Success Tips For a Personal Trainer

Lets talk about how personal trainers can increase their income and make more money as a personal trainer regardless of where you work. The pay scale of a personal trainer can vary greatly depending on the socio-economics of the gym where the trainer works along with the trainer’s qualifications.

Personal Trainer Talk

But generally trainers who work for a gym or a fitness club earn less in a year than the trainers who are successfully self-employed. Some one who is just starting off in the personal training business may not have a lot of say in negotiating his / her starting salary but one has to understand that the starting salary is as the name suggests – just a starting point. As you gain more experience and increase your value in the market, you can demand and receive more money whether you are paid an hourly rate or a salary. Salary from personal training clients is just one part of the jigsaw.

Boost Your Value As Personal Trainer

Continuous Education

Just like clients who pay for personal training, personal trainers are also not all cut from the same cloth. Do remember, that the ones who are at the top of the game in the personal training business have a good education (College Degree + MBA + Certification) behind them apart from experience. If you are struggling in your personal training career take a hard objective look at your education and personal development. Education imparts wisdom, problem solving skills and real word experience in furthering one’s career and meeting one’s goals and objectives. Are you doing enough for personal development? If not, you are making a big mistake. The importance of education for success can never be overestimated. Make it a point to read at least an hour every day, Monday Through Friday or catch up on weekends if you are not able to find the time during weekdays. Read scientific books, magazines, journals, blogs to books on business, entrepreneurship and sales. The more learned you become about conducting business the more confidence you will develop and the more you will apply your learning to your work as a trainer and eventually the more successful you will become. It doesn’t matter whether you are a young trainer still employed at a gym or clubhouse or you are doing personal training on your own. As your business grows, your seniors will start to groom you for more senior roles at the club. You can start training some of the newly hired trainers and continuously gain respect from the people whom you work with. And all this because you have taken time off to educate yourself and continue to do so!

Remember nothing in the world can replace education. It is up to you and your initiative to take advantage of the incredible wealth of resources that are available to people today. Use the power that education gives you for a successful career.

Training Takeway

Continue to read, learn, and educate yourself to boost your value both to your employer and your clients. Remember that educating yourself about business, as well as training, will help you become successful.

Prove Your Worth As a Trainer

The next thing that you as a trainer can do is to increase your value by getting your employer to recognize this. How do you do that? By making yourself indispensable! You want to make your company want you more than you want your company! The best way to become indispensable to your employer is to get to know your clients well and help them reach their goals. You know you are doing a great job when members of the club where you work come to you with complaints or concerns to pass on to the management. Not only have you proved yourself to be a trusted and dependable person to these members but you have also become a resource for market-level research for your seniors. In short, you can pull out information from the floor when you are out there and pass it on to your bosses. Another great way to show your dedication is to offer to serve as a mentor to fellow trainers.

Of course you will have to ask for permission from the management in order to do this. Providing newer trainers with informational training sessions provides an extra benefit to the organization. It also helps to create a hierarchy with you at the top of the pyramid. Also remember that offering consistent and honest feedback to your seniors about clients and suggestions can also go a long way in establishing your value. Many trainers become worried that mentioning anything negative to a manager will reflect poorly on them but that is not the case at all. When you are honest and proactive about your job, you make your manager’s job easier. In fact, if you become proactive about suggestions and improvements that can improve the overall quality of the workplace, you will in all probability be thanked for being upfront and candid and giving your seniors information that they 0therwise would not have been able to access.

Let us Encapsulate the 3 Keys For Success in the Fitness Industry:

Be Knowledgable

Every thing starts with a deep knowledge of the science of exercise or yoga or whatever discipline you have chosen to train others. If you are not aware of what you are doing, not only will your clients not get proper results but you may also end up hurting them in the process. You must be an ardent student of the craft and constantly seek out and acquire more knowledge. Read the research. Go to conferences and seminars. Further your education. Learning must never stop no matter how much schooling you have had.

Communicate Well

Good Communication skills are of utmost importance if you want to succeed not only in your career but also in life. No matter how learned you are, you cannot be a good personal trainer unless you communicate well with your clients. The number rule for effective communication is to LISTEN. Learn to be a good listener and you are halfway there. The other half is to know how to motivate your client and respond in a way that will inspire your client to outperform and go beyond his / her capacities.

Have Confidence

When you train a client, his success in achieving his goals depends on a large extent to the confidence that you exude. If your client senses that you are not confident in your approach you are finished! Every little thing that you demonstrate, say or do must be done with a great deal of confidence and self-belief. Confidence is not a natural ability in most people and has to developed. But those who do have innate confidence tend to go very far in life. It is due to this that a lot of bad personal trainers become very successful because they ooze confidence and good personal trainers do not become successful because they lack this crucial ‘success’ skill! But there is no reason why a good trainer cannot develop confidence because the world needs more good apples and not bad ones!

Have a look at the video below for more tips and remember – personal training is not just about making lots of moolah! Most trainers that I know of enjoy the fact that they can make a positive and meaningful difference to another human being’s life and that is reward greater than anything that money can buy!

Tania Verma

Tania Verma is the co-founder of Wellintra Fitness and an avid Yoga and Martial Arts Fitness Trainer and Practitioner. Tania lives in Mumbai and New York City.