This is REALLY how much money you will make as Personal Trainer

[extremenergy3]

So I'm thinking about taking a 2 year personal trainer course, once finished that I'll be eligible to take a test so I can receive a well recognized certificate. (CSEP-CPT)

so I take it this is the kind of money to expect after I were to finish said course, correct?

It's different in America than in Canada... Hopefully a Canadian PT can chime in.

[Mancacdude]

bump

[ptdirectory]

Hi!

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Go and have a look!

[etherHATESether]

Any idea of how much I can expect to make as a trainer at Retro Fitness.

[bbrock293]

your post is very informative but this is not entirely accurate.

i worked at LA fitness in CT. Trainers recieve a bonus when their clients stay beyond the length of their contract (this happens with almost all clients). so if a client signs a 6 month deal, and loves their trainer, they continue and keep their rate yet the trainer makes time and a half for those sessions.

and while it is true we did not have tiers, we DID have a "top trainer" who was paid more per hour.


***edit - bonuses were given out also when a trainer helped a salesman with a session. the salesmen did the "free sessions" to get people to sign up, but if a trainer got involved and helped close the sale, their name would be added onto the contract and they would receive part of the commission.

basically your hourly rate numbers are correct but there actually are many ways for trainers to make more money at LA Fitness.

Not entirely correct. The LA I was at paid 6.00 a session. No raises, bonuses, or anything. Depends on the area I guess.

[laidback90]

If you have experience and information regarding a particular health club, your help in building this list for the sake of all personal trainers is greatly appreciated.

Reminders:

If you are a personal trainer, unless you are working floor shifts or employed at a very unique club, you are only getting paid commission on sessions trained. You are not paid hourly.
If you think 1 personal training session = 1 hour of work, think again. (Although corporations often like to suggest otherwise.)
Also keep in mind; most personal trainers out there barely make it to 90 sessions per month, let alone in the 100's. Managers will show you somewhat gorgeous salaries at that top tier, but that is if, and only if, you train an astronomical number of sessions. Few personal trainers ever reach those top bonus tiers i.e. 120-160 Sessions in 4 weeks.
Consider these factors when considering your place of employment.

Side Note:

Based on the national statistics I have gathered from multiple sources, the average personal trainer in the United States trains 767 sessions per year.

For the following examples, I will divide that number over the course of 50 weeks (2 weeks for vacation) to get my average number, which is roughly 15 sessions per week.

If a particular club, i.e. Equinox Fitness, has minimums, I will use the minimum number of sessions required to keep employment instead of the national average.

__________________________________________________ ________________________________________________

Equinox Fitness

__________________________________________________ ________________________________________________

Floor Shift:

Minimum Wage per Hour

Tier I Personal Trainer:

$23.00 per Session (before taxes)

$28.00 per Session, if 90+ Sessions are completed in 4 weeks (before taxes)

Example:

15 Sessions/week x 4 weeks = 60 Sessions x $23.00 = $1,380.00 per month (before taxes)

+ 20 mandatory floor hours/week x 4 weeks = 80 mandatory floor hours x $8.00/hr = $640.00 per month (before taxes)

Total = $2,020.00 per month (before taxes)

Tier II Personal Trainer:

$31.50 per Session (before taxes)

$36.50 per Session, if 90+ Sessions are completed in 4 weeks (before taxes)

Example:

21 Sessions/week x 4 weeks = 84 Sessions x $31.50 = $2,646.00 per month (before taxes)

+ 10 mandatory floor hours/week x 4 weeks = 40 mandatory floor hours x $8.00/hr = $320.00 per month (before taxes)

Total = $2,966 per month (before taxes)

Tier III Personal Trainer:

$39.00 per Session (before taxes)

$44.00 per Session, if 90+ Sessions are completed in 4 weeks (before taxes)

Example: 21 Sessions/week x 4 weeks = 84 Sessions x $39.00 = $3,276.00 per month (before taxes)

Bonuses Awarded to All Tier Levels:

90 Sessions (4 weeks) = $175.00 bonus (before taxes)

119 Sessions (4 weeks) = $434.00 bonus (before taxes)

139 Sessions (4 weeks) = $717.00 bonus (before taxes)

152 Sessions (4 weeks) = $844.00 bonus (before taxes)

Summary Examples:

If you make it to Tier III Trainer…

Average Tier III Trainer:

90 Sessions (4 weeks), $44.00 per Session, plus $175.00 bonus = $4,135.00 per month (before taxes)

After 30% taxes…

= $2,894.50 per month

= $1,447.25 per 2 weeks (Pay Period)

= $723.63 per week

Absolute Best Tier III Trainer:

152 Sessions (4 weeks), $44.00 per Session, plus $844.00 bonus = $7,532.00 per month (before taxes).

After 30% taxes…

= $5,272.40 per month

= $2,636.20 per 2 weeks (Pay Period)

= $1,318.10 per week.

