About becoming a personal trainer

Kyle Aaron said:

Almost exactly five years since I started this thread, people might be interested in how things have turned out.

At GPC Nationals today my client Rosemary squatted 75, benched 30 and deadlifted 95kg for a total of 200, and had a 4th deadlift of 100kg. Not bad for a shortarsed 66yo asthmatic with high blood pressure and 3 years post-herniation of L3/4 and L4/5 with osteoarthritis in her spine.

My wife went 130/65/155 for 350kg.

In 12 weeks neither of them missed a single workout. Consistent effort over time gets results.

It took me 2.5 years of being a PT to get anyone to go to a powerlifting meet, the peak was I think 8 people at a novice meet October last year. It's taken almost 4 years to get them to Nationals. Most people "just want to tone up." But some of them want to do productive training.

I work in the mornings at a community gym, and in the evenings in my garage gym. I've gone about as far as I can at the community gym, so I'm trying to build up the garage. It worked for Markos, who's had dozens of lifters do far better than anyone I've trained, who is making a good living at PTC HQ in Carrum Downs, and who had Ed Coan as the MC and guest judge at GPC Nats today. I don't expect his level of success, but I think I can do well given time.

I'm earning about $40,000 on 20-25hr a week of work. That's the money. As for job satisfaction, well - with weights, you change lives.

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Hello Kyle!

G'day mate...you sticking around or what?

Kyle Aaron said:

Almost exactly five years since I started this thread, people might be interested in how things have turned out.

At GPC Nationals today my client Rosemary squatted 75, benched 30 and deadlifted 95kg for a total of 200, and had a 4th deadlift of 100kg. Not bad for a shortarsed 66yo asthmatic with high blood pressure and 3 years post-herniation of L3/4 and L4/5 with osteoarthritis in her spine.

My wife went 130/65/155 for 350kg.

In 12 weeks neither of them missed a single workout. Consistent effort over time gets results.

It took me 2.5 years of being a PT to get anyone to go to a powerlifting meet, the peak was I think 8 people at a novice meet October last year. It's taken almost 4 years to get them to Nationals. Most people "just want to tone up." But some of them want to do productive training.

I work in the mornings at a community gym, and in the evenings in my garage gym. I've gone about as far as I can at the community gym, so I'm trying to build up the garage. It worked for Markos, who's had dozens of lifters do far better than anyone I've trained, who is making a good living at PTC HQ in Carrum Downs, and who had Ed Coan as the MC and guest judge at GPC Nats today. I don't expect his level of success, but I think I can do well given time.

I'm earning about $40,000 on 20-25hr a week of work. That's the money. As for job satisfaction, well - with weights, you change lives.

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Fuck 40k how do you live on that, does your mrs bring in 2nd income?

She's a full-time professional.

I've lived on less, though. You won't be able to buy a house or good car, but you can certainly live.

Who has money to pay for personal training? People doing full-time, 9-5 jobs mostly. Thus 80% of PT sessions happen 6-9am and 6-9pm. If you restrict yourself to just mornings or just evenings, you'll restrict your income. If you're happy to work split shifts, then you earn more. We have a young son, so that's the "life" part of the work-life balance for me, I choose to work less to be with him. If I were single and childless I'd work and earn more.

As I'm sure I said many times in this thread, the money in fitness is not in actually training people. It's in being a manager, a gym owner, selling supplements, producing ebooks and DVDs and books, running PT certification and continuing education, and so on. But then you don't get to change lives.

I'm trying to build things up at home so I can keep more of what they pay for me, and spend even more time with the boy.

Kyle Aaron said:

She's a full-time professional.

I've lived on less, though. You won't be able to buy a house or good car, but you can certainly live.

Who has money to pay for personal training? People doing full-time, 9-5 jobs mostly. Thus 80% of PT sessions happen 6-9am and 6-9pm. If you restrict yourself to just mornings or just evenings, you'll restrict your income. If you're happy to work split shifts, then you earn more. We have a young son, so that's the "life" part of the work-life balance for me, I choose to work less to be with him. If I were single and childless I'd work and earn more.

