About becoming a personal trainer

They had 17 PT's on the floor competing for members dollars, and thats a small FF

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If they kept the PT level reasonable it may work, at that level of money grabbing corporateness it is just a joke.
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Yes, obviously if they sabotage you by having too many people there then you're fcked.

Of course, if you wanted to rent a warehouse, you'd have to sign a 12 month contract and keep paying even if your business was making no money, too. And then advertising and all the rest. As Markos says, the way I'm doing it is the safe way. I may not make much money, but I won't lose money, at least! Plus I get to learn from others. Sat in on training of two women with hip replacements the other day, learned a lot.

I think if you were really good at sales you could do okay. But it wouldn't be easy.

Hip replacements, I've been doing those all week. Welcome to the club. Unluckly for me mine are all about 1 week post surgery hip flexion past 90 degrees and hello dislocation and more surgery. Abduct your hip and hello dislocation... You get the idea.

Kyle if you do not mind me asking what do you charge your own clients and what do the Y charge their gym clients?
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You guys missed out on doing the numbers, and why I said its a scam.

With 17 trainers, locked into paying $240 pw, thats $212,160 BEFORE a single client steps through the door. Now thats a business plan. When I worked in the industry, the gym paid the instructors, now its the other way round.

Not only are they making a killing from the trainers, and I have no proof of this, I would not be surprised if they werent getting a kickback from the Institutions that was dishing out certificates to these individuals. I think I've seen where FF has specified trainers with certs from a particular organization are required. I may be wrong on this.

Can you only imagine what a BIG FF is making from trainers?

With 17 trainers, locked into paying $240 pw, thats $212,160 BEFORE a single client steps through the door. Now thats a business plan. When I worked in the industry, the gym paid the instructors, now its the other way round.

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Yep I already worked that out. I also worked out that if you payed a PT 40 per hour for each client and charged 60 per hour for a session for the client if the PT was having 5 clients a day 5 times a week they would be losing 260 dollars per week that they could be earning. This is only relevant to a busy PT though and does not include any extra pay they may have gotten from the other 3 hours they worked each day (which would even out the income).

It is a very smart and sneaky system which is something you should expect from a big national company these days.
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dave said:

Hip replacements, I've been doing those all week. Welcome to the club. Unluckly for me mine are all about 1 week post surgery hip flexion past 90 degrees and hello dislocation and more surgery. Abduct your hip and hello dislocation... You get the idea.

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Ow. The ones I met had a couple of years of working out behind them, so were quite capable, relatively speaking.

Kyle if you do not mind me asking what do you charge your own clients and what do the Y charge their gym clients?

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Privately, $40/session (1hr). Buy 10, get 2 free. I had prices for small group training, but no bites. I'm told PTs training 2-6 people make up about 5% of all sessions.

The Hawthorn gym charges around $30 for half an hour. It's a couple of bucks more for non-members, a couple of bucks less for members. I get 50% more than the gym instructor hourly rate while PTing - so it's in my interest to have clients outside my GI hours rather than during them. Though of course I must then set that time aside, as I'm doing on Wednesdays.

Reading markos's post and the thread in general depresses me.

In the early 80's it was quite simple the gym paid the instructor, no degrees needed, you just did what you did.

What do you think are the - say top 5 reasons why the industry as we know is IMO buggered?
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1. Corporate greed (encompasses many of the issues found in gyms today)
2. Poor education available
3. Not enough apprenticing

Thats 3

I was in it when it went pear shaped.

Jogging was a reason people stopped lifting weights. It hit big in the 70's, originated in NZ, people no longer wanted to lift weights. A couple of flawed tests from labcoats had everyone thinking jogging and aerobics were better for weight loss.

Gyms went broke, big time. When they reopened, they were full of easy to use machines and cardio equipment. You no longer had to work hard in a gym, so members joined in their droves.