__________________________________________________ ________________________________________________

Bally Total Fitness

__________________________________________________ ________________________________________________

Floor Shift:

Minimum Wage per Hour

Level 1:

$12.94 per Session (before taxes)

$17.00 per Session, if 20+ sessions are completed in 2 weeks (before taxes)

Level 2:

$15.54 per Session (before taxes)

$20.75 per Session, if 20+ sessions are completed in 2 weeks (before taxes)

Level 3:

$24.94 per Session, if 20+ sessions are completed in 2 weeks (before taxes)

$29.10 per Session, if 40+ sessions are completed in 2 weeks (before taxes)

Level 4:

$34.40 per Session, if 40+ sessions are completed in 2 weeks (before taxes)

Level 5:

$39.10 per Session, if 40+ sessions are completed in 2 weeks (before taxes)

Commission:

10% Commission on all session sales, which is paid out the following month.

__________________________________________________ ________________________________________________

24 Hour Fitness

__________________________________________________ ________________________________________________

Floor Shift:

Minimum Wage per Hour

CPT 1:

$13.50 per Session (before taxes)

CPT 2:

$16.00 per Session (before taxes)

CPT 3:

$18.50 per Session (before taxes)

EPT aka Master Trainer: Requirement is 2,000 sessions trained with 3 certifications

$20.50 per Session (before taxes)

Commission:

20% Commission on all session sales, which is paid out the following month.

5% Commission on all supplement sales, which is paid out the following month.

__________________________________________________ ________________________________________________

*Curves

__________________________________________________ ________________________________________________

The reason for the "*" is that Curves is not really looking to cater towards Personal Trainers, specifically.

Curves looks for anyone with experience in customer service, and if you have a background in nutrition and/or fitness, the better.

I would not recommend Curves if you are serious about a career in Personal Training, but it may be a great place for someone with no experience to start.

Pay:

Minimum Wage per Hour (before taxes)

Little room for pay raises.

__________________________________________________ ________________________________________________

LA Fitness

__________________________________________________ ________________________________________________

LA Fitness has a very straight forward Personal Training program.

There are no tier levels.

Pay:

$7.50 per Half Hour Training Session (before taxes)

$15.00 per Hour (2 back to back half-hour training sessions) (before taxes)

There are no minimums, no bonuses, no raises.

__________________________________________________ ________________________________________________

Velocity Sports Performance

__________________________________________________ ________________________________________________

Private Trainers:

I am currently training at the Velocity Sports Performance in West LA as a Private Trainer. This gym has one of the best locations, cleanest facilities, and best deals around for Private Personal Trainers.

*This Velocity MAY operate differently than others in the country. There are few like it, but I will be posting details on them as well ASAP.

Clients:

All clients must pay a ONE TIME fee of $20.00 and sign a waiver. No contracts or membership fees.

Monthly Rates:

Unlimited Training Sessions: $300.00 Flat Rate per Month

Single Training Sessions: $15.00 per Session

In-House Velocity Personal Trainers:

Information coming soon...

__________________________________________________ ________________________________________________

Malibu Fitness

__________________________________________________ ________________________________________________

A private gym located in Malibu, CA.

Private Personal Trainers:

They do welcome Private Personal Trainers.

Clients:

All clients must be a member to train here.

Membership costs roughly $90.00 per Month.

Monthly Rates:

Cost: $25 per Session

In-House Malibu Fitness Personal Trainers:

More information coming soon...

__________________________________________________ ________________________________________________

TSI Sports Clubs: New York Sports Clubs, Boston Sports Clubs, Washington Sports Clubs, Philadelphia Sports Clubs

__________________________________________________ ________________________________________________

Coming soon...

__________________________________________________ ________________________________________________

Gold's Gym

__________________________________________________ ________________________________________________

Coming soon...

__________________________________________________ ________________________________________________

Crunch Fitness

__________________________________________________ ________________________________________________

Coming soon...

__________________________________________________ ________________________________________________

Spectrum Athletic Clubs

__________________________________________________ ________________________________________________

Coming soon...

You can find more posts like this one at...

SupertrainerHQ . com / blog

how much do trainers at lifetime make?

[MuscledHorse]

how much do trainers at lifetime make?

Corporations in any field take advantage of the knowledge working in their facilities and exploit rather than reward it. I little respect or time for corporations since their marketing is more about health and fitness than their actual practice/actions. That is ti say, corporations tend not to walk their own talk. This si also the reason I am starting my own Welnnes company and combining my medical and fitness and nutrition backgrounds. I will be working for me. That seem to be the most effective way to do things.

