Lessons from My First Two Years as a Personal Trainer in a Commercial Gym
*Disclaimer: I am by no means an amazing trainer, with years upon years of experience. This is just my personal sharing of experience from my beginning years as a personal trainer.
Ask any well-known strength coach, personal trainer, or basically anyone involved with the strength and fitness industry, and (if they’re actually good) they’ll tell you to start your journey in a commercial gym setting.
Alright, before you go storming off and read some article off bodybuilding.com to make yourself feel good about yourself again, I know. I didn’t want to at first either. I wanted my own studio, or to work with the best athletes in the Barbell Brigade’s, the Cressey Sports Performance’s, and the Juggernaut Strength gyms of the world.
That was simply because I was the best. I lifted for like ~4ish years then. I read bodybuilding.com, T-nation, and watched Omar Isuf’s calves not grow. No one knew more than me. I could squat, bench, and deadlift with passable form. I could tell people to do 3x10 of everything!
But seriously, just think about it for a second. Where else can you, a new trainer, probably new to the fitness industry as a whole, work with such a wide range of people, learn from a wide range of trainers, and be pushed to grow your little to zero sales skills?
That’s right, a commercial gym.
We all hate them, but they’re there for our benefit (kinda).
I’ve been at the same gym for the entirety of my first two years as a personal trainer. I’ve worked with a bunch of people and worked with a bunch of people, all who I’ve been thankful to be with, because they’ve all taught me something different and valuable to take forward onto my training career and life in general.
There’s no way for me to squeeze two years worth of knowledge and experience into an article that like…two of you will read, so here’s my top five lessons from training in a commercial gym:
1. Find your specialty
This applies to everyone in all aspects of life. The guy who trained me to be a cashier when I first started working at Home Depot actually said it best when a customer asked him a question,
“I know a little about a lot and a lot about a little”
I don’t know if that was originally from him, or from someone else, but it still stuck with me years later.
You can’t be the best at everything, but you can be the best at your thing. Figuring out what your thing is may take time, or you might naturally fall into it. Either way, start by trying out a bunch of different training styles and see which you’re most interested in, or are naturally best at. I thought I wanted to train people to the point where they could get on stage, but less than a year later, I found out I was best at coaching and correcting movement patterns in the big three (squat, bench, deadlift), probably just due to the reason that the only thing I do is squat, bench, and deadlift.
A “side” specialty, which I actually appreciated much more was getting people to touch weights and get over their fears and anxieties of the weight room. Even after they stopped training with me, I noticed they were much more confident in reaching for dumbbells and bars instead of machines.
Simply put, whether you’re into calisthenics, powerlifting, body re-composition, or whatever it may be, be sure to learn everything you can about it and obtain the proper certifications and qualifications before teaching it to others.
For more on this, check out The ONE Thing, by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan.
2. Talk to people.
You will get nowhere if you stay in your corner and only come in for your sessions. You probably won’t even have sessions. Talk to all the other trainers and staff, especially if you’re new. Make friends with them. Have them go into their training styles and philosophies. If you’re new, there’s everything to learn.
My first two weeks there, the gym wasn’t even open yet. It was a new branch, so I had plenty of time to get to know the other trainers and the training manager as well. In this time, I learned that I was probably the least knowledgeable guy there.
I was so scared. Why would anyone want to train with me if there are not only a bunch more trainers as my competition, but also a bunch more trainers who knew a bunch more than I did?
Allow other people to open up to you (that’s half your job as a trainer anyway), and you’ll see worlds of knowledge that you were previously unaware of, or points of view on certain topics that you would’ve never seen previously.
And don’t just talk about training either. Allow real, meaningful relationships to develop. You are working with these people for an extended period of time, after all. You’ll learn which people are there to help you, and which people to stay away from. If you’re in a commercial gym, trust me, there are people you’ll want to stay away from. Listen to everything they have to say, but maintain your inner researcher nature and take everything with a grain of salt. If you haven’t personally researched it and found credible, cited sources, don’t spread it. You’re in the business of helping people to healthier lives and better performing bodies. That last thing you want to do is seriously injure someone or steer them away from wanting to train in the future.
One last thing: listen more than you talk. Sometimes it’s better to keep your mouth shut and not risk ruining a relationship by contradicting someone, unless you are certain that they are open to educated discussion with an open mind, you have sources to back up your argument, and you are able to admit when you’re wrong. This can be difficult, but you’re going to have to master these three things if you want to excel at anything.
For more on this, feel free to check out How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie.
3. Don’t stop learning, testing, and retesting.
Now that you know you’re the least knowledgeable trainer in the gym, it’s time to fix that (or not, if you choose not to). Read, watch, and repeat. Training theories are always changing, so if you’re not up to date, you’re kinda far behind. Google the top trainers in your area. Go see if you can pay them a visit just to shadow a session or two. Just putting yourself in the presence of greatness allows you to imbibe in a treasure chest of knowledge and experience which not only teaches you more about training, but also re-invigorates and re-motivates you to be a better trainer. Or at least it did for me when I went to Cressey Sports Performance and CORE.
