Corporate Fitness: An Alternative To Commercial Gyms - Personal Trainer Community - Forum

[muscletrainerdh-NSCA CPT]

What is it? Corporate Fitness is the branch of the fitness industry that serves corporate america by creating, staffing, and managing fitness centers/workout rooms/ wellness programs inside corporations.

For Example: The company you work for converts unused work space into a workout room. The workout room has a small locker room, 4 or 6 pieces of cardio equipment, weight machines and some free weights. A management company is hired to staff the facility and the staff attends to the members, supervises their workouts, creates personalized routines for them, and develops motivation programming.

Where Is It? Most large national corporations. Improving the health and wellness of your employees has been proven to decrease absenteeism, worker dissatisfaction, and increase morale. The best corporations in the world include an on-site fitness center to make working out and staying healthy convenient to their workers. Often the dues are subsidized by the corporation and employees can enjoy the same services of a commercial gym with a very personal touch. Corporate fitness centers are big on customer service and member-staff interaction.

Why do you want to work in Corporate Fitness? One reason is if you like having Saturdays and Sundays off. Most Commercial gyms will have hours on saturday and sunday, Most Corporate fitness centers will only be open Monday Through Friday. Hours are typically 6am to 7pm. Shifts are variable. No sales. Besides keeping membership levels up, there is no hard selling of personal training, memberships, or otherwise. Relaxed atmosphere. Generally Corporate fitness centers are social centers where employees go to let off steam from their work day, unlike commercial gyms where the socializing is among members and rarely includes the staff and/or personal trainers.

What is the pay? Obviously pay varies per your skill level, education, and experience. Typically if you are starting as a fitness specialist and have your degree in an exercise science field or a national certification your pay will be between $9 and $11 an hour. If you personal train, you will get about 50% of whatever the corporate fitness management company charges the client for a session.

What is the career path? Typically you start as a Sub covering shifts for the normal staff when they need time off at different sites, then you get hired by one specific site as a fitness specialist, depending on the size of the site and your ambition, you may be promoted to assistant program manager or program manager within 1 or 2 years.

Other Details? Corporate fitness is big on programming. You'll get experience in running programs to motivate the members to participate and use the exercise center more frequently. Running contests, organizing teams for walks and runs, and developing an annual plan for the client are things you are exposed to that may not happen in a commercial gym.

Cons? Typically low pay as the commission structures for personal training are lower than commercial gyms. Since members are already paying less for a fitness center, they view personal training as exhorbantly expensive. Group exercise - you may have to learn how to teach one or several group exercise classes- Step, Kickboxing, Abs, Pilates, etc. Unfortunately you do not get paid for teaching group exercise at your site, but may be paid to cover classes at other sites. You MUST BE CUSTOMER SERVICE ORIENTED. If you do not "play" well with others or think its a bother to help people out this is not the job for you.
If you've ever come across a cashier at McDonalds who rolls their eyes when you special order your meal, you know what I am talking about. that person does not need to be on the front lines at Mickey Ds, they need to be back at the grill cooking the meat.


Find Out More:
Here's the company that I work for:
www.ltwell.com

Here are our competitors:
http://www.corporatefitnessworks.com/index.cfm
http://www.hfit.com/
https://www.medifit.com/index.asp
http://www.factsfitness.com/

[Christina]

Great info, Dave! Thanks.

Christina

[SDTrainer]

Thank you for sharing!

My 2 cents:

This is favorable for employees who spends more time in the office than at home or anywhere else. Pay may be low but its a good ground to hunt for your future clientèle. Think about it.


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San Diego Personal Trainer