For those of my readers who have learned much from me and become true physical culturists, there may come a time when you decide to possibly profit off of your passion—a time when you walk away from whatever unheralded bitch job you work at and try to become that most respected of things: a certified personal trainer!
“After all,” you may think to yourself, “the trainers that train movie stars make millions, and even if you’re not getting actors ready for some superhero movie, you’ll still be in a field where you actually get respect from your clients (a non-physical but tangible fruit of labor) and hey, the lonely housewives in yoga pants are a nice fringe benefit, eh what?”
This is largely what my thought process was when my career in academia as a literati hit a downturn, and thus I decided to become a personal trainer. I studied and passed the test in about three weeks of hard studying; apparently my fellow trainers needed several months to do the same. As useless as college ultimately was for me, I must admit that it did teach me how to knuckle down and focus on one task, and after a brief job hunt, I found employment in this field. So what downsides could there possibly be?
Imagine, public school benefiting you in some way.
The Bad
Let’s make something quite clear: the typical gym job you’re going to get, especially if you don’t have a specialty such as a Crossfit certification, is a lot less “voluptuous, sex deprived housewives in yoga pants” and a lot more “glorified janitorial work”. The majority of your time will NOT be teaching classes, banging cougars, or even training clients—no, you’re probably going to be dusting ceiling fans, re-racking weights, tightening this or that nut or bolt, and repairing jammed machines. And in case you’re wondering, I’ve only had three man-hungry females explicitly throw themselves at me, two of whom were elderly and the other a pre-pubescent, neither category of female being one that I’m attracted to.
Secondly, most jobs you’ll get will not be full time. I myself work a full 40 hours a week by working a combined 30 hours at two regular gyms and the other 10 teaching martial arts classes in yet another location, with clients booking private training and the occasional bit of modeling at two art studios where I’ll usually work an additional 5-6 hours a week. So I have five jobs.
While the hourly wages I make are pretty good—ranging from 18-30 depending on the job—the intermittent nature of the work means benefits and job security are not likely, unless you work at a big national or international corporate chain—which are incidentally more likely to have those aforementioned yoga pants clad beauties, so if that “fringe benefit” is what you’re looking for, you may have more luck there.
Thirdly, you have to deal with some bad people—and I am of course referring to the customers. Contrary to what all of the 80s movies said, there are no gyms full of snarling hardass trainers that will allow you to make ingrates feel bad (this topic may provide fuel for another article).
Quite the contrary, you have to be a smiling salesdouche and enjoy all the “fun” of retail with added dollops of entitlement, mood swings, ignorance, and general stubbornness. Enjoy fat women arguing with you over nutrition, children crying and parents scolding you because you dared to discipline the smug little bastard, old people angrily telling you that “…[they’ve] been doing this for 40 years, junior!”, angry teenage boys venting their high school rage and involuntary celibacy on the weights, and more!
No matter how badly you want to, you can’t act like this
“Well Golly Gee, Larsen” you might be saying, “being a trainer sounds like a real shitheap!” It is indeed not as glamorous as I originally thought, but…
The Good
I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a lot of good to the job, not the least of which is, hey, you can work out for free and to your heart’s content! In addition to that, you can get a remarkable amount of free stuff should you sign up for public events and the like—and I always consider that to be a plus.
For those who are more gregarious, the opportunities for friendship, sex, and romance are there—perhaps not as abundant and easy as Hollywood has told you, but they are still there. After all, I did refer to the only explicit instances of women throwing themselves at me.
Most importantly, it’s rewarding in the same way that a public school teacher sometimes finds their job rewarding (yes, such a thing does actually happen)—when a client tells you how happy they are to have lost weight, or how their newfound muscles gives them newfound confidence in life, or how you gave them the ability to walk again with bridging and twist stretching, that is more than anything else why I do this job. I do it for the good people that need help, and are ecstatic when I give it to them.
Conclusion
For those who think the job is nothing but a cavalcade of easy sex and money, I would think otherwise. It may very well become that once you’ve established yourself in the field for a few years, but it won’t start out like that.
However, provided you can find a good gym and a clientele that doesn’t suck, personal training can be a great and rewarding field once you get past the admitted drawbacks. At the very least, it’s not any worse than any other job I’ve had in my life, and in fact is the best I’ve had either in terms of payment, ease of work, or both. Consider it!
