After 10 years of personal training, here is my career so far in numbers:
30 Years of involvement in competitive sport in one form or another (athlete / coach / sports massage / administrator)
25 Years as a competitive athlete
20 Years as an elite level performance athlete (at either junior / age group level or at senior level)
15 Years providing elite level support to athletes (sports massage / strength and conditioning support / athletics coach)
10 Years of running a personal training and sports massage business
It is the last 10 years of personal training that I’d like to focus on here. It is always a good idea to look back and reflect from time to time. So, in the spirit of reflecting on my last 10 years of personal training, what follows is the top 10 lessons I have learnt in that time.
10 Lessons from 10 Years of Personal Training
Personal Training Lesson One – Personal Connections
When it comes to building a thriving personal training client base, the biggest factor for me has been personal connections. These may be connections through my running career. It could be people I have met on the gym floor and struck up conversations with. My existing clients have often been valuable connections, recommending me to their friends. These various different personal connections have been responsible for the majority of the growth in my personal training client base.
Don’t get me wrong. I have always tried to maintain a presence on social media. I have always taken time to maintain my website as well. And yes, my online presence has consistently brought in new clients as well. But, the percentage of new clients brought in through my online presence versus the percentage of clients brought in through various personal connections has remained relatively small.
So my take home point for someone just starting out would be to invest your time in the right areas. Absolutely, yes, promote your brand on social media and through a website. But, if you are anything like me, this is not where you want to be spending the majority of your time. You will be far better served by making a real effort to build more genuine, ‘in person’, real-life connections.
Personal Training Lesson Two – Own Your Own Niche
This ties into my first lesson a little. Personal connections have been key for me in building my business. Probably the biggest aspect of this for me has been my personal connections within the sport of athletics. I am well connected and well respected within this sport. That has been a huge advantage to me in terms of building a thriving client base. I have had track coaches send a conveyor-belt of athletes my way for strength and conditioning support and massage treatment. I have also had athletes contact me directly for support.
However, despite this, when I first started out, I didn’t market myself directly towards runners or track and field athletes. This was probably a mistake. Since the Covid-19 pandemic I have positioned myself as a strength and conditioning expert for runners. This means that my online marketing efforts are now aligned with how I find new clients through my in-person connections. There is no-longer a disconnect between the two.
As the time old saying goes…. try and speak to everyone and you will end up speaking to nobody.
Personal Training Lesson Three – Environment is Key
In my 10 years of personal training I have based my business in two separate regions. For approximately the first five years (slightly longer) I was based in Manchester. For nearly five years now, I have been based in York.
In Manchester, I was based in Longfords Gym. This was a fantastic training environment to be based from. However, a limiting factor was that I was only allowed to train clients that were members of the gym. This largely made any online marketing efforts redundant. It provided an extra barrier to new clients coming on board if they were not already members of the gym. This is often a condition that you must agree to when working out of someone else’s gym. As such, it is worth taking the time to think about the training environment you wish to base yourself from.
When moving to York I initially based myself out of an external gym again. Without going into the details, this was not a suitable environment. It just wasn’t possible to provide an elite level personal training service from this facility.
Egerton’s Garage Gym
So I began to build my own private personal training gym from my garage – Egerton’s Garage Gym (The EGG). This was the absolute best move I ever made. I have been able to hand-pick the best equipment from the leading manufacturers from around the world. There are no restrictions on who I can and cannot train from my own facility. My clients are able to receive a truly private training experience. They can train without having to share the space with anyone else. In short, what I have created is the ultimate training environment for private personal training. As a result, my offering is completely unrivalled within York.
My advice to others would be, if you can afford it, then seriously look into going down this route. It will separate you from your competition. It will enable you to provide a level of service that cannot be found any where else in your region. BUT, if you are going to go down this route, then do not skimp. Take the time to think about the optimal layout, the optimal equipment, the finer details. Also be prepared to make a serious financial investment.
You may decide not to go down the route of building your own private personal training gym. However, you do need to make sure you take the time to carefully consider what your best option is. Consider this both in terms of where your business will be located and what training environment that will provide.
Personal Training Lesson Four – Don’t Try to do Everything
There is so much noise in the fitness industry. There’s outdoor bootcamps, studio HIIT classes, online coaches, online support groups to name a few. Some personal trainers try and earn additional income by selling supplements.