Gyms saw a business oppurtunity with PT's. No longer on the pay roll, in fact, they became a revenue source.

Few gyms take cash now, its mostly direct debit. Direct debit from clients, direct debit from PT's. A small gym I know gets $20,000 deposited on the 1st of each month. Its tiny. No staff, owner behind the counter, no stress, thriving.

We should be a really fit country now, right.Everyones running or gyming, walking etc

Why are we the most obese Nation per capita in the world?

Because as a society, we went soft when it came to exercise, and the fat free foods infiltrated the market the same time aerobics and jogging hit.

Just my views.

It's like asking why 10 year olds were doing Latin and calculus in 1900, but not in 2000. In 1900 most kids didn't go to school past 12 or so, if that. So we had a really good education for a very few people, now we have a really ordinary education for lots of people.

Same with gyms. Used to be very few, so the standards of training were high. Now there are zillions, standards are lower. Doesn't mean our individual standards as trainers or coaches have to be low, though.

Today a bloke was doing front and side raises with dumbells on a half-squishy ball thingo. I said hello, introduced myself.
"Tell me," he said, "is there a step up in challenge from this one?"
"What area would you particularly like to challenge? Your shoulders? Balance?"
"Yeah, my balance. Core and stuff."
"Have you ever tried front squats?"

He hadn't, I showed him, he took to it very well and enjoyed it, he took out his programme card and struck out the squishy ball exercise and added front squats.

A young woman was standing around waiting for a treadmill to become free, I said hello and chatted - I didn't offer, she asked me for some weights exercises. "I've hit a plateau and I guess I should..."

It was a long chat and I gave her a written-out routine including squats and deadlifts.
"I won't bulk up?"
"No. You have to eat a heap to bulk up. What a good coach I know says is, if you want to bulk up and you still enjoy eating, you're not eating enough. So if you just have your normal diet, you won't get overall bigger. Some fat will be lost and muscle gained, but you'll be overall smaller. Like a dancer or gymnast."
"Oh yeah I used to do ballet I get that."

Her squats were a bit shaky (knees tracking in, weight on toes), but her deadlifts were spot on. She was a bit timid about things, started her with just the bar for squats and 40kg for deadlifts.

I'm not around often enough at that gym to be able to really push people to lift heavy. You need to see people at most of their workouts to do that. But I can at least show them the exercises when they're interested. I don't claim to be brilliant at it - I just talk to people, and show them the best I can. It's a start for them and me both.

Not claiming I'll change the fitness world or anything stupid like that. Only that the people I meet and who are interested, I'll help them out a bit, and encourage them to give things a go, push themselves a bit. If the rest are happy doing the same thing all the time and not changing at all while listening to their iPods, well I'll leave them to it.

I'm really enjoying my jobs.

I enjoy reading about your interactions with clients.

Thanks Shane, I enjoy the interactions.

I recently worked with an elderly woman who'd had MS for 30 years or so. There's an older adults trainer who normally does that, this was a fill-in shift, the other trainer had called me up about her and told me all about it. It was very humble stuff, and very humbling. Simply to be sitting in her chair and raising one leg a few inches with a 1kg weight strapped to her ankle was making her sweat. She comes in twice a week to do that, and twice a week to swim at another place. She's recently upped her weights on a few exercises, this is amazing - when you have a degenerative disease, just to stay the same is progress. This kind of person makes me feel like a complete wuss!

I spoke to an older guy, he used to be a restaurant owner, sold it a couple of years ago, has been sedentary, and since then has had a sore back. That was the sedentary sore back many get. So of course he'd done hyperextensions to strengthen his lower back. I explained a bit about postural stuff and how the muscles work, and taught him a bodyweight squat. He immediately felt how it worked his muscles, this funny look of wonder came across his face, he was really grateful. He rewrote his programme card, too.