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If I were independently wealthy and was looking for a part time gig just to have something to do with my time, being a personal trainer would be something I might consider. But as an occupation, there’s just not enough $$ in it. To be able to make a decent living as a pt, you’d have to charge minimum $60 per hour to train someone, and be able to train at least 8 people per day for at least 5 days out of the week, assuming you would be working independently on your own and not for a fitness center. You’d need a regular stream of clients. And your hours might be during people’s off-hours, which means working weekends, really early mornings, and evenings.
I remember decades ago, like back in the 1990s, it was considered kinda trendy or sexy to be a personal trainer. lol.
Money. It’s not easy. My advice; boot camp. There will be a few hoops to jump through as far as where (city park regulations, use of space). If you can organize a boot camp;
Example;
-20 people
-$50/mo
-8 sessions/mo.
Equals $1000 per mo for 8 hours of work for the entire month. Start with this concept and Think big.
Personal trainer …… sounds like a job for a ‘no brain’ loser to me.
Sounds like a shit job with shit pay. Makes one wonder why more people don’t go into sales in their own terms and become their own boss.
Your first sale will be your soul. Your second your dignity.
everyone Ive ever met in sales is a cocksucker..bar none
Larsen,
I could not (respectfully) disagree with this more, sure I started out as a fitness coach and had to do the cleaning and maintenance etc for a year but once I became a Personal Trainer it has been nothing short of an upward trajectory. It sounds like you’re not infact a personal trainer but a fitness coach?
I have never taught a class (because I don’t want to), trained a client who didn’t fit my profile and now own my own private studio and am opening an 11,000sq ft gym in the new year.
I find that in this industry too many under qualified “trainers” look on it as an easy career. I myself have a BSc Hons, MSc by research (both into relevant fields) and have spent countless hours on placements through my study and beyond keeping abreast of the latest research.
Regards.
No, I’m a CPT, I do one on one sessions and group classes, and continually try to build my clientele. Granted, I’ve been doing it for less than a year, so perhaps I’ll have a similar trajectory to you.
Absolutely, my advice would be to look and see what trainers around you are lacking and advance your skillset in those areas. Also should you reach the point of opening a studio make sure to lease your kit! Up front cash is gold when you are starting out.
I wish you all the best in your career and will keep reading your articles as always.
Kind Regards.
My ex girlfriend was a personal trainer. Her problem was that you end up teaching people to work out then they stop paying you and go work out alone.
She was really fit though, and 15 years younger so it was fun but she was always broke
By the movie logic I should be travelling around the world, finding ancient artifacts, banging hot gals and punching nazis.
However in reality i am sitting in front of my desk and crunching an unholy amount of information (often in multiple languages) from many sources.
It’s easy to sell anything with a decent PR.
I was a personal trainer a little over ten years ago.
Typical day for me; 6am boot camp. Boot camp consisted of plyometrics, weights and cardio; rotating from station to station. I demonstrated and participated with the clients. 9am; Free motion fitness class; a one hour class where clients and myself each had an adjustable weight stack (universal, hundreds of exercises you can do). I worked out with them. This class was an ass kicker. Just imagine lifting weights for an hour straight with little rest. 11am; I would start training clients (mostly moms in their mid forties looking to lose weight). And I’m sorry to break it to you femenists trolls, my female clients loved me… LOVED me. Why? Because I made it fun, I made them feel comfortable and I cared. I wanted them to achieve their goals. I also had a few high school athletes. We worked on fundamental, sports specific exercises to improve their mechanics (very interesting and a lot of fun). As I did my research and worked out with them, I found myself becoming a better athlete. (Between clients I spent time at the computer researching, unveiling myths and finding new ways to achieve different goals). 6 pm; I am done with clients, I’ve been at the gym for twelve hours now I will have a chocolate peanut butter protein smoothie and either play raquetteball or basketball with clients. It didn’t take me long to lose about forty lbs, get in the best shape of my life and feel like a million bucks. Now let’s talk about money. After taxes, I went home with about two thousand dollars/month. Not very exciting. Looking back, I often toy with the notion of trading health for money. Being a personal trainer is not about being a motivator/cheerleader. And it’s not about being a scientist who knows everything there is to know about health and fitness. To me, it is about having a combination of the two plus the accute sense to put yourself in your clients shoes and find the absolutely perfect course of action for the individuals goal. You and your client are a team in persuit of the most important goal there could possibly be (their health). Today, I am an airline captain and my ass is glued to a seat for several hours a day. Grass is always greener. Personal trainer is a good job. If you want to do it, I suggest you join a club, train there, post ads at apartment complex gyms, consider putting together your own boot camp at a local park. If you live in a big city there should be plenty of opportunity to post ads for in home sessions…. and as a former personal trainer, my favorite words of wisdom for people staying in shape or getting into shape…. “fitness is not a goal, it’s a lifestyle.”
