r/personaltraining

I wish this sub had more cases and discussed giving personal training instead of just the business side of things. Here's a real case I've seen back when I was interning.

Feel free to ask more questions if you need more information.

Client: 16 year old sprint athlete, 200m sprint.

Problem: stuck at 27 seconds for a long time, feels like she can't break her plateau to reach 26 seconds.

Task: how can we help her break that plateau? She already does 3 trainings per week sprinting and running with a club. She comes to your gym once a week for a 60 minute PT session.

Extra info: she's advanced, can squat, deadlift and do single leg rdl's well. No experience with olympic lifts. No pains or issues we need to take into account.

English is a secondary language in case some sentences are structured weird.

Lots of medical personnel get trained at the studio I work at. I currently train an eye surgeon, spinal surgeon, head of internal medicine at a teaching hospital with an ivy league name, the list goes on. I always feel weird training them, because it's like, why am I telling a goddamn spinal surgeon what to do??? I shouldn't know more than a spinal surgeon about anything??? Especially the human body??? And then I feel they actually don't take me seriously because I'm telling them it's okay for your knees to go over your toes and that you actually want to have some natural curve to your spine rather than a flat back during a bench press. It's actually super hard to correct a doctor or surgeon about multiple things and not feel like an asshole and get imposter syndrome, lmao.

TL;DR: A client consistently talks throughout their workouts, even while performing reps. Even though they still maintain proper form and are progressing in strength, is this something that should be addressed/corrected?

Hello all - I am pretty new to personal training and wanted to get some input on a situation with one of the clients that I've been working with. This client has been making consistent progress in their strength and we have a good relationship, however they are very chatty and will talk through the reps - like as they are doing the exercise/lift. Other clients of mine might talk while performing the lift, but typically this would be to finish a thought/conversation we were having during the rest or to ask a question. With this specific client, it's not uncommon for them to speak throughout the duration of the set (sometimes 15 reps).

My first thought would be that the resistance is not challenging enough, but I'm hesitant to increase the weight too quickly as they are relatively new to lifting and have had some minor injuries in the past that I don't want to risk re-aggravating.

So instead, I figured I'd work on doing a better job of refocusing them back to the task at hand. Something like "let's hold that thought for a moment" or "try to focus on the squeeze/[target muscle] on this one" to gently redirect their attention to the lift.

Here is what I'm curious to know:

As mentioned, this client has been making good progress since we've started working together and even when they do talk during the set, they don't have any breakdown in their form and report "feeling the burn" in the target muscles. I've received very positive feedback from the client regarding our sessions and we've built a solid rapport with one another. I obviously want to keep clients happy and enthusiastic about coming to train, so as long as we're seeing progress each week is this chatty-ness something that I need to be concerned with?

Would love to hear get some additional input/experience with something like this.

Shortly after becoming a PT I fell in love and moved to Greece. I already had an income from Greece so I didn’t need to work as a PT. But I love the job, I love the gym and I love helping people succeed with their goals. I want to work as a PT here. I’ve been to 3 different gyms and I’ve noticed that the only thing PTs do here is group training and they work from opening hours to closing hours. There’s nothing wrong with group training but it’s not my style. I love making individual programs and weekly check ins with clients, I want it to be personal.

The economy in Greece is better but obviously not good enough for someone to be willing to pay 15€ per session, so they rather do group training where they get it cheaper. And PTs rather do group training so they get more money for less time.

I wanted to check in with you guys and see if you have any ideas on how I can make 1on1 training an option for poorer people without working for free. I want new ideas and creative solutions. I’ve thought of making package deals like 1 session 15€, 20 sessions for 8€/session. Or “bring a friend, split the price”. Or to gather multiple clients and do fewer sessions with each like 2times/ month. But somehow I feel like the client will be getting less quality and not enough work done through that or that I will end up not getting paid enough for my qualities. What are your thoughts?

Yeah, this is another platform reliability post. Hopefully the last one for a while.

I run an online-leaning coaching business, 70 active clients, ~$11k/mo revenue, most of it dependent on the platform staying up. This past week's True͏Coach outage cost me a weekend of putting out fires: clients texting because the app wasn't loading, two refund requests, and one client who told me he's going to "look around" before next month's payment.

