About becoming a personal trainer

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Attitude

It's amazing the contrast in attitude you get in clients.

Last night with a client, he's never trained properly before me, just his sixth session of two a week, he's set personal bests in his lifts,

and all at a bodyweight of 62kg (he was 59kg three weeks ago), so pretty respectable for six sessions.

Then stretching, then he ran off to chunder, cleaned up and we finished the stretch. I don't want clients to throw up, but sometimes it happens - especially with guys like this, he's a smoker. Smokers have good days and bad days, so it's hard to know where their limits are.

"I guess I have to make another power drink when I get home, I lost that one," he said.

I wrote to him to see how he was feeling today, he wrote back,


I call this a good attitude.

A prospective client came to me yesterday, too. I got her to do bodyweight squats, goblet squats, it was smooth and easy, so I put a 5kg dumbbell in her hand. "I can't lift that!" she cried.
"Just try," I said.
She tried and it was smooth and easy. She put it down. "I can't lift that, it's too heavy."
"You just did lift that."
"But I can't."
I didn't take her as a client, sent her to another trainer who likes bosu balls. I call hers a bad attitude.

It was asked,

Gaucheharbour said:

Kyle do you find yourself having constant arguments at work with other trainers?

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Only once was it what I'd call an "argument" with another trainer. We do have discussions. But in general, we stick to the simple principle that results count. If you have a growing client list, and a large number of the clients stick with you, then you must be doing something right.

That something may be different for different trainers. That's alright, clients should have a choice of different styles to suit their personalities - the sort of clients who enjoy bosu ball balancing would often not enjoy starting off with a goblet squat, and vice versa. If I took the "core strength" trainer's clients, I would lose most of them, if he took mine, he'd lose most of them. And people are always better off moving their bodies rather than not. So it's better that people have that choice between different training styles.

If you have a certain training style and few or no clients, well then it's time to reexamine your style. Because it doesn't matter how brilliant it is if no-one will do it. But around two-thirds the trainers do have several or more clients, so they must be doing something right.

So we don't really have arguments. The arguments we have are not with other trainers, but gym members. Most trainers are educated and experienced (about fitness stuff), so they realise the limits of their knowledge and have some humility about it, they're willing to listen to other ideas.

By contrast, most gym-goers are uneducated and inexperienced (about fitness), so they think they know everything already. I'll find someone in the gym doing a routine like GTiRolla's in that other thread, and talk to them. Most of the time they reject what I say and basically tell me I'm an idiot.

It's like car mechanics. Sure, car mechanics have disagreements on what's a good car, and what's the best way to fix a broken one, or improve its performance. But this is nothing compared to the arguments car mechanics have with ignorant car owners.

Some progress figures.

I began work in late July, so of course had no clients in the two gyms then, I was just settling in. Looking at the number of half-hour sessions done at the two gyms, they add up to,

Jul 0
Aug 18
Sep 34
Oct 61

It's really picked up in the last couple of weeks. Currently I have 13 clients between the two gyms (10 I recruited myself, 3 came through management/reception), if they all show up I'll do 20 sessions each week, or 10hr PT work. But people get sick, travel, are slack, etc. Thus in practice it'll be 16-18 sessions, or 8-9hr.

One or two will be finishing off 6 or 10-packs of sessions in November, they'd only wanted some training to get them started, another 1 or 2 will be taking some holidays, but a couple of others I expect will increase their sessions, and I expect to recruit one or two new clients. So I expect November to total around 80 sessions.

December will no doubt drop off as people go on holiday, at the very least they'll have the Christmas/New Year week off training. Then a boost in late January and early February as the Resolutioners kick in.

The most successful PTs I see at community gyms do around 120 sessions a month - but at a single gym, much harder than doing the same number at two different gyms. And of course they need their gym shifts and/or group fitness classes to get a decent income.