TLDR,
-Captain Morningwood
“and as a former personal trainer, my favorite words of wisdom for people staying in shape or getting into shape…. “fitness is not a goal, it’s a lifestyle.””
Exactly, if the person paying a PT has no personal discipline to go and invest the time and sweat equity into the actual training themselves to start with to attain a better fitness goal, the mere act of paying some body money to coach and coddle them and lie to them as they barely do anything and then claim and then “motivates” them to be better and reach for their goals, is the epitome of dishonesty for accepting money for doing essentially nothing useful for the “clientele”.
In which case the clientele are throwing away their money and then lying to themselves that it makes a difference, and the PT is lying to them as well while he takes their fools gold from them.
Much like the implication that a PT should moralize f**king the clientele as a paid prostitute, because they cater to the clienteles need for validation and “motivating” them and acceptance. Why moralize the job when you are giving the clientele EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANT AND PAY FOR? Who is fooling who here?
I was in the Army for 12 years, and for 12 years I had screaming assholes being my motivator to do physical fitness training because it was REQUIRED as part of the job and for the paycheck. You had to have ( or develop quickly) personal discipline to do the stuff you don’t want to do but MUST do, and that that fitness is required to keep you alive on the battlefield. So train for fitness for reasons beyond your own personal reasons.
Now I do PFT because it is required for my own health, not for any other reason. What more motivation should a person need to do it, or reason to do it? Nobody I could throw money at could give me my fitness or health or give me “motivation” to do it. they wont suffer the clogged arteries the heart attacks strokes diabetes pain or the constant listless fatigue of the terminally lazy undisciplined eaters breathers and breeders.
I MUST do it, I must take the time and invest the sweat equity and pain. I MUST learn what works and is non injury producing and beneficial to me. No one else. the whole notion that a PT is good job is great only if you are working with and for personally motivated and self disciplined but otherwise ignorant to the methods and means to train goal oriented and injury free.
If a PT is paid to act as the knowledgeable and trained subject matter expert and guiding coach to SELF MOTIVATED people, then the job is legit, but on the whole, the job is a catering fools means to cull money from other fools through fraud and flattery. the clientele pay for a caterer to their inner attention whore and validation so they can get through another day breathing, even when it comes down to catering to all their appetites and desires.
One good part as a male, you get to cuck all those men whose cheating broads are getting pumped by your salami. I mean isn’t that part of the profession aspect of being a “personal trainer” is to give your “clientele” all the attention and personal service they desire? They pay you play their way, right? What personal trainer doesn’t do the clients bidding in and out of the gym at the risk of their “word” incriminating you regardless….in my humble opinion is its foolish to put yourself (no matter the pay) in a very dangerous position to be falsely accused for the slim benefits you might get.
One bad thing, you better have good liability insurance for when some sorry snatch or d*ck hurts themselves and blames you for your service, or failure to meet their “goals” due to lack of devotion or in keeping their resolution to get fit (often unreasonable expectations of success more likely to begin with when they don’t get their 6 pack abs or bulky bulging biceps or nice toned round asscheeks). It is your fault right if they fail to achieve because you didn’t motivate them correctly( being most never achieve results because they are too lazy and busy and its easy to blame the expert rather than their lack of devotion to achieve the goal, and failing that, lack of interest in them sexually so that they cant gossip about their cheating with you on their other halves).
“One good part as a male, you get to cuck all those men whose cheating broads are getting pumped by your salami.”…that is not really something to be proud off, and if you were a real man then after a couple of pumps you would tell her husband. Sorry, but contributing to women cucking their man is not something to be proud off….unless you know the dude and he is an asshole, and all the more reason to tell him in the end 🙂 You could even red pill a cuck while also saving him with evidence of adultery in a divorce.