TrueCoach isn't a bad product. The programming UI is genuinely one of the cleanest in this space and the client app is well-designed. But I can't have my entire client communication and program delivery rely on a platform with 12+ hours of downtime in a single week and no compensation clause in the TOS.

Question for the sub - what's the reliability track record on the actual alternatives? Not interested in feature comparisons, can read those anywhere. Interested in:

- Has your platform ever been down for more than 4 hours in the last 12 months?
- When something does break, how do they communicate it?

- Anyone moved off TrueCoach in the last 18 months. Was the new platform actually more reliable or were you just trading one set of problems for another?

Trying to make a real decision in the next two weeks. Migration cost on a 70-client roster is non-trivial so I want to get it right.

I am currently a personal trainer with a “holistic“ perspective. I really enjoy working with clients who are sincerely interested in how their body moves and works. I love learning about the human body and want to go a little deeper than what I’m doing now. I want to have a little bit more authority in terms of what I can say with clients. I feel like I can serve my clients better if I could actually help them with certain elements like low back pain or if they happen to get an injury outside the gym, I can also help rehabilitate them without them having to go to a PT office. However, I’ve heard that physical therapy schools are just so far behind in the current research on how the body functions and works and body mechanics and I don’t wanna spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on an education that’s really outdated just so I can have a piece of paper.

I am 36 years old with a baby. And I want to think about what the next step is in my career. It seems like for a personal trainer, The next step is to own a gym or stay where you’re at…

I do a little bit of online training, but I feel like that’s not where I excel in. I really enjoy in person interaction and working with people one on one. I can see myself having my own personal training/physical therapy business.

What do you all think?

I'm not talking about one or two minutes, I'm talking about like 10-20 minutes. The consultation/orientation is technically an interview, and if someone is gonna arrive late to a job interview, that's already a red flag, and they're not gonna get hired.

Potential clients should honestly not be arriving late at all, and if they're gonna arrive late, then they can definitely become a client that leads to problems for you in the future. I personally like to arrive super early (like an hour) just so I can take care of admin stuff and chill until the person comes in.

My training business is doing well, but I have noticed a large decrease in the number of new leads we're receiving the last 6 weeks or so.

We haven't changed anything - in fact, we're probably marketing a bit more than usual.

Just wondering if anyone else is noticing a downtick in demand?

I’ve been a personal trainer and strength coach professionally for almost 6 years now along with working in Rehabilitation and PT. I wanted to share a recent development in my offerings and how it’s making me reconsider my offerings entirely.

I train several lawyers and white collar “big shots” who all seem to have wives who 1) stay at home 2) have crippling gym/social anxiety and 3) want to make a change in lifestyle. I started offering in home training and recovery to them specifically as a way to test the waters. Now it’s grown into almost replacing my training in the gym entirely.

I charge significantly more for this given the nature and extra costs associated but it’s slowly becoming my breadwinner. I now make more training half the number of in home clients a week than I do training my traditional gym clients.

Anyone else have experience doing in home training?

Hey there everyone,

I'm a personal trainer currently living in NYC and thinking of moving to Austin. I currently pay to rent gym space by the hour here in NYC where I bring all of my private clients to train. I was trying to do some research to see what types of places cater to this arrangement in Austin. Does anyone know of anywhere? Thank you!

I’m interesting in getting into this just for passion. I know that for the majority of trainers, the money is nothing fantastic.

40k is what I need to comfortably cover my life expenses.

Is this realistic in the first year of my career, or expecting too much? If not, will I have to burn myself out to hit that target?

Opinions would be greatly appreciated!

Long story short, I thought I took the exam online about 6 or so weeks ago, but instead I took a non-proctored exam? Not a practice test, but a non-proctored test. So today I I found out that I am obviously not certified. Now I am completely blanking on the meaningless fluff questions (ie - "which of the following is considered one of the 'Four Horsemen' of fitness?"). I don't want to have to go find and re-read these chapters and all over again. Then a lot of this stuff is not in the end of chapter study guides provided through NASM.

Does anyone have a resource that helps with questions specifically applicable to the test(s) I can use to search for the answer? Or at least where in the book I can find what it's talking about.

I’ve been a personal trainer in sports medicine for about 2 years now and I’m slowly transitioning to becoming independent this year. I want to make sure I have my ducks in order and that I don’t forget anything important.