I enjoy the coaching. I recently read a book by John Izzo where he says you shouldn't become a trainer/coach if you dislike showing people the same exercises 7-8 times a day. Well, actually I like it. I take a lot of my descriptions and verbal cues from Mark Rippetoe's Starting Strength DVD, it's great for tips on coaching the basic lifts. When I did the interview at Hawthorn, the guys said afterwards, "You had really good exercise demonstrations, spot on." The funny thing is that I didn't demonstrate any exercises at all - I think I might have done a bodyweight squat, that's about it. I just described things, and used a few physical cues like putting my fingers underneath someone's toes to ensure they put their weight through their heels during a squat. But my demonstrations were good? I guess in my case, a thousand words painted a picture!

I'm really enjoying my jobs. I've so far avoided much cleaning, paperwork and answering phones. "Sorry, I was helping a client." I'm sure this won't help my career in the long-term, but might help me get more clients

Because as a society, we went soft when it came to exercise, and the fat free foods infiltrated the market the same time aerobics and jogging hit.

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Those two are two of the big problems, I am fine with someone jogging if they want to run a marathon or half marathon as a goal. The fact that we now view being able to run a marathon (has any one looked at marathon runners???) as a way to be healthy and look good is a bit of a joke. I could still say the same for powerlifting and oly lifting, in the end it is not the healthiest pursuit (joint wise and if you like SHW class lifting everything else wise) but if you moderate these things then they can be very healthy for you and lead you to a good looking body (probably 99% of peoples goals). The problem is, as you said Markos, no one likes hard work or better yet no one likes the idea of hard work. I think once you get them going you find that a lot of people actually feel good after doing hard exercise it is the initiation that is the most difficult aspect.

In regards to the sugar laden ultra processed food sorry I mean fat free food that is probably never going to change. Even though people know (well I hope most do) by now that fat free is crap everything is now so processed that most meals are just sugar, fat (trans and saturated mostly) highly refined carbs and artificial flavouring. But the good thing is that all this unhealthy looking people make the healthy eating and hard exercising people look even better.

As you said as soon as people noticed they could cash in by putting in machines that made everything easier and more convenient the fitness world went down hill. Big business noticed the HUGE potential for chain health clubs that could suck people in, take their money every month and pretty much not have to do anything. Put up some pictures of good looking bodies add a few machines that take some of the effort out of working out and voila a money making machine is born.

he took out his programme card and struck out the squishy ball exercise and added front squats.

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Thats a win right there Kyle.

One failure I had today was this 82 year old guy, I said hello, he started talking. He said he wanted to show me an exercise.

He got two half-squishy ball thingos, stood on them, and started doing curls and presses on them, or something like that. He said, "I've seen others doing them, am I doing them right?"

I didn't know what to say to him. I'm not an older adults trainer, so while I didn't want to endorse the circus exercise, I didn't have an alternative for him, especially not without a health consult and all that first. So I just sort of nodded and ran away and left him to it.

He wanted to lose his belly. I said something about a higher bodyfat being better for people as they got older, but what I really wanted to say was, "Mate, you're 82. Don't ****ing worry about sixpack abz! Relax." I mean, 82 years old! Doing anything at all at that age is bloody good. Maybe even, god help me, curl-presses on half-squishy balls.

Ok what you should have said was, if you fall off of that ball doing that stupid exercise you are likely to break your hip, go to hospital, get a total hip replacement, spend 2 weeks with David doing boring ass exercises, have a good chance of dying from the surgery or just from trying to recover from the surgery. Ok maybe not that.

But just state that it is a dangerous exercise and that you try to stop other from doing that as well because it is just not needed. Tell him he should talk to your older adults PT (for legalities sake).

well done, but you know that your going to be hated by the guys who already squat, for making them wait in line to use the rack, while some 80 yr old and a mum of two are front squating

few questions
what kind of qualifications do the other trainers have at the gyms?

do you have any plans for continuing education?

Yeah I did say he should make an appointment with so-and-so or so-and-so. I didn't follow it up, though, which was my failure I think. I didn't do harm, but I didn't help.

