Ah, the fitness industry. I recall a place where I spent nearly a decade of my life building my career. I am not sure if other people who look back at former industries they’ve worked in with as much disgust as I have for the fitness industry. I started out in the field for all the right reasons. I was a fat ass in college and was around 230 pounds when I stopped weighing myself. I lost a bunch of weight and thought, this would be kinda cool to help others lose weight too. So there began my journey into the fitness industry. There is so much that I wish I knew before I started. I’ll get into details, but I’d like to give a high-level overview of just how shitty being a personal trainer really is.
The Clients
When personal trainers are working with clients, they are really working. There is no hiding behind a computer screen, bullshitting with coworkers over coffee, hell there isn’t even any sitting down. Good trainers are on their feet, off their phones and engaging with their client usually 45-60 minutes at a time. Client after client. And if you want to make any money as a personal trainer you are training as many clients as you can. That’s a lot. And it takes a lot out of you. Clients are paying a hefty price for training and expect you to be 100% dialed in. Your energy is directly responsible for the quality of the workout they are getting. Your clients may empathize with you if you had a shitty night’s sleep or if you’re going through a thing your significant other, but that better not affect what they paid for and what they came here to do. You better put on your god damn happy face and give them all the energy you got. Trainers are expected to have a plan for each client’s workout, be enthusiastic the entire time and essentially get an unmotivated person motivated. Every client expects this, and they don’t give a shit if you just got done training four clients in a row, nor should they. It’s exhausting, really exhausting. One hour you are working with Sally Foo Foo Fucker who wants to lose 50 pounds but hates cardio and claims she can’t squat or lunge because her knees hurt. Good luck with that, Sally. After Sally is done, you have Wreck it Ralph who works his butt off when he’s with you only to pick up a box of Krispy Kremes on the way home. He’s all in for the 60 minutes he has with you twice per week, but the others 166 hours of the week he destroys any and all progress he made. And so you find yourself constantly trying to invent creative ways for Sally Foo Foo Fucker to lose weight or trying to drive it into Wreck it Ralph that he’s sabotaging his progress and you soon find out that all this devotion you’re pouring into people is mostly, well, ignored.
Side note: If you’re really overweight and you hate cardio and refuse to squat or lunge for whatever reason, you have a long road ahead my friend. More on that later.
It’s tough to stay motivated when you know deep down inside that, more than likely, your client is one of the 99% of clients who shows up for a few weeks and then falls off never to be seen again. Most of the time, they just got jolted into training by some bad news they received at the doctor’s office, a new year’s resolution, or maybe they are sick and tired of being sick and tired. Every trainer wants a success story. However, chances are, you are coaching and training a person who is not really in it to win it. But you take every client you can get because you want to make some decent money and just being at the gym for floor hours, if you’re lucky to have them, pays shit.
The Business Side of Personal Training
The very nature of personal training work is not conducive to a 40-hour work week and the hours suck. As a personal trainer, you work when everyone else is off. I was waking up at 4:30 am to train clients until 9:00am. Then, I would go back home for a few hours before heading back to the gym for the afternoon/evening crowd until from 4pm until 8 or 9 pm. Some clients wanted to work out Saturdays and because the only time you made a decent hourly wage was when training, you oblige.
I know zero trainers that train clients 40 hours per week. Zero.For one, its very rare for a personal trainer to have that many cleitns to train week in and week out and even more rare to keep that type of hustle up for 52 weeks a year. It just doesn’t happen. And even if they did have the opportunity to train 40 hours per week for 52 weeks per year that would be the most miserable, unhealthy, unhappy bag of human skin you’ll ever see. To make up the income gap for not training 40 hours per week, trainers work at 2 or 3 gyms to mix it up and diversify their exposure,and get access to different pay structures. Afterall, when trainers work at a gym the gym takes their cut from the hourly rate and that’s very rarely less than 60%. Trainers incorporate group training which can be more lucrative than the typical 1 on 1 session. Anything that helps make the most amount of money and reach the most amount of people while avoiding burnout. But the pay is not the only thing that sucks about not working a steady 40 hours per week. At most places, if you work there less than 40 hours per week you’re not considered full time. And in most jobs that means no medical insurance or paid time off.
