Over the course of a year, how many training sessions do you average per day?

[arian11]

I know there are a lot of ebbs and flows to personal training based on time of the year, location, and many other things. I'm sure training sessions go up during the New Years rush and then you get a drop off. But I'm trying to run some estimates to see what it would take to make a reasonable salary as a personal trainer/gym owner. And I'm wondering what would be a good estimate (if anything, an under-estimate) of how many training sessions to expect per day (average).

What I am using right now is that after the initial transition phase of getting into the industry and building up a clientele base is 1 session (1 hour of 1 on 1) per day. This leads to 365 sessions per year at $50/session (another estimate) for a total of $18,250 per year. Then I am estimating 1 bootcamp/group style class per week that will be $20 per person and average 10 people to get to $10,400 per year. Putting all these averages/estimates together would get me to $28,650 per year.

Do these estimates sound within the realm of reason? Over-estimate? Under-estimate? And if it makes a difference, it wouldn't be in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It would be in South Florida where population and cost of living are higher. Any help would be great, thanks.

[SFT]

I know there are a lot of ebbs and flows to personal training based on time of the year, location, and many other things. I'm sure training sessions go up during the New Years rush and then you get a drop off. But I'm trying to run some estimates to see what it would take to make a reasonable salary as a personal trainer/gym owner. And I'm wondering what would be a good estimate (if anything, an under-estimate) of how many training sessions to expect per day (average).

What I am using right now is that after the initial transition phase of getting into the industry and building up a clientele base is 1 session (1 hour of 1 on 1) per day. This leads to 365 sessions per year at $50/session (another estimate) for a total of $18,250 per year. Then I am estimating 1 bootcamp/group style class per week that will be $20 per person and average 10 people to get to $10,400 per year. Putting all these averages/estimates together would get me to $28,650 per year.

Do these estimates sound within the realm of reason? Over-estimate? Under-estimate? And if it makes a difference, it wouldn't be in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It would be in South Florida where population and cost of living are higher. Any help would be great, thanks.

I'm confused. Are these rates for your own business or working elsewhere? At any rate, you would be out of business very quickly with these estimates. I can't speak for South Florida, but up here in New Hampshire/Massachusetts, you're looking at $12,000/yr for a small facility on the low end. That is just rent without any utilities, equipment, etc. I'm guessing you'd need ~$15,000-20,000 around here per year just to cover your small facility costs.

Even if you rented space, you'd probably be looking in the range of $200-600/month (here in MA/NH). So we're talking $2,400-7,200 per year just to cover rent cost.

That being said, you need a new way to estimate things unless you intend on working 365 days a year. Realistically, you could probably run 3-4 group classes a day, but they probably won't all have 10 people paying $20. You could also work up to a client base of 3-5 or more clients per day if you market yourself well. In personal training, you are limited only by hours in the day and how well you market yourself.

[arian11]

I'm confused. Are these rates for your own business or working elsewhere? At any rate, you would be out of business very quickly with these estimates. I can't speak for South Florida, but up here in New Hampshire/Massachusetts, you're looking at $12,000/yr for a small facility on the low end. That is just rent without any utilities, equipment, etc. I'm guessing you'd need ~$15,000-20,000 around here per year just to cover your small facility costs.

Even if you rented space, you'd probably be looking in the range of $200-600/month (here in MA/NH). So we're talking $2,400-7,200 per year just to cover rent cost.

That being said, you need a new way to estimate things unless you intend on working 365 days a year. Realistically, you could probably run 3-4 group classes a day, but they probably won't all have 10 people paying $20. You could also work up to a client base of 3-5 or more clients per day if you market yourself well. In personal training, you are limited only by hours in the day and how well you market yourself.

I guess it is confusing because I only posted a portion of my estimations. The plan is to open a small gym with a friend. But I didn't mention in the original post that I cancelled the cost of rent/electricity/insurance with membership costs. Obviously that may not happen, but I just did that to see how much extra money could be made from personal training that can be re-invested into the gym. Here are all the estimates I just came up with in like 10 mins:

600 square feet gym * $20/square feet/year = $12,000/year rent or $1,000/month
$1,000/month Electricity/Insurance (Complete guess. I have no idea on this. Could be way more or way less)

$2,000/month (Rent/Elec/Ins) / $35/month/member = 58 members to cover the costs and break even

Obviously this doesn't count many other things like equipment, marketing, stuff breaking, and recurring costs of all the little things. Just general estimation for now.

So then what I have posted in my original message, $28,650/year would be money to re-invest into the gym each year or keep for myself.

And no, I'm not planning on working or making money 365 days a year. I just made my estimations over the course of 1 year. I figured personal trainers keep track of all their sessions and would know how many sessions they had this year or last year. So they could look at their books and see they had 250 sessions in 2012, thus averaged 0.68 sessions per day though they may have not worked every day.

