Thinking about becoming a Personal Trainer? Read this first.

Estimated read time 5 min read

It’s 2016; fitness bloggers are the new fashion bloggers. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry is now a ‘certified’ Personal Trainer. Hiring a Personal Trainer is so 2008. If you want to stay on top of the trend, if you want to stay ahead of the game, you’ve got to quit your 9-5, change your name from ‘Susie_00’ to ‘SusieFitness00’ enroll on a PT course and definitely start a blog.

I know this because I did it too. I quit my job in order to ‘live the dream’ but it wasn’t an overnight decision and it wasn’t #fitfam that lead me to it. It took a good few years of mulling over, going back and forth, to reach the point where I knew it was the right decision for me. And I’m glad it took so long because before then I wasn’t ready. Before then, my motives were wrong.

PSA: Enjoying your workouts and embracing a healthy diet is not a valid reason to become a Personal Trainer. Any current Personal Trainers will nod and laugh in agreement, because, well, if you know, you know.

You’re no longer number 1. 

It’s no longer about your training. It’s no longer about your diet. It’s no longer about you. And if it is, well then you’re a sh*t trainer. Of course, you need to practice what you preach, you need to look after you and you need to eat well, but your clients are the number one priority. You are no longer number one.

If you think becoming a Personal Trainer will be an easy way to stay in shape you’re having a laugh. Don’t hand in your notice yet. Just because you love working out doesn’t mean you will love training others. Your own training will now have to come second to your clients.

If you like training at a particular hour you’re going to have to get over that pretty quickly. If you want to build a profitable business, you’re going to have to get used to training at odd hours, squeezing in workouts between your clients or God forbid not training at all.

Sometimes you’re going to feel like sh*t. 

And guess what? When you do get to work out you’ll probably prefer plucking out your own eyeballs. After waking up at the crack of dawn, and after spending a whole day training others, sometimes the last thing you’ll want to do is actually train yourself.

You’re probably going to have more caffeine in your body than blood.

You’re probably going to be hungry a lot.

You’ll probably never experience the beauty of a lie-in ever again because your body clock will be f*cked for life.

Personal Trainer? Businessman? Social media whore? 

Sorry to break it to you but your level 3 isn’t going to teach you how to become a Personal Trainer. The level 3 is simply a tick in the box you need to legally work as Personal Trainer. Knowing what your capillaries do or your origins and insertions aren’t going to pay your bills.

And don’t think for one minute that you’re going to be handed clients. You’re not going to join a gym and be given a client base. No one is going to come up to you and ask for you to be their trainer, not at the beginning anyway. You’re going to have to talk to people. You’re going to have to sell yourself. You’re going to have to hustle. It’s uncomfortable, it’s terrifying, and you’re going to question whether it’s really worth it.

There’s a lot more to consider than those hours you spend training your clients and contrary to popular belief, PT’s don’t (or shouldn’t) have tons of free time in the day to do what they please. There’s programming, researching, selling, accounts, marketing, and that’s just a few. Your qualification isn’t going to mean jack sh*t if you can’t handle the rest Hoxton Personal Ttrainer.

Personal Trainer? Counsellor? Entertainer? Host? 

You’re going to be tired. You’re going to be fed up. Sometimes, you’re going to not want to be there but that doesn’t matter, when the session starts, so do your performance. You’re not being paid to talk about how sore you are or how hungry you are. You’re being paid to make someone else feel better. No matter how good your knowledge or how many qualifications you have, you’re not going to make it as a successful trainer unless you can keep your clients entertained.

Performing can be exhausting. And after a full day of ‘performing,’ you’re not going to want to talk to anyone. You’re not going to want to see anyone. You’re not going to want to respond to text messages. You’re going to want to eat your dinner and stare at a wall.

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