As I'm sure I said many times in this thread, the money in fitness is not in actually training people. It's in being a manager, a gym owner, selling supplements, producing ebooks and DVDs and books, running PT certification and continuing education, and so on. But then you don't get to change lives.

I'm trying to build things up at home so I can keep more of what they pay for me, and spend even more time with the boy.

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Fair enough didn't mean for my post to be cünty, I'd love to do what you do but with a young family myself it'd be a major battle to get by on that.

one of my mates is a commercial gym pt, he reckons he makes the same as when he was labouring around 75k gross. But he pretty much works every morning and evening of the week, not very family friends but he gets to train heaps between clients and enjoys it

I'd love to just do fitness all day

Brick said:

Fair enough didn't mean for my post to be cünty, I'd love to do what you do but with a young family myself it'd be a major battle to get by on that.

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And that's fair enough. We wouldn't be doing well if this was our sole income - but then, if I were the sole breadwinner I'd choose to work more than 20-25hr a week.

one of my mates is a commercial gym pt, he reckons he makes the same as when he was labouring around 75k gross. But he pretty much works every morning and evening of the week, not very family friends but he gets to train heaps between clients and enjoys it

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And there it is.

My idea with this thread from the beginning was to give people a realistic idea of what it's like to be a PT. Any dickhead can get into it, and lots of the people into it are dickheads. But it takes some work to be good at it. The money and hours aren't great, and most clients and almost all gym members ignore your advice. But the few who listen - you change their lives.

One guy I trained recovering from cancer, he said, "Kyle, you saved my life."
"Um thanks, but I think that was the surgeons."
"No, they kept my body alive, but you saved my life. I used to have to just sleep all the time, but I went from being able to be active two days a week, to five. With two days a week there was no way I could keep my job and my girlfriend, now I can. That's my life."

And then there's taking a woman in her 60s from being stuck in bed hopped up on morphine because of sciatic pain, to a couple of years later deadlifting 100kg at a national powerlifting competition. I think her 200 total was last in her weight class except maybe for some 13yo girl, but she's still happy.

Those are big examples but there are lots of little ones. Past paying the bills, what do we spend our money on? Stuff to make us happy. So maybe if we enjoy our jobs, we don't need to spend as much money outside them.

That's a decision every person has to make for themselves. I started this career and this thread because I've always believed in choices. Maybe a woman in her 60s wants to do PL comps, maybe she doesn't - but if she can't even squat the empty bar, she has no choice. Being stronger gives you choices. Maybe a guy in his 30s recovering from cancer wants to just lie around for 5 days a week, but if he's weak and unfit he has no choice, he has to. Being fitter or more flexible gives you choices.

Maybe someone doesn't want to be a trainer, whether because of the money and the hours, or it just doesn't interest them. But if they don't know what the whole thing involves, then they can't do it, they have no choice. Being better-informed about what a career is like gives you choices, too.

Rosemary was a beast

Rose is very good at grinding a weight up. If she is physically capable of lifting it, it'll go up.

this has made for a good read , thanks for the updates

Rosemary squatted 75, benched 30 and deadlifted 95 for a total of 200kg at 66yo. She also took a 4th on deadlift for 100kg. This is a 15kg improvement on her total from the last meet in March. All these are GPC world records for a woman in her 60s.

B went 130/65/155 for 350, which is a 20kg improvement on her meet in March. This would have been submaster's records but some Russian woman competed in the GPC European championships and totalled 372.5.

There were 83 women, 27 of them totalled 350 or more. If they all went to my commercial gym we'd have to get more weight plates. The Euro championships only had 24 women in total, and they certainly didn't all total 350+. Women's lifting is growing well in Australia.

I only have squat vids so far,

Kyle, based on your very voiced opinions on drug use and you being opposed to associating with drug users to further your career, why did you choose to enter your lifters in untested competitions?

0ni said:

Kyle, based on your very voiced opinions on drug use and you being opposed to associating with drug users to further your career, why did you choose to enter your lifters in untested competitions?