What would I owe to the other guy who is oblivious to his partner that is cheating? Why do I OWE it to him to let him know whats up?
So he has a chance to get angry and attack me because of the actions of his thot?
Why do I have to morally justify a paycheck as a PT if it includes screwing the thots?
“Contributing to the woman cucking her man”? Do you even know what you said? Dude, drop the nonsense of morally looking at what I said and look at it FACTUALLY speaking without investing your emotions into it. I WOULD OWE NOTHING to anyone if I pursued a paycheck as a PT and literally screwing the clientele as part of that process because it is part of the ATTENTION service they desire. Is it detestable to cuck another.. Well duh, morally speaking yes. do PTs do it and care afterwards? NO, the fringe perks (as if screwing loose thots could be that without the added dangers of diseases and angry cucks being mad and attacking YOU for the shit their sluts do….misplaced anger anyone?) after the obvious paycheck.. You would be lying to me that PTs do that job 100%for the sake of the clienteles best interests if it makes you broke to moralize your wages. Such unneeded and unwarranted nonsense. you almost couldn’t sound more blue pill with that logic.
I’m not a PT, never will be. I hate vapid narcissistic bitches and “alpha” posers who act like the women in their mirrors. Why would I pollute my day catering to them and that gym mentality atmosphere for dollars? Ugh. When I go to the gym it is solely for ME and my health, I give less than rats ass about any other breathing entity in the building. Honestly, all the “training” done in a gym is work that makes no money whatsoever and wastes time and energy….I go for ONE reason. MY HEALTH. When money making ops come up that preclude the gym, I seize them. Two things guide my day, my health and well being of myself and kids, and my fiscal ability to play the game of life. End of story. Why would I waste my life on narcissistic egotistical self absorbed lying cheating thots and morons and cater to them in self depreciating concern and their lax and laziness attitudes and ,lack of self discipline to better themselves without needing artificial “motivators” and flattery begging their bucks out of their wallets, when I can work HONEST useful jobs for pay? Shit I could be one of hordes of useless air breathers that function as politicians lawyers movie stars bankers and the like that generate NOTHING TANGIBLE AND USEFUL to any human being, but those are meaning less parasitical jobs that generate nothing useful except strife and enslavement. Get on with yourself and your moralizing…..Pfft.
i would be okay if cheating was punished by death sentence. cheating is for the lowest of lows.
Humility goes a long way, Brother.
Just Sayin’…
Larsen. This was a wonderful article. As a personal trainer in my early 20s, I have to stress that you emphasized the negative and didn’t detail the positives in the same light. This leads me to believe your experience was predominantly awful. What state and city were you training in?
Okay. Lift. One. Two. Three. C’mon, Fourth rep of 10lb dumbbell bicep curl. You can do it. Lift it. You’re goin’ for it. One more rep. No? Ah. Fail. No- no. Don’t cry..instead let’s try a seated leg extension with 5 lbs. (no plates). Okay. One. Two. C’mon, you can do.. Thre-.. no? Another fail, I guess. I mean,.. short-reaching of your goals. Well, we want to do at least one more set of something if we are going to carve that 150lbs off your body for that New Year’s party. What? Well, no,… you do not really need the Chocolate Protein Mega-Blast Gains Smoothie with 1600 calories in it… you’re only on your fifth rep. You’re sweating? Umm… okay… where are those two Gatorade Hyper-Hydration drinks (1200 calories plus 400g sodium) .. shit.. you already drank BOTH bottles?.. take it easy there! By the way you forgot to pay me $10 for last week’s Training session. No. I don’t give “vouchers” because you were sore. -Is this time next week still on? -What do you mean you are thinking of quitting? Fitness takes time and dedication and… uh, ..yes I am CFT even though that is basically a fake title and does not recognize my 9 hours per day ,12 year monastic dedication to gymcel steroid cycles… all to place 57th in Olympic Pre-Qualifiers and leaving me in quiet poverty with advanced osteoarthritis. Don’t misunderstand me, of course I ENJOY my work … Hey! How can you say I don’t motivate you properly? You CAN do it!! What? No, I am not yelling at you. Listen, I have studied physiology, kinesiology, medical therapies,advanced sports medicine, pharmacology and my mother even re-mortgaged her house so I could afford liability insurance just so that I can count reps & hand you towels for less money than a valet makes! Yeah.. that is the Gym Manager over there… Nah .. please.. don’t tell him I am not ‘good at my job’… No, please don’t leave hateful reviews of me on Twitter.. come on… This session will be FREE, okay? You’ll feel better after New Years binge drinking.. How about some seated rows to get your “good vibes” back? Here… grab the handle… we’ll skip the pin (no plates)… Okay. Ready? One. Two. Thr— ah, that’s alright if you stopped.. you did GREAT! You are the best!
