or looking to improve their strength after illness or injury.
Community gyms: Check your local community centre to see if they hire personal trainers.
Cruise ships: Most popular cruise ships offer personal training for their guests and employees.
Resorts: All-inclusive resorts often hire personal trainers or fitness instructors to teach classes to their guests.

If you want to find work as a personal trainer, try looking online, attending trade shows or by approaching gyms directly in-person or via their website.

Marketing your services

One of the best ways to strengthen your personal training business and find success as a PT is by marketing your services.

In this modern age, having an online presence is key to attracting and retaining new clients. Social media is a great place to start (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, etc.) as it allows you to reach a wider audience. It’s also a great idea to have your own website that highlights your experience as a PT, your qualifications, your specialties and rates. Using a Google My Business listing will also help to increase your local audience reach and give potential clients a way to find and contact you.

As a personal trainer, your brand is YOU! Therefore, think of ways you can market yourself in a way that will attract the clients you want. For example, you may decide to upload a couple of workouts on YouTube. You may offer a workout program tailored to growing the glutes or improving flexibility or getting 6-pack abs. You can also look at providing package deals and discounts along with referral programs to increase your client list.

Building client relationships

To become successful as a personal trainer, you only need to look at delivering the best results to your clients. This doesn’t have to be just physical results, either. Building rapport with your clients and approaching their fitness journey in an understanding, patient and empathetic manner will help you to grow a loyal client base. A lot of times, personal training clients are struggling with motivation, mental health, boredom, injury, stress and any number of issues that can prevent them from committing to their fitness journey. If you treat your clients with kindness and create the right atmosphere for them to enjoy working out as much as possible, then you’ll find that your clients will continue returning – and referring their friends, family and colleagues to you, too!

Being a personal trainer is incredibly rewarding. While it may take some time to grow your business at the start, you will find your hard work paying off in the long-run. Following the above tips will help prepare you to be successful in your personal training career and to reap the benefits of having a job within the fitness industry. As you become more experienced and successful, you’ll find new opportunities emerge that can help you take your career to the next level.