You love working out. You love learning about fitness. You enjoy helping people get stronger, healthier, and more capable.
So why not become a personal trainer?
Well, because enjoying fitness and enjoying the business of fitness are two very different things.
I know because I used to be a personal trainer.
And while there are certainly rewarding aspects of the job, there are also plenty of reasons I wouldn’t recommend it as a career.
Here’s why.
Most Personal Training Jobs Are Heavily Sales-Based
This is fine…if you’re into sales.
I would guess most people get into fitness as a career because they love fitness, not sales, though.
Depending on where you work, you’ll likely be tasked with finding your own clients. You’ll need to get good at conducting sales pitches on the gym floor, calling prospects, sending emails, advertising your services, networking, and conducting assessments with the goal of signing people up for training.
And signing someone up is only the beginning. You’ll also need to retain those clients, sell additional sessions, and continually find new business.
In many gyms, you’re essentially a salesperson who also happens to teach people how to exercise.
This takes a special kind of person, and being fit does not make you good at sales.
Neither does knowing everything there is to know about exercise physiology.
You might be the most knowledgeable trainer in the building, but if you can’t sell your services, you might struggle to make a living.
The Schedule Sucks
It’s not unheard of for personal trainers to work split shifts.
You might come in early in the morning, train a few clients, have a big gap in the middle of the day, and then come back in at night.
Who on Earth would want to do that?
Even if you’re not working split shifts, you can look forward to plenty of early mornings, evenings, and weekends.
Why?
Because most of your clients have jobs of their own.
They work from 9 to 5, so they want to train before work, after work, or on weekends.
Unfortunately, those are probably the same times you’d like to have available for yourself.
And those gaps between sessions? Depending on your employment arrangement, you might not be getting paid for them.
You could spend ten hours at the gym and only get paid for five hours of actual training.
Not exactly an ideal arrangement.
The Pay Isn’t Great
At least, not necessarily.
If you’re working at a commercial gym, the gym is probably going to take a substantial portion of what clients pay for your services.
And if you’re independent, you’ll have your own expenses: insurance, equipment, renting space, certifications, continuing education, advertising, and more.
Sure, some personal trainers make excellent money. But those trainers have generally figured out how to build and maintain a successful business.
And that’s the problem.
You didn’t necessarily get into personal training because you wanted to become an entrepreneur. You got into it because you loved fitness.
Even the hourly rates can be misleading.
Let’s say you charge $75 for a session. Sounds pretty good, right?
But what about the time you spend finding clients, communicating with them, writing programs, handling administrative tasks, and managing your business?
That $75 session doesn’t necessarily translate into $75 an hour across your entire workweek.
And if you’re not particularly good at sales or business development?
Good luck.
Clients Cancel, Disappear, and Quit
Imagine you’ve finally built up a decent roster of clients.
Things are looking good.
Then one client moves away. Another decides training is too expensive. Someone gets injured. Someone else goes on vacation.
And another client simply stops showing up.
Now you’ve got holes in your schedule and potentially less money coming in.
Of course, cancellations don’t affect every trainer’s income in the same way. Some gyms have cancellation policies, and some trainers are salaried.
But client turnover is a reality of the business.
And there’s another frustrating aspect to all of this.
You can spend hours developing a program for someone, teaching them proper technique, encouraging them, and helping them work toward their goals.
Then they quit.
Or they keep showing up but don’t follow through with anything outside your sessions.
You can guide someone, but you can’t do the work for them.
Which brings me to my next point.
Unrealistic Client Expectations
It’s not unheard of for clients to come in expecting to lose 40 pounds in a month, look like a fitness model in six weeks, or bench press 315 pounds within five months (when they’re not even close to any of the above).
Many people have unrealistic expectations because of the internet and fitness culture in general.
On the internet, everyone is muscular, shredded, benches 405 pounds, runs a 4.5-second 40-yard dash, has a 42-inch vertical, has a 20 minute 5K, and eats nothing but chicken and broccoli.
And loves it.
This is because the internet concentrates all the outliers.
You’re constantly exposed to extraordinary physiques, exceptional athletes, dramatic transformations, and people who have dedicated enormous portions of their lives to fitness.
Eventually, after enough time on the internet, extraordinary starts to look ordinary.
But that’s not real life and reality for the average person.
Most people aren’t going to look like professional bodybuilders, run like Olympic sprinters, or develop elite strength.
And look…that’s perfectly fine.
Unfortunately, part of your job as a trainer is helping clients understand what’s actually achievable.
Sometimes that means explaining that losing five pounds is meaningful progress.
Or that being able to climb a flight of stairs without getting winded is a legitimate accomplishment.
Or that consistently exercising three times a week is far more important than having visible abdominal muscles.
Which leads to another challenge.
You Have to Be a Motivator, Too
You might love fitness.
You might look forward to every workout, enjoy learning new exercises, and find the process of getting stronger genuinely exciting.
Your clients might not feel that way.
In fact, some of them might hate exercising.
They aren’t necessarily interested in exercise physiology, progressive overload, or optimizing their squat technique.
They just want to lose some weight, feel better, and get through their workouts.
And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.
But it means your job involves much more than designing programs and teaching exercises.
You need to encourage people, keep them engaged, adjust to their personalities, and help them build habits they might not particularly enjoy.
Sometimes the challenge isn’t getting someone to deadlift 400 pounds.
It’s getting them to come back next Tuesday.
Being passionate about fitness doesn’t automatically mean you’ll enjoy helping other people become passionate about fitness.
Those are two different things.
However, It IS a Rewarding Job
Despite everything I’ve said, there are genuinely rewarding aspects of personal training.
Guiding someone, helping them, and watching them make progress can be incredibly satisfying.
When someone tells you they’ve lost five pounds, that they’re moving better, that their back doesn’t bother them as much, or that everyday physical challenges are becoming easier, that’s pretty cool.
You’re helping someone improve their quality of life.
And unlike a lot of jobs, you can sometimes see the results of your work right in front of you.
A client who couldn’t do a single push-up can suddenly do ten.
Someone who was intimidated by the gym starts showing up confidently.
Someone who thought they were too old or too out of shape to exercise discovers they’re capable of much more than they realized.
Those moments matter.
And for the right person, they might make all the other frustrations worthwhile.
But Is It Worth It?
For an outgoing and gregarious young person with tons of enthusiasm and very few expenses?
Maybe.
Personal training could be a great part-time job for a college student interested in pursuing strength coaching, sports medicine, physical therapy, occupational therapy, or another career involving human movement. It’s a chance to get some real-world experience working with people while earning money.
But for those of us with bills to pay and families to support?
Probably not.
The answer is a definite no for me, which is why I’m not a personal trainer anymore.
I still love fitness. I love lifting weights, running, hiking, learning about the human body, and finding new ways to become stronger, healthier, and more capable.
But I don’t need to make a living doing those things to enjoy them.
In fact, there’s something nice about fitness simply being something I do because I want to.
I don’t have to sell it. I don’t have to market it. I don’t have to build a business around it.
I can just enjoy it.
Could you have a successful career as a personal trainer? Quite possibly. If you love coaching, enjoy working with people, have a knack for sales, and don’t mind an unconventional schedule, you might thrive.
But if you’re considering becoming a personal trainer simply because you love working out, I’d encourage you to think carefully about what the job actually involves.
Loving something and loving it as a job are not necessarily the same thing.
And sometimes, the best way to keep enjoying something is to leave it as something you love doing.
No marketing required.