[ericd8]

This is significantly less than what I had expected to be making. Fortunately this will only be part time work until I make my way through undergrad and med school.

[VaggieStriker]

All you need to do it put on some weight and lift it up and so on. I will train anybody for free.

[bbrock293]

All you need to do it put on some weight and lift it up and so on. I will train anybody for free.

Sorry man, you can't neg me with no rep power. Not sure why you tried though, you made the ignorant statement that helped no one.

[PhagBucket]

Are your numbers averags for those chain gyms nation wide? Cuz down here in california, especially thr bay area, fitness trainers get to rape clients for cash. So id expect them to be a little higher/lower depending where you live

[jsmurray]

After reading all of these prices gyms pay their trainers, I am just awe struck. I came directly out of college with a BS in Exercise Science and got certified by the ACSM. I have a heavy athletic background including college sports. But I charge 40$ a session privately for a basic training package that doesnt include nutrition advice or allow for texting contact on the offdays. As an alumni at College of Charleston, I offer those affiliated with the college a reduced price of 30$ a session. I also run bootcamps, which are usually 10 dollars a person. And this pricing is LOW for private trainers in my area of Charleston, SC. I just couldnt imagine having all my money taken from a gym, where in most cases I have a stronger knowledge even though I may not have as long of experience.

[ljknapp]

Thanks for the info, it is quite nice to see it written down.

[godzilla916]

good info, Im apply as a manager at golds in my area soon. I have 4 year manager experience but im 24 so we will see what happens i have a NESTA cert that expires soon but im re certifying.... Anyways ill let u guys know how there works as well..

I think its silly though that if its true that without a NASM cert u cant make more than 35% i look better than all the trainers in there lol

sometimes things are a joke

[ptw001]

LA Fitness pay is actually
$6 per 1/2 hour if under 80 half hour redemptions per pay period
Every 6 months you get a $.25 raise only applies if you are training over 80 half hour redemptions
No shows do not count towards your redemptions
For example, if you hit 85 redemptions for the pay period, but have 10 no shows, you will not get your productive pay bonus
$.25 tenure bonus stops at $1.50, or you stop getting a raise after 3 years of working there as a trainer.

So after 3 years of working for the company you will get paid $7.50 per half hour session ONLY when you train over 80 half hour redemptions, if not you get paid $6.

I believe trainers at Lifetime have a percentage structure they work from. If they sell certain levels of training, they get certain percentages. Starting percentage is like 30% commission on sale, 18% on the redemption.

[El Elyon]

I take you don't have to pay rent at these gyms?

I work at a UK gym where i work 15 hours per week, unpaid, doing classes and cleaning equipment. I don't have to pay anything to gym regardless of how many sessions i do with my clients. But i have to find my own clients.

[Chachibenji]

how much do trainers at lifetime make?

100% commission, no hourly wage.

Level 1s make around 51%
Level 2s, 53%
Level 3s, 55%
Level 4s, 57%
Level 5s, 59-61%
If you do not have NASM after 6 months of employment, you get bumped to a level "0" and only make 49%.
Levels are based off of 3 month rolling revenue.

If you work hard and put in your time you can expect to clear 32k by your first year pretty easily, and more if you become one of the program managers or higher up. Plus we get really nice health insurance and benefits.

In short, I love working here.

[Ronin4help]

There is no future working in a gym. Those days are gone... long gone. Gyms are good to use when they provide free certifications or to help start building a clientele but not much more. You have to get your own place, do in-home, corporate training or even mobile training to have a real future in the business.

[sft540i6]

Good lord seeing these figures is somewhat depressing. I make 1.5-2x as much in the military. Unfortunately I won't be staying in the military due to some physical reasons. I would have expected personal trainers to earn more money a year. What is the pitfall here? If more money can be made privately why aren't all personal trainers doing it?

[KyleAaron]

If more money can be made privately why aren't all personal trainers doing it?

Because where do you get your clients? And you don't just have the client income, there's marketing, equipment, rent for facilities (mobile training is strictly small-time stuff), bank and accountancy fees, and so on. Work at a gym, it has thousands of members who are potential PT clients - you just have to talk to them - and the centre takes care of all that other stuff.

Those US figures are atrocious. Australian figures here.

Of course, if you want to compare with the military, usually nobody at the gym is firing AK-47s at you.

[massakre]

I truly enjoy helping others especially when it comes to the fitness area. It's sad seeing some of these figures, I'm just about to finish a B.S. in an exercise related field (actually more like 9 months from now lol) but I'm also about to finish my first PT certification. I hope I'll be able to make a living off of what I have.

[WoofieNugget]

If more money can be made privately why aren't all personal trainers doing it?