My next step is getting insurance for June. I’ve already found a policy, but if you know of good companies, I’m still open to looking around! I’ve completed most of my internal forms for field work, I’m in the process of completing an intake form and policies, but to be honest I don’t fully know what my policies are yet. I don’t know how I want to handle payments, I might make that policy different for new vs recurrent clients.. but I also don’t know what works best. Do you guys prefer cash? Do you set up an account like Venmo? Any policies I should make sure I have in there? I’m also trying to figure out my cancellation policy.

Other than that, I’m able to rent out the space at my current job, I’m meeting with HR about that later this week or next for more details. I know I’ll need to get quickbooks or an equivalent, my marketing products are in the works with my graphic designer, a website will be whipped up by my software engineer husband.. but what else am I missing? There’s so much stuff to think through.

Early on as a trainer I was TERRIFIED of sounding pushy. I didn’t want clients feeling like I was “checking up on them”, trying to pressure them, acting needy or constantly selling something

So if someone missed sessions or got inconsistent, I’d usually back off and “give them space.” And honestly? A lot of those clients quietly disappeared

But I think most clients don’t interpret silence the same way coaches do. To me, silence felt respectful. To a lot of clients, silence felt like “my coach probably forgot about me”, “I already fell off”, “it’s awkward to come back now”

So I started doing way simpler follow-ups. Nothing aggressive. Usually just: “Hey, how’s your week going?” or “Still alive? 😂” or “Want to get back on track next week?”

And clients responded WAY better to casual/direct communication than I expected. I even started experimenting with simple sms reminders/check-ins because texts felt more human and less “formal business communication” than email. And weirdly people opened up more.

Not saying this is universally true obviously. Some clients probably hate extra communication and want maximum space.

But in my experience, disappearing completely has been way more damaging than occasionally reaching out like a normal human.

Curious how other coaches handle this.

After gaining some experience as a personal trainer i have some questions. Would love to read what other personal trainers think or how they deal with it.

1. Do you believe anyone can be turned into a client or are some people just never gonna be convinced no matter what you say/how you approach the convo?

To add onto this: a lot of people in my country/area are convinced that if they do personal training, its only necessary for a few sessions and then they can continue on their own. I try to convince them that its a process which takes time without coming off desperate but often it feels like you cant convince these people otherwise.

2. What is your opinion on exercise variation (strength training focused)? A lot of people still have the belief that they need to change exercises every 8 weeks or something like that. I know for a fact that this is also something that personal trainers like to tell their clients (so they stick around longer?). Exercise variation is actually quite overrated and people get better results when they train the same exercises and progress on those. I usually only switch exercises if clients get bored, reach a plateau or severely dislike the exercise.

How do you deal with clients that expect you to give them new exercises each week?

3. How do you go about form correction? Over the years it has become more clear that there is not one right way to do an exercise. Since everyone is different, exercises might look different when performed by different people. E.g. not even that long ago if you posted a deadlift with even a slightly bent back you would get the form police all over you. Now it is accepted that some people are strongest when their back is slightly bent.

How do you go about correcting a client if there is not one right way to do an exercise? And do you feel judged by other people if you dont correct a client who is not doing anything wrong?

I'm thinking of changing careers and becoming a personal trainer. I'm thinking of working at a big box gym. I'm a single woman with no kids or pets so I can live off a lower salary. There's a technical college where I live that has a health and fitness associates degree. Would I be over qualifying myself? Are the online certificates enough? I know how to exercise my own body, but I know that everybody has different fitness needs. I don't want to accidentally hurt someone. Can anyone help?

I get given a list of leads every month to contact from my gym- I haven’t found much success in contacting leads at all, and I’m curious what other trainers do.

I’ve managed to build a pretty steady client base without contacting leads very often any more, but I know there’s always room for improvement.

If you regularly contact leads- what approach have you found to be successful?

Thanks.

New trainer here — how do you guys spend your unpaid floor hours?

Just got started and trying to be smart about my time at the gym when I'm not with clients. My plan is to get my own workouts in and just be present on the floor, talk to members, make some connections, maybe hand out some free sessions.

For those who've been through the early grind — what did you actually do during those unpaid hours that helped you build your client base? Any tips on approaching members without coming off too salesy?

Appreciate any advice