Lost a guy from productive training today. He'd come to me a few weeks back wanting to get bigger. He was reasonably fit and with decent bodily awareness, so he got squats and all that normal stuff. Today I was early and doing my own workout, I saw him rolling a swiss ball into a corner.
"What are you doing with that? No exercise I showed you."
"No, something another trainer showed me. Dumbbell flys on the swiss ball alternating with pushups on the swiss ball."
"But you wanted to get bigger, those are stability exercises." Then in the hopes of discouraging him I told him the story about the guy who burst a swiss ball and broke his ribs. It didn't work, he started setting himself up.
"You're not going to stand and watch me do them, are you?"
"No, it'd be too painful. Plus I have my own useful and productive training to do, instead."
He smiled.
"In six months when you've not put on a gram of weight or become even slightly stronger, come back and I'll try to help you again."

Starting out as I have, I've had a lot of advice about marketing, getting new clients. Stuff like offering a stack of free sessions, "overcoming objections", "closing the sale" and all that American-style hard-sell stuff. I don't like it and won't do it. I prefer to just talk to people and help them out, I figure clients will come that way. So far it's worked well.

At time of this writing, I have 15 clients on the books. However, two of them purchased packs of 6 sessions as part of a gym promotion, and their final sessions are this weekend, so most likely I'll drop down to 13.

BUT - this evening I contacted a client to say, "Concerning our session tomorrow, one of my clients postponed their session, I'll have an extra half hour I can give to you free of charge, I'd rather train you than stand around listening to the gym staff gossip." I like to do that with the hardworking and reliable clients from now and then, give them some extra time.

He replied,


I have previously met his father briefly in the gym, nice guy. Now, I don't know that this will turn into a new client, but if it did, it'd be my first real referral from a client. If nothing else, just from one session it's an extra person to speak well of me in the gym.

Offered a client a free extra half hour, he decided to bring his dad along and pay for the time instead. Now that's the kind of marketing I can get behind.

I've missed this thread Kyle, have a lot of reading to do! Can't believe the guy paid for a session you offered for free though! Nice work he must get a lot out of your sessions.

Maybe he didn't understand it was for free, he tends to be so enthusiastic he doesn't listen or read really well. A couple of times in sessions he's done his reps and I've said, "good, now rack it," and he pumped out another few reps.
"What are you doing? Put the weight down you crazy bastard."
"Oh, I thought you said crack it. So I went faster."
If you read through this thread, you'll hear more of him... puking.

As to our sessions, well you have probably heard the template somewhere around here before All we do is a deep knee-bend, put something heavy overhead and pick something heavy off the ground. And do more weight or reps in every session. Simple stuff, most clients are quite happy with it.

Kyle you sound like the kind of trainer that there needs to be more of!

I watch some trainers with a plain look on their face, texting on their phones.

Keep posting!

I can't even imagine my clients' reactions if I were standing there texting. They start getting nervous if I don't say anything during a single set.

Kyle, VFA are going to run their courses out of PTC, any experience with them?

PTC said:

Kyle, VFA are going to run their courses out of PTC, any experience with them?

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Sorry, didn't see this until now.

VFA have an okay reputation, but not great. They're a step above AIF, that's for sure.

I'd only ever heard of them doing online courses. Not great for learning of a practical skill. At least if they went into a gym that'd offer some practical experience.

I am surprised to hear you allowing this...

The gym sits dormant on Wednesday between 1.00pm and 5.00pm.

If they want to rent it, thats great.

Plus if a PT learns his trade in a gym with no electronic equipment, it can only be a good thing for the industry

PTC said:

Plus if a PT learns his trade in a gym with no electronic equipment, it can only be a good thing for the industry

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Yes but who will be teaching them? You, I hope. I mean with the typical PT school teachers you might get half squats and stuff happening, scary. Even I could instruct them better than that.

"It's different working with you, Kyle, not like when the trainer is young and good-looking."

I suppose that's a compliment. I see alot of people getting trained and both the trainer and trainee treat it like a social visit!

Hey, I'll take $60 an hr to socialise and I'm sure u would too.

No, I wont be teaching, not interested to be honest, getting paid for the gym while I watch the cricket at home.

I'm curious how they heard of PTC in the first place.

I had another guy contact me today, he got my number from a Health Food shop in Kilsyth. He wants me to sell his egg whites at PTC.

You tell him it's whole eggs or GTFO!!!

To be honest, the only way I'd use them is to add them to a protein drink.

Maybe those on low calorie diets could use them, I dont know.

I love my eggs fried with lots of bacon, tomato, asparagus, whole grain toast and Pepsi Max lol