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Kyle Aaron
Active member
I work basically Sun-Thu at a commercial gym in the mornings, and at my own place in the afternoons and evenings.
Just think, who can pay for PT? people with full-time jobs, usually 9-5. So they want to train 6-9am and 6-9pm, that's where 80% of PT sessions happen, only 20% happen during business hours. So if you want to be a real gun of a PT, you need to do split shifts, come early morning and evening.
In practice it usually goes 0600 to 0730 or 0800, with all the urban professionals getting in their workouts before heading off for shower etc and work. Then there's a quiet time until 0900 when the students, retirees and stay-at-home parents come in, so there'll be another session or three there, if the trainer hasn't organised their clients well they might have 2 hours between them here, like the last one finishing at 0830 and not another until 1030. Most will do their own workouts whenever they have a big break like that.
Evenings are mostly 1800-2000, with one or two before and not many after. You get a lot more people pulling no-shows or being late in the evenings, though. At 6 in the morning unless someone's kid's been sick or they have some mental 70hr/week legal or accounting job that tells them the day before about a 0730 meeting, usually not much can come up except that it's too dark and cold and the person can't be fucked getting up. But by the time you get to 1800, the person might have had to stay late at work, or maybe it took too long to get the kids bathed and in bed, or they had to go shopping, or the workday was shitty and they don't want to come, etc. The morning people are more reliable.
Trainers usually look to do gym shifts or group classes in between their PT sessions, especially during those business hours where so few people come.
Not many people do it in combination with another job, and they try they usually don't last. We get lots of trainers come through the community gym doing it as a part-time job while they're studying something related like nutrition, exercise science, etc. Usually when they finish their degree they say they'll go onto another job, but they fuck around for 6-12 months letting the world know they're too good to be there, then they get a professional job and say, "I'll keep training a few people," but they usually drift off within a few months. If you're doing a full-time job it's just too much hassle to train a few clients here and there, you become very intolerant of the usual bullshit, they sense it and quit.
There are a few trainers who work at a couple of gyms. Fitness is like hospitality, it's all casual and the managers like to keep everyone hungry for gym shifts, so to get a decent number of hours you'll often need to work at a couple of places. Typically if the trainer can build their hours up at one gym enough they'll ditch the other, it's a big hassle travelling from one place to another, changing uniforms, adjusting to different managers and teams, etc.
Just think, who can pay for PT? people with full-time jobs, usually 9-5. So they want to train 6-9am and 6-9pm, that's where 80% of PT sessions happen, only 20% happen during business hours. So if you want to be a real gun of a PT, you need to do split shifts, come early morning and evening.
In practice it usually goes 0600 to 0730 or 0800, with all the urban professionals getting in their workouts before heading off for shower etc and work. Then there's a quiet time until 0900 when the students, retirees and stay-at-home parents come in, so there'll be another session or three there, if the trainer hasn't organised their clients well they might have 2 hours between them here, like the last one finishing at 0830 and not another until 1030. Most will do their own workouts whenever they have a big break like that.
Evenings are mostly 1800-2000, with one or two before and not many after. You get a lot more people pulling no-shows or being late in the evenings, though. At 6 in the morning unless someone's kid's been sick or they have some mental 70hr/week legal or accounting job that tells them the day before about a 0730 meeting, usually not much can come up except that it's too dark and cold and the person can't be fucked getting up. But by the time you get to 1800, the person might have had to stay late at work, or maybe it took too long to get the kids bathed and in bed, or they had to go shopping, or the workday was shitty and they don't want to come, etc. The morning people are more reliable.
Trainers usually look to do gym shifts or group classes in between their PT sessions, especially during those business hours where so few people come.
Not many people do it in combination with another job, and they try they usually don't last. We get lots of trainers come through the community gym doing it as a part-time job while they're studying something related like nutrition, exercise science, etc. Usually when they finish their degree they say they'll go onto another job, but they fuck around for 6-12 months letting the world know they're too good to be there, then they get a professional job and say, "I'll keep training a few people," but they usually drift off within a few months. If you're doing a full-time job it's just too much hassle to train a few clients here and there, you become very intolerant of the usual bullshit, they sense it and quit.
There are a few trainers who work at a couple of gyms. Fitness is like hospitality, it's all casual and the managers like to keep everyone hungry for gym shifts, so to get a decent number of hours you'll often need to work at a couple of places. Typically if the trainer can build their hours up at one gym enough they'll ditch the other, it's a big hassle travelling from one place to another, changing uniforms, adjusting to different managers and teams, etc.
Kyle Aaron
Active member
Up to the person. They buy sessions in 30' blocks, either casually or else direct debit (pay for X sessions a fortnight). Some people like a full hour, mostly because they assume they need an hour the PT doesn't disabuse them of this notion since it's easier for them to handle a 1x 60' session than 2 separate 30'. Some will pay for 3x30' and get 2x45', but it's not common since it makes scheduling a hassle. The most common is 2x 30' a week.