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I'm guessing because she's "female" and Masters mate. Unless you're talking about Sticky?

And don't you know how to mention someone mate: @ 0ni ; = @0ni ;

0ni said:

Kyle, based on your very voiced opinions on drug use and you being opposed to associating with drug users to further your career, why did you choose to enter your lifters in untested competitions?

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It's my lifters' choices, not mine. They have two reasons for their choice.

The first is that for my lifters, the difference between their performance and that of the top lifters in these federations is not drugs. It's years of training. If my guys are squatting 140 and Dan Green 385, no amount of drugs is going to get them near Dan Green in the next 6-12 months. If they'd lifted for 5-10 years and were squatting 300kg then it'd be a different matter. Or you could think of Irina Petrovich totalling 500+kg and my women 275-350 - but my women have been training with barbells just for a year or two. Really the differences due to drugs are insignificant compared to the differences due to hard work over several years.

Secondly, the only tested federation is Powerlifting Australia, which does not offer true novice competitions. You have to join up and get a softsuit and be subject to all their rules and ASADA random tests etc - and as a novice lifter you don't even know if you're interested in doing this long-term, is all that really worth the trouble? You don't know until you try. But the people involved in GPC and CAPO offer true novice meets, where you can just show up in shorts and t-shirt, pay some money and go for it, after that if you want to you can join a sanctioned competition. My lifters did that, and those who chose to continue competing found they liked the people involved in GPC. If they met them, they might like the people in PA, too - but they met the people in GPC first, and wanted to meet them again, so they joined there.

In the end it's up to my lifters. They have to go as a team, though - PA rules mean drama if I coach one in PA and another in GPC/CAPO, I'd be kicked out of PA and not be able to help that lifter much on the day. So they go where they want, but together.

Kyle Aaron said:

It's my lifters' choices, not mine. They have two reasons for their choice.

The first is that for my lifters, the difference between their performance and that of the top lifters in these federations is not drugs. It's years of training. If my guys are squatting 140 and Dan Green 385, no amount of drugs is going to get them near Dan Green in the next 6-12 months. If they'd lifted for 5-10 years and were squatting 300kg then it'd be a different matter. Or you could think of Irina Petrovich totalling 500+kg and my women 275-350 - but my women have been training with barbells just for a year or two. Really the differences due to drugs are insignificant compared to the differences due to hard work over several years.

Secondly, the only tested federation is Powerlifting Australia, which does not offer true novice competitions. You have to join up and get a softsuit and be subject to all their rules and ASADA random tests etc - and as a novice lifter you don't even know if you're interested in doing this long-term, is all that really worth the trouble? You don't know until you try. But the people involved in GPC and CAPO offer true novice meets, where you can just show up in shorts and t-shirt, pay some money and go for it, after that if you want to you can join a sanctioned competition. My lifters did that, and those who chose to continue competing found they liked the people involved in GPC. If they met them, they might like the people in PA, too - but they met the people in GPC first, and wanted to meet them again, so they joined there.

In the end it's up to my lifters. They have to go as a team, though - PA rules mean drama if I coach one in PA and another in GPC/CAPO, I'd be kicked out of PA and not be able to help that lifter much on the day. So they go where they want, but together.

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Pa gyms do offer informal novice meets. They are not fed meets just like the other Feds and their gym meets (ptc )

i think ink you may be wrong on the coaching as well, I thought it was only officiating

They may have gym meets. I've never seen one advertised outside a gym.

I'm all about making it accessible. For this reason I don't think much of equipment such as bench shirts, monolifts and knee wraps. Another reason I'm not in favour of drugs, it's another layer of bullshit to work with other than just getting under the bar and lifting. I don't even think there should be softsuits.

Any sport or code of a particular sport though, you'll never like all the rules they have there. You just pick the least worst.

Eating for the gainz at Lazy Moe's in Oakleigh tonight. It was a member's birthday. Food and friends. It's not just about squats and deadlifts.

I've just enrolled in Cert III Fitness through TAFE and it's already a bloody nightmare.

Details, jeff, details.