Do you love working out? Would love a career where you will be helping others achieve their fitness goals and live a healthy lifestyle? If you’ve answered yes to both of these questions, then working as a personal can be a great fit for you.
But, like any other career, being a personal trainer comes with its pros and cons. So, before you rush to obtain a personal trainer certification, it’s important to explore both sides of the coin.
In this article, we will take a closer look at the pros and cons of being a personal trainer. And with this information, it will then be easy for you to determine whether being a fitness coach will be the right career move for you.
1. About the Job of Being a Personal Trainer
If you are looking to become a personal trainer, you may be probably asking yourself; what does a personal trainer do on a daily basis?
Well, a personal trainer or a fitness instructor is an individual tasked with helping people achieve their fitness goals. As a personal trainer, your daily tasks will revolve around working with your clients to train them, guide them through various exercise routines and offer them nutritional advice, to help them achieve their health and fitness goals.
For instance, someone can approach you to help them lose weight, for an upcoming marathon. Another individual can hire you to help them build strength and muscle. In short, you will be working with a diverse range of clients.
As a fitness coach, you will be working either for yourself or in a fitness center. If you will be working in a fitness center, you may be also tasked with maintaining it and keeping it neat. Basically, your daily work will involve training your clients and taking them through various exercise routines.
2. Pros of Being a Personal Trainer
2.1 Enjoy a Flexible Career
One of the main advantages of being a personal trainer is that you will enjoy a highly flexible career. In fact, it’s one of the most flexible jobs out there. And this career is flexible in various ways.
2.1.1 Choose Your Working Schedule
First, you will not be stuck with the 9-5 working schedule, which is usually the case for most people. Instead, you have the opportunity to choose your working hours, based on your preferences.
For instance, if you are a morning person, then you can schedule your training schedules with your clients for early mornings. You can then spend the afternoon with your family.
On the other hand, if you prefer working in the evenings, then you can schedule your sessions around this time. Simply put, you are not limited to working at a particular time of the day. You will set a schedule based on what works best for you.
2.1.2 Work in a Wide Range of Environments
Once you’ve earned your level 3 personal trainer certification, you will have an opportunity to work in a diverse range of environments. For instance, you can choose to work in a leisure center, a cruise ship, in a health club, in the armed forces, in health care facilities, in educational institutions and professional sports team.
So, if you are tired of working in a particular environment or you feel your career has stagnated; you have the option of choosing another environment, where you will enjoy a more fulfilling career. But with most of the other careers out there, this option is not available.
2.1.3 Work in Diverse Roles
No two days are the same for a personal trainer. For instance, you may find yourself working with clients today at the gym while the next day you will be training someone at their home.
Also, different clients will approach you with different goals. For example, today, you may be working with a client who is looking to build muscle for an upcoming muscle show while tomorrow you will working with a client who wants to improve their fitness for an upcoming race.
Also, you have the option of specializing in different areas. For instance, you can specialize in obesity and weight management, lower back pain management, diabetes management, youth fitness, senior fitness, bodybuilding specialist, group exercise, strength and condition as well as group fitness.
In short, it’s almost impossible to get bored working as a personal trainer, regardless of whether you are employed in a gym or you are a freelance personal trainer. It’s one of the most diverse careers out there.
2.2 High Job Satisfaction
If you are a fitness enthusiast, being a personal trainer can be a highly satisfying job. At the end of the day, you will be doing something that you love every day. It will feel more like earning money doing a leisure activity.
And as mentioned above, you will never get bored working as a personal trainer. If you feel a particular environment is not fit for you, you have numerous other options to explore.
Compared to working in a corporate environment, a personal trainer’s role is more satisfying and stress-free.
2.3 Huge Earning Potential
Another reason why you should become a personal trainer is that your earning potential in this career is huge. Whether you are a self-employed personal trainer or you are employed in a gym, there’s no limit to how much you can earn. It will depend on the number of clients that you have.
For example, if you are charging $30 per 60-minute session and you deliver five sessions per day, then you will have earned $150 that day. If you work six days per week, this translates to $900 or close to $4,000 per month.
And this is assuming that you are only working five hours per day. If you were to dedicate more hours to training clients, you will be monthly take-home will be decent.
Apart from the money that you earn through in-person training sessions, you also have the option of selling workout programs online or offering virtual personal training sessions. And, these avenues will help to boost your earnings further.
2.4 Enjoy a Fulfilling Career
When you are working as a personal trainer, you will get clients who want to achieve different fitness goals. For example, someone may approach you, looking to lose weight and build muscle.
You will then create a workout program for that client and then guide them towards their goals. And nothing is as fulfilling and rewarding as helping a client achieve their fitness goals and improve the quality of their life.
3. Cons of Being a Personal Trainer
3.1 Unstable Income
One of the main drawbacks of working as a personal trainer is the issue of unstable income. As mentioned above, your earnings as a personal trainer will depend on the number of clients that you have.
So, if you only have a handful of clients, you may struggle to pay your bills, especially if you are only relying on the income generated from training clients. To this end, you must be constantly marketing your personal training services, to ensure your client is always full.
Also, if you are starting out, you should consider being employed as a fitness coach in a gym, where you will be earning a fixed weekly or monthly income. You can then venture to self-employment or freelancing once you’ve become popular.
3.2 No Job Benefits
Since the majority of personal trainers work as self-employed on a freelancing basis, they don’t receive most of the benefits that a traditional employee will get. For example, you won’t get health insurance, meaning you have to make your own arrangements.
Also, you won’t be getting any paid annual leave, if you are a self-employed personal trainer. So, if you want to go on a vacation, you have to save money and sponsor the trip yourself.
3.3 No Job Security
Similar to other self-employed individuals, personal trainers don’t have job security. In most cases, a client will sign up for your services, and then leave once they have accomplished their fitness goals.
Simply put, there’s no future work guarantee when you are working as a personal trainer. With this in mind, most personal trainers tend to overwork themselves, especially during the January high season, in an attempt to make as much money as possible. Unfortunately, this can lead to burnout, which comes with serious health issues.
3.4 You Can Be Sued
Working as a personal trainer also comes with the possibility of being sued. Regardless of how experienced you are or how cautious you are during your training sessions, mistakes and mishaps do happen.
During such a mishap, one of your clients may end up being injured in the process. They may then decide to file a lawsuit claiming malpractice from your end. And, lawsuits can be extremely time-consuming, mentally draining, and expensive. While personal trainer insurance can help to reduce the financial burden, having to defend a lawsuit will still inconvenience your life in various ways.
4. Wrapping It Up
There you have it! All the pros and cons of being a personal trainer. Moving forward, it’s now up to you to weigh them carefully and then decide whether being a personal trainer is the right career move for you.