2x 30' a week is enough for the "I just want to tone up" crowd, you just do circuits. 10 goblet squats, 10 dumbbell bench press, 10 rows, 10 hip hinges, a farmer's walk, one round of that is 5'. Do 3 rounds of that and 5 minutes of intervals, plus some stretching, there's your 30'. Or they could do heavier stuff, and do some steady-state cardio on their own after the PT session - they might need me to hang around for intervals, they don't need me to hang around while they jog on the treadmill for half an hour (though some people will actually pay for that). Combine with eating more protein and fruit and vegies, and most people are going to look, feel and perform better over the next 3 months, probably not much will change after that, though, to get better than the newbie effect you need to train, and that means longer workouts.
Doing 30' sessions back-to-back, even if you had 8 hours of clients you wouldn't want to. Just being bright and chirpy, adjusting your tone and pace of the session for the sullen middle-aged accountant, then the lazy uni student, then the driven solicitor, then the stay-at-home mother, then the old retired guy with the heart problem, etc - it takes a lot out of you.
Sometimes I end up training them for longer sessions, though. If the person is strength-oriented, then provided they arrive early to warm up and do a third workout on their own sometime during the week, the women can get to squatting 60kg, benching 40 and deadlifting 80, and the men to 100/80/120, in 3-6 months. Or thereabouts. If they want to go further than that they'll need longer sessions, but they also don't need one-on-one attention by then, so I stick them in small groups; if Anna was coming tue/thu 0600-0630, and Bob 0630-0700, they can come together 6-7, get extra time, price of that is they share their own.
In practice if the person is genuinely interested in training and I've not got an appointment straight after them, the 30' stretches to 45' or even 60'. Plenty are watching the clock though, when it hits the hour or half-hour, they thank me and fuck off quickly. Exercising, not training.
My clients in my garage gym, they just pay for 3 months, and come up to 3 times a week, they stay for as long as it takes to complete the planned workout, this might be 30' or it might be 90'. I'm not watching the clock.
Certainly there's a lot of crap in it, myst, but there is in every job. Question is, do the good bits make up for the bullshit. With weights, you change people's lives. Of every 10 clients, about 3 don't hang around long enough to get any lasting improvement (less than 3 months). About 3 stay long enough but aren't that dedicated so get only a small improvement, another 3 stay and are dedicated and get a big improvement, and 1 is just fucking astounding. So 7 out of 10 get some improvement, and 1 of those amazes me.
General gym members you can take the same numbers but make them out of 100 instead of 10. But it comes to the same thing, you use the ones who get good results to help you handle those who get none.
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CaT_SPeW
extra crispy
i was thinking something along those lines too. i could easily handle a few part time evening or weekend shifts in a gym. with the age thing though i guess you have to face that whenever you make a career change later on in your life. from reading a lot of peoples experiences though it seems the fitness industry is pretty accepting of the older people
Kyle Aaron
Active member
Your observations are incorrect.
Or rather, they may be true for the general gym-goer, who rolls in, fucks around and wanders off, just chatting with a good-looing 19yo with their clipboard is fun. But people who intend to stick around and train, and people who are willing and able to pay for personal training, these tend to prefer people with some life experience behind them. Obviously a person could be 22yo and have really lived and done a lot in physical training, or 32yo and still living at home with their parents and never done anything - but generally speaking, years lived add experiences. Good judgment comes from experience, experience comes from bad judgment. If I'm paying someone a dollar a minute for their advice, I'd like them to have been around long enough to make some mistakes.
jzpowahz
Well-known member
Agree with you there Kyle. The gym I work at was trying to get rid of most of the younger PT's actually.
I have a bit of a different setup as I was a full time accountant. Quit that and was going to be a full time PT. Attempted to but I'm not enough of a sales person/BS artist. So I now do 3 days a week accounting and the other days PT.
I pretty much to go the gym every night so some days are after office job. I also run some classes which I love. But what Kyle said is right that you need to be able to do split shifts if you want to make it. Also, I'm lucky in that the place I work at has a split of total income rather than a set rental cost so I can afford to do it as a non full time thing. The rental would totally cover all of my income otherwise I'd say. I know Goodlife was around $300/week rent and $1500 license to start. With no guaranteed income that is pretty tough.
I have a bit of a different setup as I was a full time accountant. Quit that and was going to be a full time PT. Attempted to but I'm not enough of a sales person/BS artist. So I now do 3 days a week accounting and the other days PT.