It wasn't a swiss or bosu ball it was a smaller thing, let me see if I can google it up.

.... can't find it. It was about the size and shape of a frisbee, inflated a few inches thick. So if you inverted or everted your foot, that edge with the weight on would have the top and bottom of plastic touching each-other and onto the ground, flat foot you'd be on air. There was really very little risk of the person falling if they could stand normally, which the guy could.

Ok for him that would have been fine if he has balance issues that are affecting his gait and causing him falls. Falls due to loss of balance are big factors along with lower mobility and strength leading to less foot clearance during the swing phase of gait yadayadayada.

But he should really be looking at doing two legged stands at a time and removing arm work and just focussing on balance then moving from there. In fact starting with foam mats is best and progressing by doing exercising on it like squats and heel raises then one legged stands then moving onto a more difficult object like what you are talking about. That would help increase his balance ability. But then again it all depends on his needs.

haz said:

well done, but you know that your going to be hated by the guys who already squat, for making them wait in line to use the rack, while some 80 yr old and a mum of two are front squating

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Nobody interrupted us while we were there, unlike the 1,000,000 cardio machines there's no line waiting for the 1-2 squat racks. So I think I could get a few more people doing this stuff without it getting crowded. And anyway, the gyms can just buy more squat racks

One woman came up to complain that some other woman had spent like 2 hours on the treadmill, it's supposed to be 20 minutes each. I said, "You could always ask us and we could suggest other ways of achieving your goals, other exercises than cardio." She looked at me kind of blankly, I wondered if I'd accidentally said it in Italian or something.

few questions
what kind of qualifications do the other trainers have at the gyms?

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Same as me as the minimum. There are a few ones with Bachelor of Exercise Physiology, myotherapy, even a physiotherapist. Usually they're in the middle of their degree and just going PT to get their hands on bodies, so to speak, plus some cash. Some seem to have carried on doing it after graduating, usually just as a part-time job.

Their quals make no difference in their pay or the work they do if they PT, except of course that they'll get different clients. I mean if someone needs rehab work after a hip replacement (for example), I'll shuffle them off to the physio or ex phys people. You might think they get more clients with more quals, but it doesn't seem to be so. The two busiest guys have the same quals as me, though obviously a couple more years in the industry, some of the least busy ones are those with degrees. Getting clients seems to be about being extroverted, enthusiastic and having empathy. Nobody asks to see your paperwork.

do you have any plans for continuing education?

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Continued registration with Fitness Australia or Kinect (FA's my own) requires that you do some courses, a certain number every two years. For example FA requires 20 points every two years. A weekend course learning the powerlifts from PA was I think $495 and gained 15 points, so that gives you an idea of the scale and cost of it. It's not very demanding.

At the moment I'm interested in something to do with nutrition, and some rehab stuff. I wouldn't want to go all the way to dietician, nor get a degree. But it'd be good to be able to hand out basic meal plans and have a good idea what to do if someone has (for example) had a knee reconstruction or shoulder impingement surgery. I know what not to do, how to avoid making it worse, but making it better? I gotta ask my physio mate.

Beyond that I don't know. I need some experience in the industry to see what sort of people I enjoy working with. I'm well aware of the gaps in my knowledge, I just need some time to figure out which ones I care about filling.

Also, I forgot to mention: at the Box Hill place, my second shadow shift the other staff member there was a woman, she came to me and said, "um, an unpleasant task for you..."

Went to the men's toilet's, someone had had tuna and rice for dinner and drunk a lot of water and then gone a bit too hard on the treadmill, he didn't even make it to the loo. I'm not sure how he got it behind the door.

I asked her if it was an initiation, she said, "yes, we keep a spare bucket of it just in case of new staff."

The next day the manager took the piss. "I hear you had an interesting shift last night."

Ah, the glamorous life of a PT