What Is the Salary of a Personal Trainer?
- Most trainers are not paid a regular salary but instead make money by the hour. This means that how much a trainer makes in a specific month depends a lot of how many clients he has and how often he trains. As a national average, trainers make between $60 and $250 an hour, with the majority being in the lower bracket. If you work in a gym, your place of employment will take a percentage of the hourly fee charged to the client. Some fitness centers pay trainers a flat hourly fee of $7 to $10 to "walk the floor," introduce new members to the machines and talk to potential clients to see if they can sell a training package.
- Most personal trainers work in a club setting. Some need to obtain their own clients, while others are given the clients by the gym itself, which sells the training packages through their retail force. In any case, the company takes a percentage of each training session. The percentages vary widely among companies, with some taking as much as 60 percent. Other companies give the trainer a percentage based on her fitness certifications, experience or type of training package sold to the client, so for example, a trainer with a single, basic certification will get 30 percent of the cut, while one with four or more certifications will get 45.
- Aside from traditional training, many personal trainers make extra money by taking on other positions related to fitness and exercise. A clear example is online training, in which trainers offer support, program design and consultation over the Internet. Prices for this vary, but most trainers charge a monthly fee of at least $20 and require a subscription. Other trainers supplement their incomes by selling nutritional supplements or meal planning counseling.
- Established trainers or those who want to keep more control over the financial aspect should consider working on their own. This can be done in several ways: at the home of the client, in a rented space, outdoors or by paying a fitness club a fee to use the facilities. Even with the expenses involved in running your own business, personal trainers who work for themselves will still keep a higher percentage of the earnings than those who work for a fitness club or other type of facility. This is mostly true because most places consider trainers as independent contractors, rather than employees, so the tax rate paid is still high. Self-employed personal trainers can expect to make over $60,000 a year.
- Another important factor to determine how much a trainer makes is what type of qualifications he has. There are four major fitness certifications available: American College of Sports Medicine, American Council on Exercise (ACE), National Academy of Sports Medicine, and Aerobics and Fitness Association of America (AFAA). Graduates of these programs can expect better employment opportunities, since many of the large fitness club franchises require one of these courses as a prerequisite for being hired. Trainers who have a degree in the field, such as an Associate of Science degree in medicine and fitness technology or health and exercise science can expect to earn higher salaries or aim to work as training managers.