[arian11]

So no personal trainers on here that keep track of their sessions over an entire year?

[KyleAaron]

I keep precise track of sessions, however I'm not self-employed. I work at a gym with some 5,000 members, I'm employed to do some gym floor hours and I do PT on top of that. I don't have to spend anything on rent, utilities, marketing, etc. This changes the numbers quite a bit.

GI = gym instructor shift hours, PT = personal training hours.
FY 2010/11, GI 903 / PT 334
FY 2011/12, GI 606 / PT 494
FY 2012/13, GI 324 / PT 292 (so far) if second half is same as first, will be GI 648 / PT 584

However, I have deliberately restricted my hours as I have a toddler son. I work five days a week, start at 0600 and always finish by 1400.

40% of PT happens 0600-0900, 20% 0900-1800, and 40% 1800-2100. Thus if you work only mornings or only evenings, you'll deal with about 50% of potential PT clients, and thus have 50% potential income. I've chosen to do this, a young single person might do differently. Choosing an 8-9 hour block where you're willing to work, like 0600-1500 or 1300-2100, I find I get a 4hr gym shift and 2-3hr of PT in there.

My gym offers half-hour sessions. Thus in the 0600-0900 period in principle I could have 6 clients in a row. In practice if you book 6 then 1 of them will fail to show for some reason, reschedule etc. And anyway you wouldn't want 6 in a row, 6 different people with different capabilities and goals and personalities, it's too much to adjust to, would you be giving the same service to #6 as you gave to #1? Probably not. And what about going to the toilet, food and drink? So 4 is more reasonable, 2hr of PT in a 3hr space. Add in a bit later than 0900, and you end up with 2-3hr of PT possible in the mornings, and the same in the evenings.

You could get lucky and get a client like someone's trophy wife who works out 1hr a day at 1000 five days a week, but these are few and far between, more commonly it's 1/2-1hr for 2-3 sessions a week.

As for getting new clients, consider also that you lose some.
FY 2010/11 I gained 26 clients and lost 14.
FY 2011/12 I gained 10 and lost 10.
FY 2012/13 I've gained 7 and lost 6.

That is to say, when I started I worked hard to get clients, and didn't always choose those who would last. Or I was given clients by the manager and they didn't last. Later I learned better who to approach to work with, or who to accept when they asked me, and of course with a fuller schedule I made less effort to get new clients, so things settled down, basically I just replaced losses. My client numbers have been fairly steady at 10-15. Of my current 13 clients, 5 have been with me for more than 12 months.

This is a fairly common pattern, after the trainer's first 12 months they have as many clients as they'll ever have, after that they just maintain, and around half their total clients are a hard core of people who'll stick around indefinitely. The obvious exception is if you change gyms to somewhere distant from your current workplace, or if you take a few months off to have a child or something.

It may be different in self-employment, but this is what we see when PTs are employed by a gym.

[arian11]

I keep precise track of sessions, however I'm not self-employed. I work at a gym with some 5,000 members, I'm employed to do some gym floor hours and I do PT on top of that. I don't have to spend anything on rent, utilities, marketing, etc. This changes the numbers quite a bit.

GI = gym instructor shift hours, PT = personal training hours.
FY 2010/11, GI 903 / PT 334
FY 2011/12, GI 606 / PT 494
FY 2012/13, GI 324 / PT 292 (so far) if second half is same as first, will be GI 648 / PT 584

However, I have deliberately restricted my hours as I have a toddler son. I work five days a week, start at 0600 and always finish by 1400.

40% of PT happens 0600-0900, 20% 0900-1800, and 40% 1800-2100. Thus if you work only mornings or only evenings, you'll deal with about 50% of potential PT clients, and thus have 50% potential income. I've chosen to do this, a young single person might do differently. Choosing an 8-9 hour block where you're willing to work, like 0600-1500 or 1300-2100, I find I get a 4hr gym shift and 2-3hr of PT in there.

My gym offers half-hour sessions. Thus in the 0600-0900 period in principle I could have 6 clients in a row. In practice if you book 6 then 1 of them will fail to show for some reason, reschedule etc. And anyway you wouldn't want 6 in a row, 6 different people with different capabilities and goals and personalities, it's too much to adjust to, would you be giving the same service to #6 as you gave to #1? Probably not. And what about going to the toilet, food and drink? So 4 is more reasonable, 2hr of PT in a 3hr space. Add in a bit later than 0900, and you end up with 2-3hr of PT possible in the mornings, and the same in the evenings.

You could get lucky and get a client like someone's trophy wife who works out 1hr a day at 1000 five days a week, but these are few and far between, more commonly it's 1/2-1hr for 2-3 sessions a week.

