We always tell potential clients that “you can’t put a price tag on your health,” but face it, the biggest drawback to personal training involves cost. It’s just too expensive for most people. They want to train their body, but they don’t want to spend an arm and a leg to do so!
The solution involves group training. With group training, you get all the benefits of personal training at a reduced cost. Trainers love it because they make more per session, and clients love it because they pay less per session.
Group training is “HOT” right now, but there are three strikes against it:
| 1. | With fewer group participants, there’s less compromise to individual attention and a better ability to manage the logistics of a safe and effective workout (e.g., fewer people require less equipment!) With group training, clients should be as homogenous as possible in terms of health history and physical ability. |
| 2. | Strike two involves zoning. If you operate a home studio like I do, by-laws exist that won’t permit you to service large groups of individuals at any given time. Between traffic and parking, fire and safety issues, and not pissing off your neighbors, a small gym setting is not conducive for group training. |
| 3. | The final nail in the coffin involves goals. If everyone is on the same page, great! But what if that’s not the case? Can you still design and implement different routines for different goals? The answer is YES, it can be done. It’s more work of course, and it can become a nightmare trying to supervise, but it’s doable. |
Even with those three strikes, semi-private sessions are the current rave in the industry. They’re the only way to make serious money in personal training.
Well, I beg to differ!
Sure, group training for yoga, stretching and aerobic work (e.g.,, step/spinning classes, bootcamps, etc.) can be useful in certain situations, but for the average, non-athletic client that enters your gym, one-on-one training still rules and can be quite lucrative. Play your cards right and you’ll earn a six-figure income with ease. Let’s do some quick math:
5 sessions a day x $80 per session = $400 a day
$400 x 5 days a week = $2000 per week
$2000 per week x 50 weeks = $100,000 in a year
There you go! You get your weekends off, two weeks for holidays, and you only need five people a day (check out my book The Business of Personal Training, and I’ll show you how to easily make that daily quota!)… and that’s at your bare minimum rate! Work an extra day, do an extra session, raise your rates, etc. and watch how things start to multiply. With this scheme, you have time to read, write, train and plan your sessions, as well as eat, sleep and spend time with your loved ones. Who could ask for more?
All of this is accomplished without killing yourself supervising a large group where you’re liable for any mishap. Trust me, there’s a lot less stress and a lot more happiness! Quite frankly, my clients don’t want to share me with anyone else anyway. It’s their time and they want me all to themselves… and they’re willing to pay for it! That’s fine with me.
In fact, I rarely train more than two people at a time anymore. Two people are enough – either two friends, two siblings, or a husband and wife. Any more than that and it becomes a headache!
Training couples is popular today for many reasons: trainers love it because they can earn 50-70% more per session without all the hassles that occur with group training, and couples love the motivation, convenience and cost savings. Everyone wins!
Most couples usually have the same goals – it’s often weight loss. When you can get couples to shift their focus on body composition rather than body weight, they concentrate on the process rather than the outcome. They keep each other accountable, it becomes less competitive and more cooperative, and it’s a far more positive endeavor.
How do you design a program when training two people at once? I go through all the details in the following 12-page report:
Every personal trainer and fitness professional should go
There you have it! Whether your clients are beginners or advanced trainees, whether they train at home or in a gym, or whether their primary goal is to increase muscle mass or lose body fat, the 12-page report and the video presentation provide all the information you need to train couples, earn more per hour, and grow your personal training business.
