This is something that I hoped I’d not be writing about…still! When I first opened Impact almost 5 years ago it was because the current gym ‘system’ was failing it’s members. Zero education on exercise and nutrition. How were people supposed to get healthier if they weren’t educated?
Not only that, when members of gyms realised they needed more support and hired a personal trainer in a commercial gym, it wasn’t much better.
Why was this? These members were now paying for gym membership AND personal training and still not achieving their goals. Something wasn’t right and it didn’t sit well with me.
This isn’t a bashing all personal trainers post, there are some amazing personal trainers working in commercial gyms, the problem is that the gym industry is failing personal trainers and it’s members. The reason why “personal trainers” are able to get away with being so bad at their jobs is because the whole system is wrong.
You see, the gym owners and management care about the numbers, how many sessions are delivered. Which then leads the personal trainers down the rabbit hole of trying to deliver as many sessions as possible per week.
Which of course leads to the personal trainers having no actual accountability for the level of work they are delivering. No emphasis on continued education and certainly no levels of professionalism (using phones whilst training people ring a bell?!!). These are the fundamental reasons as to why the fitness industry is failing.
Not once have I met a personal trainer or manager in a commercial gym that has ever mentioned their results with clients first. There is some weird kind of bragging badge in the industry about how many sessions are delivered per week by trainers.
Sure, all businesses require money to continue, I get it. But why are we focussing on the WRONG goal. The goal is to help people. If a personal trainer continuously helps his/her clients to achieve their goals, to me that is a successful trainer. If a trainer delivers great results, they will be busy!
Don’t get me wrong I have been there, delivering 50+ sessions per week. I’ve made that mistake. I quickly realised that delivering that many sessions with quality is near on impossible. The sweet spot is around 30-35 sessions per week in my opinion, with the additional work surrounding each client, that is still in excess of a 40-hour week.
Until there is a huge change in how gyms work and manage personal trainers this is going to be an issue for the foreseeable future.
Which is exactly why Impact is how it is. Results based professional personal training. All personal trainers have 2 layers of accountability. Firstly, this is from our PT manager and then our PT manager is accountable to myself.
Adding in these layers of accountability helps to create a professional and results based experience for our clients.
I certainly can’t see the fitness industry as a whole changing too quickly, so if I were you? The first thing I would be doing before I signed up at a gym or with a personal trainer is ask to see some results that have been achieved with clients like you. If a personal trainer can’t show you any results, run! (that’s the only time I’d ever be telling you to run aha 😉 ).
Richard Gunter
Owner- Impact Personal Training