As for getting new clients, consider also that you lose some.
FY 2010/11 I gained 26 clients and lost 14.
FY 2011/12 I gained 10 and lost 10.
FY 2012/13 I've gained 7 and lost 6.

That is to say, when I started I worked hard to get clients, and didn't always choose those who would last. Or I was given clients by the manager and they didn't last. Later I learned better who to approach to work with, or who to accept when they asked me, and of course with a fuller schedule I made less effort to get new clients, so things settled down, basically I just replaced losses. My client numbers have been fairly steady at 10-15. Of my current 13 clients, 5 have been with me for more than 12 months.

This is a fairly common pattern, after the trainer's first 12 months they have as many clients as they'll ever have, after that they just maintain, and around half their total clients are a hard core of people who'll stick around indefinitely. The obvious exception is if you change gyms to somewhere distant from your current workplace, or if you take a few months off to have a child or something.

It may be different in self-employment, but this is what we see when PTs are employed by a gym.

Thanks for the info. Looks like you are on pace for 1.6 PT per day for this year as a part time trainer. The percentage of PT in the morning is quite surprising. I guess because I go train after work, I expect others to do the same. But I guess I could still tap into the 40% evening market if I'm doing it part time. I can have my main job from 0800-1700 and then train people during that 1800-2100 window. Then on weekends I could get the entire market since I would be free all day.

[KyleAaron]

Well it's more like 2.5 hours of PT a day, because I'm only working 5 days a week, ie 200 days a year. And the sessions are mostly 0.5hr each.

[arian11]

Well it's more like 2.5 hours of PT a day, because I'm only working 5 days a week, ie 200 days a year. And the sessions are mostly 0.5hr each.

Oh I know. I just standardized the PT sessions to a year (365 days) that way I can compare it to my current salary which is based off a year (365 days) even though I don't work every day.

[Simmo0508]

I average around 4-5hrs of PT work a day, on purpose. I only work Monday through Friday.

Give yourself a goal in terms of a weekly income, do some basic math, charge accordingly per session. I know some guys that do 10hrs+ of PT a day and make quite a bit, but have no life whatsoever and no time to train and eat. Savings go up heaps quick, but what's the point when you hardly have time to sleep, let alone enjoy anything with that said money. I find that you can still earn good coin and save up, by limiting hours and just charging more, and being strict on your policies.

I value my own training and have to eat quite a bit, plus have 4 stepkids, a partner, a house to take care of etc. so i limit my PT work to even out work/life balance. I only make myself available during mornings 6-10am, and nights 5-8pm. I train at another gym during daytime and plan my meals around those hours.

[arian11]

I average around 4-5hrs of PT work a day, on purpose. I only work Monday through Friday.

Give yourself a goal in terms of a weekly income, do some basic math, charge accordingly per session. I know some guys that do 10hrs+ of PT a day and make quite a bit, but have no life whatsoever and no time to train and eat. Savings go up heaps quick, but what's the point when you hardly have time to sleep, let alone enjoy anything with that said money. I find that you can still earn good coin and save up, by limiting hours and just charging more, and being strict on your policies.

I value my own training and have to eat quite a bit, plus have 4 stepkids, a partner, a house to take care of etc. so i limit my PT work to even out work/life balance. I only make myself available during mornings 6-10am, and nights 5-8pm. I train at another gym during daytime and plan my meals around those hours.

Thanks for the info.

Yea, I'm thinking a long term goal would be to build up the clientele base so I could do 10 hours of PT a week at $50/hour and 2 hours of group classes at $10-$20 per person. That has the potential of $45k-$50k right there. That would be enough to make me comfortable with my living while having a job I really enjoy.

But I know I will have to start small, get my name out there, produce results, and build up to that. That's why I was thinking on the low end first in my estimates.

[WoofieNugget]

I set myself monthly rather than daily or weekly goals and give it an average over the course of a year. Generally what I'm shooting for is 120 sessions per month performed, which breaks down to about 30 per week. I know historically this means I should be booking about 35 per week if I can. My sessions goal total for budgeting to reach September 2013 is 1200 (or only 100 per month) because I recently moved into a new studio. At my rate this means I know I'm going to make x amount for that year and can plan accordingly.

Since opening my new studio in September I have had a big transition period but I was back up to 97 sessions in November and while it will dip in December due to Christmas (estimating about 80-85) I know in January I'm going to be back up to my 120 mark unless I go away for a week.

[KyleAaron]

What Woofie describes I do, too. I was lucky in that our manager put up numbers on the wall for us, monthly sessions achieved and targets for each trainer, the targets were based on how long the trainer had been there - someone three months shouldn't have as big a target as someone three years - and their current client base. The top trainers had ~100 sessions a month, so I said, "Within 12 months of starting, I will have 12 clients and do 80 sessions a month." In fact it took nine months. But by that stage the top guys were doing 120 sessions a month, so... I changed my goals!

