What's the best company - Personal Trainer Community - Forum

[MajorT]

Does anyone have any opinion on the best club or fitness center to work for? Does anyone know anything about LA Fitness or Bally? Also does anyone now what kind of pay is involved or is it all client based? Or, are private facilities the best to work for?

[Christina]

Hey Jarrell,

I emailed Joe Cannon to see if he could answer your questions. He is familiar with LA Fitness since he certifies their staff. I'm sure he will respond as soon as he gets a moment.

Christina

[Joe Cannon MS CSCS]

Hi Jarrell
There are advantages and disadvantages to working in private training facilities and big clubs like LA fitness etc. the advantage of the big club is that they have lots of members which can be potential clients. they usually also "feed" new potential training clients to the trainers which is good. the downside generally is the pay. if I remember LA fitness pays about $6 per half hour session (most of their training and that of some other clubs is based on 30 minutes). so if you do 2 clients an hour you get $12/hr. This may or may not be on top of the pay you may get if you did "floor hours". Not sure what LA Fitness charges per training session but my guess is that it is about 50 or so per session. so they get most of the money.

As for private training studios, you usually can charge what you want and keep most of it. You usually pay the private studio a monthly rent. If you are employed by the private studio as a subcontractor, then its like the other clubs - they keep most of the money and pay you some percentage.

If you are paying the place a monthly fee you may have to do your own marketing to draw in new clients.

If you are just starting out my advice is to start at the big chain clubs and learn EVERYTHING you can. do fitness, do sales (thats super important!!!!!), do the front desk etc. the more you know the better. learn about all the equipment you can (read the manuals!). this will help you if future clients ever ask you what you recommend they buy if they get stuff for their home.

The big clubs also give you a wide variety of different types of people. that way you can learn who you like working with and it will help you hone your personal training skills (so few trainers ever do this and prefer to focus on everybody. this is a good thing however I also like the idea of specializing).

Whatever you do the most important thing is to KEEP LEARNING!!! I come in contact with thousands of fitness trainers each year and very few of them seem to do more than just get their certification. a new car has to be tuned up occasionally and the same is true for our educations. I know Christina, who runs this site, is very big into education. thats why she is in such high demand as a personal trainer. if you stay educated and learn all you can, it will easily set you apart from most of the others and clients will flock to you-whether you are in a club, in a private studio or wherever you go.
Hope some of this helps Jarrell
Joe

[MajorT]

Joe,
Thank you for the information and your time, I certainly appreciate it. I agree with the idea of learning the ins and outs of the club. I live in a small city and there aren't many large chain clubs. As a matter of fact there is only one. I will probably try and get a job there to start out and then maybe move once I learn everything I can here and build some experience.

[Joe Cannon MS CSCS]

My pleasure Jarell. let me know if you have any other questions. I am also a big fan of audio books. I do so much driving that I like to listen to books about fitness, nutrition etc when Im driving. Just bought a Garmin GPS last week (Garmin 350) that has an audio book reader. I went to audible.com and they have various books on fitness, selling, marketing etc that can help personal trainers. may be something to look at in the future. my website also has other information that can help you as well - www.Joe-Cannon.com
good luck!!
joe