The quicker you can learn exactly what your craft is, and discard the rest, the better. Doing a load of shouting around at a bunch of people in a generic fitness class is not my scene. I thankfully learnt that very quickly, and so I am very clear about my offering. I offer personal training and sports massage, and that’s it. My focus is on attention to detail, quality coaching and quality programming. I leave the shouty, motivational type stuff to others who’s personality is more suited to that.
For you, it might be the opposite. You might be really great at engaging a large group of people in fitness sessions. Maybe you thrive on making sure people have a lot of fun with what they are doing in these classes. If that’s you, then you might want to discard personal training completely and just focus on group training. The key is to find out what you are best suited to as quickly as possible and focus on that. Don’t try and do everything.
Personal Training Lesson Five – Charge What You are Worth
Don’t get me wrong here. My price point represents superb value. However, I am not cheap either, and nor should I be. The are less expensive options out there, and so I will not be for everyone. If you are shopping on price alone, I am not the guy for you.
I am the trainer for people who are happy to pay a slightly higher price for a premium service. These people want to work with someone with years of high level experience. They want to work with a trainer that has invested heavily into his education. I am able to provide these qualities, and more. My private gym that, that I have invested heavily into and provides you with an optimal training environment, is also a big selling point. I am someone with a proven ability to achieve great results, and who prides himself on being organised and reliable. If you value these things more than going for the cheapest price, then I am probably the trainer for you.
For the reasons above I am very confident in the value my price point provides. As such, I have a very simple pricing structure. There is one price and one price only. No mates rates, no discounts for certain people, no discounts for block booking a certain number of sessions. The price is the price.
Command Your Price With Confidence
I will not budge on price. But that wasn’t always the case. Back when I worked in Manchester, it would be common for people to ask about discounts for block booking. I would usually accommodate this. Since moving to York, my standard price hasn’t changed. What has changed is that I no longer accommodate any requests for discounts for block booking or discounts for any other reason.
Taking this approach has been a massive positive for my business. Yes, occasionally it has resulted in a potential new client not coming on board. But that is fine.
What I have found, is that when you take this approach, clients respect your time more. They also value their sessions more. There are fewer last minute cancellations. There are fewer texts asking to change session times. Clients generally continue to work with you for longer.
It takes a lot of confidence in your service to take this approach. But after 10 years of personal training, I have the confidence to do so. It has been one of the best things I have done for my business.
Personal Training Lesson Six – Professionalism is Key
Professionalism possibly means different things for different people. However, for me, some of the following are key:
Timeliness – If I have agreed a certain time for a session, then I will be ready at that time.
Reliability – Not forgetting about sessions or double booking people for session slots.
Preparedness – being prepared for each individual session. Keeping client records so that progress can be tracked and session plans can be made accordingly.
These are possibly the big three for me. These are three areas I have always placed importance upon. But, the longer I have been in this game, the more I realise that these are actually quite rare traits to find. After 10 years of personal training, I have come across a handful of other trainers that are always 1) On Time 2) reliable and 3) Prepared.
Of course, there are other aspects of professionalism that are important. Friendliness and having an enthusiasm for fitness are two that spring to mind. However, I have found most personal trainers do have these in abundance. Instead, I do think it is the top three points above that go along way to separate myself from many of the rest.
Personal Training Lesson Seven – Organise Your Time
This is something I’m still working on but am getting better at.
I personally find I am more productive at getting things done when I can allocate a good chunk of time towards getting things done. The implications of this for me are that if I have a half hour gap between clients here and a 45 minute gap there, then I am not going to be using those time gaps very productively. However, if I can manage to schedule three to four clients back to back, and then have a three hour gap before going again – I will be able to be far more productive during that time gap.
I also believe having set days off work is important. This is something I really am not very good at, but am trying to improve upon. I am doing better at only training clients on Mondays through to Fridays and then taking the Weekends off.
Lesson Eight – Continue to Pursue your Own Training Goals
This is something I have come to realise recently.
The end of my Track Running career roughly coincided with the beginning of my personal training and sports massage business. As such, I have not really had a competitive outlet during the whole time I have been personal training and providing sports massage. Of course, I have continued to do a fair amount of training in order to stay in shape; but with no specific end goal in mind.
From time to time, I have been asked by clients (and prospective clients) if I am in training for anything in particular. The response has always been something along the lines of… ‘no, not really. Just training to stay in shape’.