Let's also explore the fact that most trainers are in the business because they think they know how to "work out" and want to get paid for it. They have little to no business sense or customer service skills. Just like any other small business, it takes hard work, dedication to your business and persevering over time. A lot of trainers don't have any of these things, they get into the business thinking they are going to be getting paid to hang out at the gym with bikini models and athletes all day and make hundreds per hour because they look good with their shirt off. Reality is something completely different.

I just recently went private (again after moving cities and having to rebuild my practice from scratch) and I'm targeting 60k in terms of income this year. It is easily doable, but it takes hard work every day.

[PerFit]

I do agree that if you are wanting to have a life AND make a decent living you must either charge a large hourly rate or have staff working for you. If you truly love doing split shifts and chilling during the day thats fine but i am talking about normal hours, holidays without your busines coming to a halt, being able to go away when you feel like it.

If you are just working for yourself this is very difficult.

[AssassinCrazy]

work at two gyms. get paid houly $10 at one and $8 at the other. I make $20 pt training and at the other gym I make $30 along with receiving comminson based on packages sold.
To put it in simplest terms I make ATLEAST $18per and thats just floor hours. Can easily bring in 4k-5k a month.

[PerFit]

work at two gyms. get paid houly $10 at one and $8 at the other. I make $20 pt training and at the other gym I make $30 along with receiving comminson based on packages sold.
To put it in simplest terms I make ATLEAST $18per and thats just floor hours. Can easily bring in 4k-5k a month.

you make $18 an hr training clients but then you need to factor in all the non training hours such as consultations, session preparation etc.

[KyleAaron]

That's right, PerFit. This is something newbie trainers don't always appreciate, one client is pretty much the same amount of work for you whether you do 1 session a week with them or 5.

I spend at least 30' each week on each individual client scheduling and rescheduling sessions, planning the workouts adjusting for injury or illness or sudden few weeks without work/family dramas (chance for some good progress), researching their injury/illness issues and consulting with medical types, etc. And this is of course unpaid. For example 10 clients means at least 5hr a week unpaid.

So if you have the choice between 5 people doing 2x30' each and 10 people doing 1x30' each, the first one is much less work for the same 10 total training session hours and thus money, it's 15hr total vs 20.

As well, the 1/week clients can be more work than the others because you don't control all their workouts, or even if they do them at all. If I see John on Tuesday and he does SQ30kg 5x5, then I know that on Thursday he'll be able to do SQ32.5kg 5x5. But if I don't see him till next Tuesday, whether he can progress depends on what he did that week, he might have done 2 good workouts and can progress, 4 too tough workouts and be too fatigued to progress, or maybe he just sat around drinking beer in between. Or maybe he comes this Tuesday and next week postpones his session and comes the following Thursday for 1hr to make it up, after 10 days will he be stronger or weaker? With the 1/week clients I'm always having to readjust the workouts to accommodate this sort of stuff.

The 1/week people tend to reschedule at the drop of a hat, anything else at all comes up and they're out that week. 3/week people almost never reschedule because it's too much hassle finding another time and they'll end up working out 2 or more days in a row. But that's a lot of money for most people, and if the trainer did only 3/week people they'd have to work 6 days, so a mix of 2 and 3/week people is the compromise.

Recently I've had a lot of new people start, and there are 4-5 more prospects who may sign up soon - basically if I tell them to, they just need a bit of prompting. It's now at the stage where it's getting difficult to deal with so many different people. It's probably time for me to tell my 1/week people that I'm cutting back, they can either do 2+/week or transfer to another trainer. Hard to put it tactfully, though.

[pcproffy]

100% commission, no hourly wage.

If you do not have NASM after 6 months of employment, you get bumped to a level "0" and only make 49%.
Levels are based off of 3 month rolling revenue.

In short, I love working here.

They make you get NASM even if you have other certs? Even CSCS? Lifetime does have appeal but I don't like the 40hr requirement (at least the one I visited).

[AssassinCrazy]

you make $18 an hr training clients but then you need to factor in all the non training hours such as consultations, session preparation etc.

i make 18/hr for just floor hours. I make more when im training clients. But I do agree, there is a lot of preparation involved.

[Borschtbeet]

In 2011 I made 18 thousand dollars. LOL! Although I was unemployed for 2 months during it while switching jobs.

[justinslayer]

If more money can be made privately why aren't all personal trainers doing it?

It's fear of the unknown and comfort.
It's alot more difficult when you're on your own trying to bring in clients
It's easy to go to your public box gym, because their are hundreds of "potential" clients. The problem with that is "what other trainers have talked to you" with the members

When i opened up my own studio, i just did it. Got commercial property and bought everything used. I rent out space to other instructors for pilates, yoga and trx. I didn't map everything out. I love what i do, i took the big jump and will never look back.

Thanks to a fellow trainer here for the great advice