This one was great ! Made me laugh tears 🙂
SPOT F**KING ON!! I love how you put the PT job out there as it actually happens. Awesome post. thank you.
are people really too stupid to train on their own? why am i even asking. of course people are too stupid for almost everything.
With regard to your other comment to me. I don’t understand why being mad at PT or for that matter another guy at all for banging a cheating broad. Any anger should not be at the dude laying pipe to her, you (or the cheated guy) should be mad at the betraying whore not the dudes she screwing. That’s misplaced anger at the wrong parties. Yeah its disrespectful from them towards you, but she is the agency of the actual act of betrayal, no the cock carousel.
yeah i know! im not mad, im just saying banging a cheating broad is an indicator of him being scum too. she and him are scum. what stink is worse puke or poop? thinking of that i was once scum… i did not know what i was doing….
As a dude who is 24 and just broke well over 6 figures (in my 2nd year of business) owning my own studio with PT + Group + online clients, a lot of you are waaaaaaaay off-base. You’re not going to get rich doing PT, but man can get it provide a great living, fulfillment (if you’re a good trainer and actually help people) and a platform to build other businesses off of, which I also have. Bunch of salty old fucks on this site lol.
Im a salty old fuck chap and I know Id still piss all over you, anyday ofthe week. If you cant motivate yourself, no arsewipe with PT course under his belt is gonna help.
I am a certified personal trainer since 2007 and would love to help more men in the manosphere. I started as a gym instructor and then moved to helping people that I know, for free or for a small amount, and then moved into online coaching (mainly training programs and nutrition programs) in 2014. Love to do it as a part-time thing. Due to my high verbal IQ and super-fast feedback I am good at what I’m doing. I agree that one shold stay in excellent shape and showcase good character.
Biggest issue I have with personal trainers is it seems 95% of their clientele are women. I think there is something genetic in women that makes them incapable of just learning things on their own. They need someone standing there saying, yes you are doing that right. How difficult is it to learn the basics of a weight and cardio fitness regimen? With the advent of the internet it’s made trainers even more obsolete. If there’s a particular exercise that I’m not sure about, I just google it and there’s 20 certified trainers with their YouTube channels happily showing me exactly how to do it.
Keep in mind I’m not knocking the PTs who help people with injuries or who teach classes geared towards specific sports. I’m talking about the 45 minute sessions at the local gym where a guy stands there chatting with a woman while she does leg presses.
There was a little blonde that worked as a personal trainer at my gym. Long story short, she was a recently divorced 28 year that had left her husband when he cheated on her. She in return started dating another man while they were separated. The owner of the gym had given her a break and hired her on as a personal trainer after she got her qualifications.
Not 2 months later she ups and quits and moves to Houston to work at a more exclusive style gym in an upper class neighborhood. Her reason for this she told me was that she wanted to get out of Austin for a bit. In lady speak I realized that she had dumped her boyfriend and was looking to trade up.
She lives for a few months and I think I’ll never see her again. Lo and behold she comes back this past summer saying she couldn’t afford living in her new neighborhood. She comes back to Austin and moves back in with her parents. The gym, now under new managements, hires her back on as a trainer, where she promised to do a 2 year commitment. Not even 3 months into her commitment, she ups and leaves again saying that she wasn’t making enough money (she wanted to make 40k a year as a PT alone), and moves back to Houston with another guy she started dating. Needless to say being a PT and helping others wasn’t her priority and was just using it as a way to monkey branch from one rich BF to the next.
I want to be a personal trainer for women and turn them from fat feminists to thin and healthy patriarch princesses with extreme cardio and forbid them any weights as real woman shouldn’t lift anything more than 1 lb. I saw women lifting 2lb and had some muscle, how unfeminine and gross.