Personal Trainer certification

In your market, how much does the average personal trainer make compared to the average IT professional? Just curious...

Hi Jeff!

So a bit part of being a personal trainer is being able to sell yourself. You have to sell personal training to clients and hope you get enough clients to pay the bills. It's also just like sales in that your income is not guaranteed.

I have been told by people who chosen being a personal trainer or tri coach as their career... that you won't get rich off doing it, so you better LOVE it.

I know for me, while I love tri coaching, I can't earn enough tri coaching to justify quitting my day job. I figured out I would need to carry around 25 clients a month to make what I made at my day job. Between injuries, people quitting because they got to their big race, etc. it just seems near impossible to make a GOOD living at being a full time tri coach.

I could be wrong, but it seems like personal training might be along the same lines. If you are in IT... and you are making over $45,000 a year... it's going to be very hard to make enough personal training to cover your paycheck. But if you are willing to make less, then it could work.

Also, going to the personal trainer route, you have to decide if you are going to go with a gym (who take a huge cut of your earnings, and expect you to upsell products, etc.), or if you are going to do it on your own (but then you need to have the equipment to train people on).

Good luck man!

P.S.- I got certified by NASM as a personal trainer in 2010. I did my research on working in a gym, etc. and figured out that making my day job work was the best thing I could do.



Edited by KSH 2013-01-18 10:47 AM