Living the personal training lifestyle, what happens when you want to take a day off? Well mostly it means any time you need off is coming out of your pocket. There is no vacation hours. Who do you expect is going to pay you paid time off (PTO)? The clients? Hell no. Sally Foo Foo Fucker paid for 12 PT sessions and that’s what Sally Foo Foo Fucker is getting. There is no money left on the table for paid time off. The gym where you work 25 hours per week? They have no obligation to pay you PTO, you’re not a full-time employee. But even if you are lucky enough to be offered PTO, do you think your PTO rate is going to be your training rate? Probably not. If anything, it will probably be your shitty $8 an hour floor rate.
This same situation is true for getting hurt on the job. Trainers are active while they are training, and injuries happen. I have personally seen plenty of dumbbells dropped on feet, fingers crushed, exposures to sick people, etc. Maybe the gym you work at will cover an injury, but what if it’s at one of the gyms where you are an independent contractor? Or what if it’s a home client? Now you have to pay for treatment, much of the time with shitty medical insuracne if any at all, and any lost time at work due to that injury in time off without pay.
Not having a steady 40-hour work week makes getting benefits very rare, if not impossible in the fitness industry. Many gyms treat the trainers as independent contractors and as such you are responsible for securing your own health care. For those few trainers that have these benefits, they are working at a gym and working a mix of floor hours and personal training hours- nice for benefits and the such but not so nice for a decent paycheck.
The Long Term Outlook
It wasn’t until I found positions in fitness management where I was able to make a decent salary. It was nice for a while. I liked the fact that I was doing what I loved, was able to stay in shape, work somewhat regular normal people hours and make a decent living. However, after a few years of doing the same thing its human nature to ask yourself, “what’s next, where is this going, how do I continue to advance my career”? Most of my career options in the fitness industry seemed like lateral moves. I could go and manage this gym or manage that gym, but at the end of the day it all seemed the same.
In management my day to day had changed. I was doing a mix of personal training and manager stuff which was a nice change from just training people nonstop. I felt like I was actually using my brain to things behind the scenes rather than telling people to pick things up and put them down. Even with the reduction in personal training I was doing I grew tired of training people who just weren’t serious about getting in shape. I got in the business to help people lose weight and realize a better lifestyle. I didn’t care to work with geriatrics on strengthening their rotator cuff or helping people rehab from injuries. It just wasn’t fun. I was tired of giving passionate advice about nutrition and lifestyle change to people who were just visiting tourists in the world of fitness.
Meanwhile the employees who I was managing, who were living the crazy personal training lifestyle I was working not too long ago, would come and go. Some leaving for better personal training situations and others leaving the fitness industry all together. Look at any personal trainer’s resume who has been in the field for a few years and you’ll see more fitness centers and gyms on the list of previous employment than you knew existed in that area. Those that did stay with one gym for an extended period of time would constantly change their hours to cater to outside or home clients (these types of clients were the most lucrative because there was no gym taking their cut). How could I blame them? It’s a tough way to make a living and I totally understood. Additionally, they weren’t full time employees. Anyone in management can tell you that managers don’t have nearly as much influence over the hours their employees work when those are employees are part time vs. full time; especially when those part time hours aren’t set in stone and they are made at the will of when the client wants to work out.
The longer I stayed in the more anxious I grew. I wasn’t a spring chicken out of college anymore and I was basically a professional exerciser; and that’s how other employers saw me. I started applying for jobs in other career fields and began realizing that other hiring managers and corporate gatekeepers didn’t see me as a manager with experience in sales, leadership, writing reports, meeting deadlines, customer service, etc; they saw me as a personal trainer. They saw me as a guy who knew how to lift weights. Afterall, almost all of my industry certifications were in fitness and most of my experience was as a trainer. Changing job industries in your 30s and starting entry level is not ideal when this is the age when most people are accumulating wealth and starting families.
