When you become a personal trainer, you get to work out all the time and help others get healthy. But there’s a lot more to it than that.
When you become a personal trainer, you realize there is a lot more to the job than working out.
When you become a certified personal trainer, you think that you will be healthier than ever before. For many personal trainers, the opposite is actually true. Trainers are often busy first thing in the morning and later in the afternoon and evening. They are generally self-employed and reluctant to turn down clients when they appear. They don’t get enough sleep, they rush from client to client, and they have no times left over to eat right and work out properly. Getting a personal trainer certification also leads to a poor social life due to lack of time.
After your personal trainer training, you start to take on clients. Those clients need to work out before or after they go to their day jobs. That means you often have your first training session at five in the morning and your last session at seven in the evening. It takes a lot of energy to get through the day and that often translates over into coffee drinking. Many trainers feel like they need coffee to wake up and more coffee later in the day to make it through the evening. Lack of sleep leads to caffeine addiction and can cause health complications down the road.
Once you get personal trainer certification, you might start to chase clients and try to get as many people on board with you as possible. You are chasing the money and not focusing on any of the clients. This is a fast way to build a business and then see it come tumbling down around you. If you look at everyone you see in the gym and assess every body for weaknesses and strengths, you aren’t focusing on the people who actually come to you for help. You need to act with integrity, be honest with clients and dedicate the time they are paying for to them. This will grow your business in a manner that will help it have staying power.
If you know a doctor, chances are you ask them what might be wrong if you have a persistent cough. When you are a certified personal trainer, the same thing will happen to you. You will be asked for fitness advice around every corner as small talk and even from close friends. People will ask small questions, to which you could give a hundred different answers, and you know most people won’t take the advice you give anyway. You will tire of these questions and your social life, both large and small, will suffer as a result. You can’t hide what you do when people see you doing it around the gym.
Even if no one says anything, they probably think it. After personal trainer training, people become self-conscious around you. When they eat a decadent dessert in front of you, they might feel guilty because they know they shouldn’t have so many empty calories. You are the accountability partner they didn’t sign up to have. They feel like you are judging them for what they are eating and how they look because it is your business to help people act in healthier manners. This becomes annoying to those who spend time with you, and you will likely be annoyed by it as well if the comments come out into the forefront.
When you are at the gym nearly every waking hour of the day after you become a personal trainer, you will tend to gravitate towards dating others with a personal trainer certification or even your own clients. It is hard to avoid what people look like in tight clothing while working out, after all. When you date someone who is on the same schedule as you, like another personal trainer, it seems convenient. But dating a client is usually not a good idea. If things end badly, it can hurt your business and reputation. Being in the gym for long hours of the day makes it hard to meet anyone outside of your normal location.
If you break a sweat alongside your clients, you may have to change clothes multiple times in a day in order to look fresh for your next client. Your laundry will start to pile up because you aren’t home enough hours to get it done. That leads to purchasing more work out clothes, which can get expensive when you buy the good brands and the right fit. Laundry is not high on your priority list until you have a 5 am training session and realize all of your workout gear is dirty and in a pile on the floor of your bedroom.
Whether you run your sessions in person at the gym or act as an online personal trainer, you usually count a lot of reps and do a lot of circuits. After a while, you won’t need a stopwatch. Counting becomes second nature. Your normally tight schedule allows you to count how long it takes to get coffee, grab lunch or even take a bathroom break. You may not notice how much time affects other areas of your life, but as you begin to count it all, it will start to ingrain itself into your subconscious.
You used to enjoy the holidays and the breaks you would get from everyday life. Even though you still expect to have holidays off, when you become a personal trainer, you can expect the money tap to turn off completely for several weeks around every major holiday. Clients will be spending time with family and money on gifts and other holiday items. They won’t have time for you or money to spend on your services. When the holidays are over, you’ll find yourself working twice as hard in person and and as an online personal trainer to make up for the time you had off that you didn’t want to have off.