Before I even thought about training at a gym of any kind, I was already reading and watching a lot. I learned a lot from Elliott Hulse, Omar Isuf, and Chris Jones. They were essentially my foundation of training knowledge. However, I realized I needed to get a little more specialized in the training world, and I had pretty much gotten the overall jist of what Elliott and Chris Jones had to offer, so I went to google. There, I started reading everything from Dean Somerset, Tony Gentilcore, the PTDC (go here. Seriously), and many, many other trainers’ blogs. I was heavily influenced in teaching techniques from Chris Duffin and found that his method of teaching a barbell back squat has an almost 100% success rate.
Basically, what I’m trying to say here is, you’re a beginner, don’t waste your time formulating and testing “new” discoveries, methods, and modalities of training when others have already done so for you, and all you have to do is spend a few minutes reading about it or watching a video on it.
It might just be because I have a science background, but I treat the gym as my lab, and test all my theories on actual people (sorry to my clients, yes you were my lab rats). If it works, great, if not, modify and retest. Don’t have any clients yet or can’t find someone suitable to test your theories? Try yourself first, and if you have any training buddies that are up for it, try it on them too.
And finally, don’t be a know it all who doesn’t actually work out. You don’t have to be the next Arnold, Brian Shaw, or Lillibridge, but you should still have a very good base of actually working out consistently and correctly for a while before you start to teach others how to do so.
For more on this and where to get started, I definitely, highly recommend going to theptdc.com
4. Don’t shy from sales
If your commercial gym is anything like mine, training prices are pretty much fixed. There’s no room for negotiation, and you will be pushed to sell. For the most part, they pretty much only care about sales. That’s their revenue. They could care less if you were the most knowledgeable trainer in the world or if you just got your certification because you had an open book test from some sketch $20 company. I don’t actually know if that exists, but you get my point.
The gym I worked at charged almost $100/session for training. As a beginner, I thought this was crazy. $100 an hour to have someone tell you what to do then watch you work out? Why would anyone want to spend that much on training?
I’m not telling you to get over it immediately, but learn to not be afraid of pricing. Also, make yourself worth more than what your gym is charging per hour of training. Members will be more willing to pay for your services if you have the confidence and knowledge of getting them towards their goals. People have money, they just need to be shown where and how to spend it. I don’t want to make this too sales-y, because I got into the industry to help people, but it’s a necessary part of the profession. After your first few nerve-racking sales opportunities (or all of them, for some people that never get over it), you’ll start to notice subtleties in your prospective clients. You’ll start to notice when they just need a little more coaxing and when they just really aren’t interested in training. And with that, don’t take the “no’s” personally, they’re just really not interested.
Honestly, this is my biggest weak point, so I don’t have a lot of advice to offer you here, but there is plenty of help out there, as long as you make the effort to read, test and retest. My biggest tip for you here to get comfortable with sales is to get in front of as many people as possible. You’ll get a bunch of no’s and a few yes’s, but those yes’s will build your confidence. Keep building until you’re confident enough to know the value of your time and knowledge (as well as your limitations), and you’ll start to develop your own methods.
There are many different variations to go towards when it comes to sales. You can either hit them hard (think used car salesman), or you can go the friendlier route, which takes more time to develop full relationships with. With this, I recommend you check out Pitch Anything, by Oren Klaff, and Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook, by Gary Vaynerchuk.
5. Know when to leave.
If you are serious about your training career, you will have exhausted the amount of resources that a commercial gym can give you. If your gym allows you to build a personal brand and have a bit more freedom when it comes to running your business, then great (i.e. Dean Somerset). Stay there if you’re happy there. However, most gyms have a pretty low ceiling when it comes to quality of education, peers, and clients they’re bringing in.
If you really are on a path to be the best, know when your time is up and when to move on to your next venture. Yes, it will be scary to start over, especially if you’ve been working to build your client base for a while now and you’re going to start back at minimal to no income. But, it’ll be worth it to further your personal development as a trainer and in running a business outside the confines of a commercial gym.
This one is not to be taken lightly. It’s better for you to leave later than earlier, to ensure you really are at the point where you can move to a bigger, better place.
Think of it as prestigeing in COD. You’re going from essentially the highest in your class to zero again, in a whole new realm of greatness. On the other hand, if you wanna just stay there your whole career, do you. I shouldn’t have any sway in what you want to do with your life.
There’s not really another resource I can think of off the top of my head for this one, so I can’t give a recommendation. Sorry!
And that’s it! Well, not really, but those were my five biggest lessons learned from working at a commercial gym for two years. Again, I don’t consider myself an amazing trainer by anyone’s means, but I’m decent. It’s what I have been obsessed with learning about for the past 6–7 years, so it’s engrained in my (all natty) blood by now. I have a long way to go, and still a lot to learn. Like I said, it’s a never-ending journey.
Hopefully at least one of you found these tips helpful and can use it to launch the start of your training career. Please feel free to give me any feedback from just reading this, or even better, if you’ve applied these lessons to your business and found failure or success, please let me know!