I pretty much to go the gym every night so some days are after office job. I also run some classes which I love. But what Kyle said is right that you need to be able to do split shifts if you want to make it. Also, I'm lucky in that the place I work at has a split of total income rather than a set rental cost so I can afford to do it as a non full time thing. The rental would totally cover all of my income otherwise I'd say. I know Goodlife was around $300/week rent and $1500 license to start. With no guaranteed income that is pretty tough.
Rugby88
I have Ep1c Calendar kunce
PT can be a fantastic, rewarding job - but the avg life of a PT is 3 months - so there is the risk of burn out fairly fast and also simply finding work - I used to do PT and I was lucky enough to find a gym that paid be a full-time salary to simple do PT/Fitness classes - I was making about $50,000 a year - which was great for a young PT (about 20) straight out of my PT course. I worked 5:30am - 1:30pm in this job - I honestly think this is perfect hours for any job.
I moved onto a gym floor style role after that - which paid about the same but I didnt do any PT - they contracted out - those PT's were pretty much working 5:30am - 9:30am then maybe 1 or 2 sessions over lunch and then 5:00pm - 9:00pm - so it can be tough hours - def if you have a family etc
I would honestly love to do PT again but even though its an industry with a "high" demand its tough the crack to be successful and earn a "good" living - unless you can find a gym that will pay you a full-time salary to PT which makes it abit easier as you know you will always be getting paid the same regardless of if people cancel or not.
I moved onto a gym floor style role after that - which paid about the same but I didnt do any PT - they contracted out - those PT's were pretty much working 5:30am - 9:30am then maybe 1 or 2 sessions over lunch and then 5:00pm - 9:00pm - so it can be tough hours - def if you have a family etc
I would honestly love to do PT again but even though its an industry with a "high" demand its tough the crack to be successful and earn a "good" living - unless you can find a gym that will pay you a full-time salary to PT which makes it abit easier as you know you will always be getting paid the same regardless of if people cancel or not.
Rugby88
I have Ep1c Calendar kunce
Most gyms you will have to pay a "rent" to train people there - you cant just rock up - pay a casual rate and train someone - more than likely they will kick you out. I have seen rent per week ranging from $150-$300 - depending on if you have an office at the gym/or just going in and training people and leaving.
Rugby88
I have Ep1c Calendar kunce
haha - no I wouldnt - of course it depends on your relationship with them/how long/how well you know them - but still I am not that sort of PT - you def do have PT's though that are prob abit to touchy/feely
Jungnaut
YOLO Kunce
Lmao, I guess if the PT can actually wrap their arms around the chubby that's just come in for their first session they deserve an award
Kyle Aaron
Active member
I have embraced clients when they were going on a long holiday, or returning from one. Both women and men, and as others said it depends on the relationship. Some you're close to after a couple of months, others can come for years and they won't even wish you happy birthday.
I have sometimes done a "are you alright" or "well done" thing where you stand by someone's side and put one arm across their shoulders for a moment, but you're not facing them so it's not as intimate as an actual embrace, and it drops after a moment. Basically it depends on the relationship and the person. Some will be uncomfortable, some won't, and some will like it TOO much. I err on the side of not touching in a friendly way, as I said elsewhere, you need to give tactile cues but these are on the bony bits not the fleshy bits - top of shoulders, tip of elbow, lower back, etc.
Handshakes and back slaps are pretty common with me though.
The most touchy-feely male trainer I knew advised me (as my then manager) to finish each PT session with a woman with a shoulder massage. I said, "Frank, you're a gay man in his 50s, I'm a straight man in my 40s. It's different."
Technically, cert iii allows you to be a gym instructor, and cert iv allows for personal training. In practice, trainers don't get employed unless they have both cert iii and iv. The exception is group fitness instructors who generally do cert iii and then some group fitness qualification like a Les Mills Bodypump, Pilates, Spin or something. But if they want to work on the gym floor they go and get cert iv.
I have sometimes done a "are you alright" or "well done" thing where you stand by someone's side and put one arm across their shoulders for a moment, but you're not facing them so it's not as intimate as an actual embrace, and it drops after a moment. Basically it depends on the relationship and the person. Some will be uncomfortable, some won't, and some will like it TOO much. I err on the side of not touching in a friendly way, as I said elsewhere, you need to give tactile cues but these are on the bony bits not the fleshy bits - top of shoulders, tip of elbow, lower back, etc.
Handshakes and back slaps are pretty common with me though.
The most touchy-feely male trainer I knew advised me (as my then manager) to finish each PT session with a woman with a shoulder massage. I said, "Frank, you're a gay man in his 50s, I'm a straight man in my 40s. It's different."
Technically, cert iii allows you to be a gym instructor, and cert iv allows for personal training. In practice, trainers don't get employed unless they have both cert iii and iv. The exception is group fitness instructors who generally do cert iii and then some group fitness qualification like a Les Mills Bodypump, Pilates, Spin or something. But if they want to work on the gym floor they go and get cert iv.
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