Top Tips For Succeeding As A Personal Trainer

If you're craving a career change and want to find a way to monetize your love of all things exercise, becoming a personal trainer is a win-win situation. After all, in doing so, you can:

• Become your own boss, meaning you have complete control over your schedule and work/life balance.
• Increase your earning potential.
• Share your love of fitness with others, having a positive impact on their lives.

Photo by Jonathan Borba on Unsplash

However, this is an incredibly competitive industry, meaning that you have your work cut out for you if you want to achieve long-term success. With that in mind, here are some top tips that you can use to succeed as a PT!

• Ensure that you're fully qualified. In order to grow your client base, you need to find as many ways as possible to showcase your expertise as a fitness professional, and qualifications are a great way to do this. After all, while your passion is admirable, it does not necessarily mean that you're cut out for training others! If you aren't sure where to get started, companies such as The Fitness Group run a wide range of industry-leading PT courses, whether you're interested in targeting a specific niche or are looking for more general training.

  In addition to this, you should always keep your eye out for new learning opportunities that will allow you to enhance your skill set or elevate the level of service that you are able to offer your clients. After all, doing so will allow you to establish yourself as a leader within your industry.

• Choose a niche audience. Choosing a niche audience can also help you to succeed as a personal trainer, as it reduces the amount of competition you are facing. As such, the more specific you can be, the better. For example, you may want to focus on working with newbies who have never so much as stepped foot in the gym or those recovering from injuries.
• Develop basic business skills. Succeeding as a PT is about more than helping clients to lift heavy weights or improve their cardiovascular health. You also need to know how to run a business, especially as you begin to grow your client base. As such, you should be sure that you understand the ins and outs of running a business before getting started, whether that's marketing or budgeting. The more business savvy you can be, the easier it will be to grow and ensure that you're earning as much money as possible.
• Use social media to grow your business. Believe it or not, marketing your business doesn't have to be a nightmare. In fact, it can be as simple as posting content on social media. After all, this allows you to then promote your business to a wider audience, which is great news if you're offering both online and in-person training sessions.

  When posting on social media, try to present yourself in a position of authority by posting a wide range of content. For example, this could include client progress photographs, videos of your own workout sessions, tips and tricks, or even videos in which you break down common exercise myths. This kind of varied content will increase the amount of views/engagement you receive, which can make it easier to connect with a potential client.

• Find as many ways as possible to support your clients. Finding as many ways as possible to support your clients can also help you to succeed in the PT world, as it means that they're likely to get the best results off the back of this. For example, in addition to tailoring their workouts and correcting their form, you may want to encourage them to use fitness apps to accurately track their workouts or calorie intake.
• Provide your clients with nutritional advice. Whether your clients are looking to build muscle or lose weight, you can ensure that they get the best possible results moving forward by also providing them with nutritional advice and guidance. This is particularly important if you'd like them to remain in a calorie deficit or enter a bulking phase, which they may find difficult if they are new to this kind of approach to dieting.

  Providing them with detailed nutritional advice is also far better than encouraging your clients to participate in fad diets. After all, while the former may help them to lose weight quicker, it is not as sustainable as making long-term positive changes to their diets.

• Ensure that you are pricing your services correctly. One of the biggest challenges you'll face when working as a personal trainer is knowing how much to charge for your services. After all, this can change depending on a variety of factors, from your own experience and qualifications to the level of support that each client needs. As such, you should be sure that you get the pricing right. One way in which you can achieve this goal is by researching the average price for a PT of your experience and skills and building your pricing model around this.

  You can also offer discounts for long-term clients if they are willing to pay for a certain number of sessions upfront. This encourages loyalty and often brings forth a positive ROI, even if it may seem as though you're accepting a “lower fee” to begin with.

• Offer free trial sessions. If you're struggling to build your client base, then running a promotion where potential clients can participate in a free session is a great way to rectify this. This is because it provides them with more of an insight into what working with a personal trainer is like while also giving you the opportunity to connect with them on a deeper level. Ideally, these sessions should be around half an hour in length in order to ensure that you are spending your time as wisely as possible.
• Take on feedback from your clients. Taking on feedback from your clients can also help you to succeed, especially if they feel as though there are areas where you may be falling short. While receiving criticism can be daunting, it provides you with the insight you need to excel moving forward! For example, it could be that they feel as though their workouts are too cookie-cutter, meaning you need to ensure that they are as personalized as possible moving forward.

  Any positive feedback you receive can be used in your marketing efforts. For example, you may want to attach a client testimonial (video or text) to their progress pictures, as this gives viewers yet another reason to reach out and work with you moving forward. Generally speaking, the more positive reviews/testimonials you receive, the easier it will be for a potential client to put their trust in you and book a session or hire you as their trainer.

• Develop a healthy work/life balance. When first starting out as a personal trainer, you may feel as though you need to take on as many clients as possible. However, this can quickly lead to you developing a poor work-life balance, especially if you're at the gym from morning to night. As such, you should set yourself strict working/operational hours and avoid exceeding them as much as possible. For example, if your clients tend to prefer to work out in the evenings after work, you should take the mornings off so that you can curate a more balanced work life.

In short, there are many steps that you can take that will ensure that you succeed as a personal trainer.