Fitness Certifications
My first $600 certification was a certified personal trainer course (CPT) through a local company in my hometown of Virginia Beach known as WITS, World Instructor Training Schools. My first job didn’t accept that certification, well shit. So, I chose one from the list that they did accept. My next $600 certification was through NFPA or National Fitness Professionals Association. After a few years in the industry I was noticing that NFPA was largely recognized only in the DC metro area. I realized that, eventually at some point, I would need yet another certification. But not in anything different; it still be the CPT certification, just a different name would back it. So, another $600 and a different but same certification; this time with NASM, the National Academy of Sports Medicine. NASM certifications are accepted almost anywhere and are nationally recognized. The irony of this was that my first certification, through WITS, was easily the most vigorous and intense. I went to a lecture one night per week and a practical one night per week. NASM was almost a joke as far as actually teaching anything. You got sent a book (now an ebook) and studied out of it for “X” number of weeks then signed up to take a ridiculously hard test at a testing site. I started to see how the education wasn’t as valued as the name on the certification. Even as a manager, I had applicants and employees who apply or work for me that had 4-year degrees from accredited universities in Kinesiology or Exercise Science yet none of that somehow mattered unless you had XYZ certification. Ridiculous. How some certifications that do nothing more than tell you to study out of there book and pass a test 6 weeks later is more valued than a bachelor’s degree is beyond me.
As for the certifications themselves, I get it. Every industry has their rite of passage to get through to see if you really want to get involved. For me, who didn’t have a degree in Exercise Science, the CPT course was good information and gave me a deeper understanding of the human body. However, much of what I learned and taught to my clients about how to get in shape wasn’t taught to me from a book. I learned it myself through working my ass off, losing weight, going to the gym and experimenting with different foods. My clients didn’t give a shit that the calf muscle involves the gastrocnemius and soleus muscle, they just wanted to look good in a bathing suit. Personal trainers have to renew their CPT certification every 2 years. I found many of the courses that were accepted as qualifying CEUs were issued by the same company who held the CPT certification. Interesting how that works. Furthermore, I found much of the information auxiliary courses to be the same bullshit packaged with a different wrapping paper. What some of these certifications were missing was new research. Cutting edge trends and new findings rather than the same old antiquated fitness advice that’s been given for years:
It’s all about calories in vs calories out, don’t weigh yourself every day, fat is bad, you need 6-11 servings of whole grain, etc.
The Nutrition Problem
I obtained an additional certification through NASM as a fitness nutrition specialist. It was a cerification on the list that would earn me credit towards renewing my CPT. Take it for what its worth, but I agreed with less than 50% of the material in the course. There was a large portion of the book devoted to vitamins and minerals and at the end of each chapter they would give examples of the best foods to get those nutrients. Guess what was at the top or near the top of every list? Cereal. Yes, cereal- the processed food with added chemicals, sugar and packaged with an infinite shelf life. Here was this book on nutrition, telling us that cereal was the best choice to get this vitamin or mineral in our diet. And the nutrition guidelines in this book were based on the USDA’s myplate. If you want to know just how misguided the food pyramid is or myplate is, don’t ask a government official or even a doctor for that matter. Find someone who is lean, fit and in shape and ask them about their diet. I guarantee is will not consist of 6-11 servings of whole grains or other carbohydrates per day.
This is a big problem with the nutrition business. Because of the ethical considerations, nutrition trials are difficult to pull off and difficult to fund by impartial 3rd parties. They are often funded by the very people selling the food they want you to eat. Nestle (yes, the company known for making chocolate) funds a lot of the research, but so does the dairy industry, the oatmeal industry, the sugar industry, the list goes on. Do you think these organizations are going to fund a study that makes their product look bad? Not a chance. Check out this telling read by The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/dec/12/studies-health-nutrition-sugar-coca-cola-marion-nestle. To put it lightly, I was disgusted by the bullshit these certification companies were selling. I would never advise anyone to eat cereal as part of a healthy diet. Sure, they contain some nutrients, but the bottom line is that cereal is a processed food. Its packaged carbohydrates with flashy infographics saying things like: “heart healthy”, “part of a balanced diet”, “reduced sugar”. The list goes on.
Summary
I’ve rambled on about the issues with the fitness industry, but please don’t take my experience as the experience of all. There are fitness opportunities out there that circumvent a lot of the issues I brought up. Personal trainers are passionate people, after reading this you can safely assume that personal trainers didn’t get into the job for the money. And I know people who seek out personal training or are getting started on their fitness journeys mean well. I am also certain nobody bought an expensive personal training package with the forethought of quitting. I am still very passionate about fitness and I am lucky that I have a job that encourages physical fitness and well being without the burden of trying to make a living trying to get others to be just as passionate as me.