However, more recently I have actually taken on a more specific goal. The reason for this is primarily because my own training was starting to become slightly lacklustre. So I felt like I would benefit from a tough target to work towards. Getting back into middle distance running was out of the question – I can happily draw a line under that aspect of my career. However, I stumbled across a challenge that was catching on amongst ex-professional runners in particular. This challenge really caught my interest since it involves both running and lifting – and I have done a lot of lifting over the last 8+ years.
500Lb Deadlift and Sub Five Minute Mile Challenge
The specifics of this challenge are as follows:
- Deadlift 500lbs for one repetition
- Run one mile on the track
- Complete the whole challenge in under 5 minutes, with the clock starting when the hands first touch the bar for the deadlift and the clock stopping when you cross the line at the end of the mile
So this is what I am currently in training for. I do not yet know if I will be successful in this challenge. It is going to stretch me to my limit in order to get in shape for this challenge – and even then, it may transpire that it is still not enough. However, I am up for the challenge and I am going to give it my best shot.
What I have found, is that now when clients ask me about what I am training for; I am able to tell them about this challenge, they are always very interested in it, and they will often bring up the subject again to ask how my training is going for the challenge. I think this is a good thing.
So I think the lesson here is that it is very important for personal trainers to always continue to pursue their own training goals.
Personal Training Lesson Nine – Understand Your Worth
Not all clients will train with you forever. Many do stay with me for a very long time. But inevitably, circumstances change over time. With those changes in circumstances, there will always be some drop off.
For those clients that have stayed with me for a very long time (many years), they will have learnt how I work. They will have learnt how to structure training well, how to make suitable adjustments to training based on a range of factors, and they will have learnt what kind of training provides great results for them. Despite all that, if they eventually part ways, they typically fall back into their old patterns and quickly revert back to sub-optimal training again. This isn’t true 100% of the time – but I have found it to be true in the vast majority of cases.
Of course this is unfortunate. It would be nice if those former clients would go on to use the tools and knowledge that they have acquired to impact their training in a positive way.
Change for the Sake of Change
However, at the same time, this pattern has helped me to appreciate my own worth as a personal trainer. It would be easy to fall into the trap of thinking, once a client has been with you for a very long time, that you need to re-invent the wheel in order to keep providing value to them. It would be easy to think that you need to continually be showing them new things. And of course, variation is important. But change for the sake of change is not a good thing. So if it is in the best interests of the client to continue working those same fundamental movement patterns, then that is what we will do.
Once you have seen a certain pattern of events over and over again; and that pattern of events is that clients continue to make great progress for as long as they are working with you, and then that progress stops once they part ways…. that instills a certain confidence in your methods and your worth.
Lesson Ten – February is the new January for Personal Trainers
This is more of an interesting observation than a lesson. However, something that I have noticed as a Personal Trainer over the years, is that more personal training enquiries actually come in February than January.
Perhaps this is peculiar to me and my business – as I have never heard any other personal trainers talk about this. However, it is a definite pattern that I have noticed.
Everyone knows about the January rush in the fitness industry. Christmas is over, and New Years resolutions have been made to get fit in the new year. That, coupled with the fat that not an awful lot else tends to be going on in January, all makes for the perfect storm for signing up new gym memberships.
However, it is typically not until February that I actually see an influx of enquiries to start personal training with me.
The February Rush
I have a theory for why this might be the case. Everyone starts going to the gym in January, yes. But it takes them around a month of trying to figure things out on their own to realise that, actually, they need the help of a professional if they are actually going to be successful in their fitness journey. So January is the boom period for gym memberships and February is the boom period for personal trainers.
I think this is a pretty solid theory. However, as I mentioned, I have not heard any other trainers talk about this phenomenon. So there is a possibility that this is peculiar to my business. One reason why my personal training business might be different to others out there could be the type of clients I tend to attract. I do tend to attract more performance athletes (particularly track and field athletes and runners) for strength and conditioning work. This isn’t exactly the typical new year, new me crowd, and so perhaps that skews things a little for me.
Either way, I think it is an interesting observation, and I would be interested to hear if any other personal trainers have also observed this or have any thoughts on this. Or if you have any thoughts on any of the other points covered from my 10 lessons in 10 years of personal training, then please get in touch as well – I’d love to chat about it.
If you do want to get in touch, you can do so in one of two ways:
Get in touch through my Personal Training Website Enquiry Form
Tim Egerton – 10 Years of Personal Training
The EGG
Egerton’s Garage Gym
Foxwood Personal training, York