I also kept figures on clients and sessions, as you see above. And with each client, I noted how I'd got them - from a health consult, from talking on the gym floor, through the manager, etc - and if they left, why. I also considered their goals and where they started, to see if I was better with strength or weight loss or whatever. I started to see patterns. The clients I got through the manager didn't last as long as those I picked up myself, and I had not great success getting people from the health consults, but did best just talking to people on the gym floor. And I did best with people who had health-oriented goals, not so well with those with looks goals, just okay with the performance-oriented people.

I think it's important to do this kind of analysis, especially when you're new in the career. You find out what you're good at and enjoy, what you're not so good at or don't enjoy, then you can decide whether to go with your strength or fix your weaknesses. Note that you may not have to fix your weaknesses. Nobody can train everyone, if nothing else there are only so many hours in the day. Every trainer needs to find a niche. But if your niche has only got one client in it, maybe you should broaden your niche a bit. If your niche leads to a full schedule, you can probably safely ignore your weaknesses and focus on your strengths.

[Mr.ILL]

Too many. Sometimes 12 hours of training per day. I do not recommend this. I prefer 5 training hours/day mon-fri 3 hours on Sat sun off.

[arian11]

Great posts guys, thanks for the info. Especially Kyle. I understand what you are saying because I did a similar thing when I was helping get our FSU Weightlifting Club popular. I would advertise using various methods and then when people would come in their first time I would ask them how they found out about us. This way I knew which method was the most effective. We also tracked goals, but they were basically all performance goals since we all did strength routines. So that would probably be the niche that I would start in, but as you said, I will have to see if I can get enough clients that way.

[SageFit]

Too many. Sometimes 12 hours of training per day. I do not recommend this. I prefer 5 training hours/day mon-fri 3 hours on Sat sun off.

I average 24 clients a day doing 30 min sessions. 5 days a week but I own the facility. When I was new to training I generally had 3-4 hours of training a day

[arian11]

I average 24 clients a day doing 30 min sessions. 5 days a week but I own the facility. When I was new to training I generally had 3-4 hours of training a day

24 sessions/day
x $30/sessions
x 5 days/week
x 52 weeks
________________
$187,200

Am I getting this right?

[SageFit]

24 sessions/day
x $30/sessions
x 5 days/week
x 52 weeks
________________
$187,200

Am I getting this right?

Yes and then I have 5 other trainers working for me. 2 of which are full time

[arian11]

Yes and then I have 5 other trainers working for me. 2 of which are full time

Nice. 12 hour days and 60 hour weeks of just training is intense. Plus you probably put in more hours just running the facility. But, hey, that is some serious money.

[SageFit]

Nice. 12 hour days and 60 hour weeks of just training is intense. Plus you probably put in more hours just running the facility. But, hey, that is some serious money.

I generally work from 5am to 9pm every day. Look it's all about priorities. Even my own fitness has taken a hit but monetarily I can't complain. I work about 80 hours a week and it certainly catches up to you

[SFT]

Sage, are you training multiple people at the same time, or are you putting in 12 hour days of training alone? As in, not even counting other administrative functions? In any case, looks like you're doing well for yourself.

[arian11]

I generally work from 5am to 9pm every day. Look it's all about priorities. Even my own fitness has taken a hit but monetarily I can't complain. I work about 80 hours a week and it certainly catches up to you

Are you married or have kids or anything like that? I'm single and looking to start up a small gym with another single guy. So we will have a ton of time to put into the gym and clients. But down the line I would want more time obviously once I have a family and stuff. I figured with you having 2 studios and trainers working under you, you could eventually back off more to a manager/supervisor role and let them do all the training.

[SageFit]

Are you married or have kids or anything like that? I'm single and looking to start up a small gym with another single guy. So we will have a ton of time to put into the gym and clients. But down the line I would want more time obviously once I have a family and stuff. I figured with you having 2 studios and trainers working under you, you could eventually back off more to a manager/supervisor role and let them do all the training.

That's the reason I'm trying to shift to group classes. Getting married in 6 months and I need a life. I'd like to open some more and eventually invest in other people and do consulting.

[SageFit]

Sage, are you training multiple people at the same time, or are you putting in 12 hour days of training alone? As in, not even counting other administrative functions? In any case, looks like you're doing well for yourself.

Generally I put in 13-14 hours a day of training and Admin stuff. We usually train 2-5 people at a time. There's always at least 2 trainers training. Mon and weds nights we have all 6 training at once

[arian11]

That's the reason I'm trying to shift to group classes. Getting married in 6 months and I need a life. I'd like to open some more and eventually invest in other people and do consulting.

inb4 sage fit is as big as golds

[SageFit]

inb4 sage fit is as big as golds

hah one can wish