If you have a love for sports and fitness, you may find yourself enjoying the satisfaction of teaching others around you. Switching your career path to a personal trainer may seem like the perfect fit for your lifestyle. However, here are four factors that you should take into consideration before making a final decision about trying out this new career path.
Your Target Salary
Talk to many fitness instructors, and you’ll soon find out that they prefer training others over making tons of money. While there’s no ceiling on salaries in the personal training sector, the average annual salary is about $50,000. Those who make more tend to specialize in specific fields of fitness. Before you jump on board with this new career, take some time to determine if this average salary is alright with you.
Are You A People-Person?
While the fitness industry may have you thinking that being a personal trainer is all about teaching exercises and forms, that’s not the case. While fitness training is a necessary part of this career, it’s only some of the story. People tend to open up when they are under strenuous physical exercise. This means expecting to hear about people’s bad days, marital issues, work problems, and so forth. You need to be able to have the personality of a people-person to handle both the mental and physical well-being of your clients.
Big Box Gyms Vs. Self-Employment
Starting out as a personal trainer, you have one of two options. You can become a trainer at a big box gym, or you can strike it out on your own. Working for a big box gym does provide you with the advantage of easily getting connected with new patients and always getting paid. However, big box gyms can come along with some undue stress to push certain fitness classes, products, and so forth. Self-employment, on the other hand, requires that you find a source of clients, keep your own books, and collect your own payments.
Can You Provide Endless Motivation?
As a personal trainer, your job is to teach and inspire your patrons. While it may seem a simple concept at first, it can become more difficult when you throw in the frustrations of dealing with other people’s mindsets. If your client comes in with an “I don’t care” attitude, you need to be able to switch that off and motivate them.
Becoming a personal trainer may just be the next career for you. However, you should take the four areas above into consideration. This will ensure that you’re ready to take on your new career and stick to it.