So how much $ do you charge for a session?

[SamuelCoke]

Hey guys,

I want to know more about all you PT's out there!

1 - How much $ per session?
2 - How long is each session?
3 - How many yrs xp do you have?

For me:

1 - $45
2 - 45 minutes
3 - 3 yrs

Super interested to know your answers!!

If you aren't a PT let me know what you thinks a fair price!

Thanks,
Sam

[Ronin4help]

Most people do not believe a 21 year old who works in a gym should make more per hour than they do. Especially when they do not even get a full hour. So, to convince them there is a reason you make that much you have to provide a service that indisputably shows them you actually EARN that much. They will give you roughly a ten session package to prove it. If you do not...chances are you will not... they will not resign and eventually you will have an insufficient clientele base to support yourself. This is the sad state of affairs for the majority of trainers who end up working other jobs to supplement.

[rdferguson]

My prices have varied throughout the years, but have generally sat around the $60-80/hr mark.

"Fair price" is always debatable, and one of the problems with it even as a concept is that fairness is very context-dependent and ethically complex.

For someone who works a minimum wage job and has responsibilities, there's not a lot that they can give to personal training, even though receiving could very dramatically improve their life. The value a good PT will provide will very easily be more than they could ever compensate for with money. Ethically, is it more fair to charge them what it's worth and make PT inaccessible, or is it more fair to charge them something they can afford so that they can reap the benefits?

For a CEO who gets paid in a week what the average person gets paid in a month, on a day when they aren't motivated to show up, it may be worth more to them to lose $200 than to show up for 45min. Because $200 frankly isn't worth that much to them, is it fair to charge them even more than that, so that the financial cost of PT measures what they can actually get out of it by showing up? Or is it more fair to charge them $60/hr, because that's what you've decided is a fair price for you to receive?

IMO, if you have good reason to believe that you are competent and can legitimately help people through personal training, you should start out charging something close to the average. When you have so much business that you need to get rid of clients to give yourself a better quality of life, or you have a waiting list forming, consider bumping up your prices. At that point, if you don't lose clients, it means you didn't raise your prices high enough.

[KyleAaron]

When I worked for big gyms, they set the prices, not me. They varied by whether it was

- casual - pay session by session or
- direct debit - commit to X sessions a fortnight, money goes out whether you show up or not, same as general gym membership
- whether you were a gym member too, or just came for the PT sessions

and it went up a bit in the time I was there, but by the end was A$75-85ph; there were no student or buying in bulk discounts. Trainers got A$35-$45 of that depending on experience, which was a bit strange - you get less because you aren't as experienced, but the client pays the same. At commercial gyms the trainer can set their own price and get the full amount, but they pay a weekly rent, too; community gyms also pay you for gym shifts where you can find clients, commercial gyms don't pay you for hanging around on the gym floor. So for the typical trainer it works out about the same.

Most people did 2x30' sessions a week, so in practice were paying A$80pw for PT sessions. Some uni students did it, as I said they didn't get discounts, so they usually did 1x30' pw and thus paid $40pw for training. General gym membership was A$20pw for employed adults, I think a bit over half that for students, elderly on pensions, etc. Thus I was getting $40pw from each client, or $20pw from students.

So the gym charged A$80ph and we got A$40ph. By comparison, minimum wage here is about A$16ph, and a uni graduate position would pay about $30ph - but the uni graduate has permanent full-time work with sick pay etc rather than all these little half-hours scattered about they have to find for themselves and no sick pay.

I left that and opened a garage gym.

Nowadays I don't do one-on-one sessions, it's individualised training in a small group setting. I teach the lifts, give them a programme, and watch over the group of 3-6 as they do their thing and record their own workouts in their journals. I charge by the quarter so I don't have to chase up sessions and nobody asks to be credited for the week they missed, etc. $500 a quarter for full-time employed adults and $250 for students. So in practice I am getting the same - $40pw from clients, or $20 from students.

On the other hand I don't do gym shifts anymore, so have lost the income from that. But my commute is about 15 steps from my loungeroom to my garage and I now fill up the car every 90 days instead of every 10 days. And I don't have to deal with managers or gym members asking anxiously why I'm having that elderly woman deadlift, or complaining that they can't find a copy of the Financial Times to read while walking at 4km/hr on the treadmill, and all that crap.

Oh, and trainer since 2010.

[Tommylsantos]

In San Francisco, I was charging $100-120/session; here in San Diego, since I do not know many people, I charge $45/session.

Sessions last anywhere from 55-65 minutes; with my MMA fighters it really depends. Sometimes 30 minutes, sometimes up to 90 minutes.

Training since 2011? I am also a Soft-Tissue Therapist and currently starting my journey to DPT.

[SamuelCoke]

Awesome!! Thanks everyone. Fantastic feedback.

[EdgarAllanPoe]

$45-$55 for 45 mins depending on how many times client comes per week

All monies paid up front for a 4 week cycle setup to recur

[Ronin4help]

$45-$55 for 45 mins depending on how many times client comes per week

All monies paid up front for a 4 week cycle setup to recur

What is the difference in the two services ($55 vs $45)?

[MrEatyourCookie]

I'd be a typical client, but it depends on how this was set it...meaning if you had your own set up (you're own gym,private place etc) i def would never pay over 40/hr for a trainer if they're working in a big chain though just too much...might as well go to the equinox at that rate : /

if you have a your own gym that isn't crowded good set of equipment etc...then i'd do it...but you should look to make deals with younger people too just having a flat rate at your age with little experience isn't appealing let alone there are going to be other people out there with way more experience and better physique no offense who would charge the same/cheaper, i for one wanted to workout with a trainer while in college...but i couldn't afford it...i think most trainers should have a student discount to attract more people, it's like a guaranteed return customer because once they finished school and start working they WILL get out of shape and they will obviously end up having to go back to the person that hooked them up before and gave them a fair deal.

[KyleAaron]

I have a student discount, but this is out of kindness rather than commercial necessity. The students I know all do one or more of - drinking, interstate or overseas holidays, fashion shopping, new smartphone every 6 months, frequent and upmarket restaurant meals, movies, and so on. They have money for luxuries, the only question is whether they want this luxury or that luxury.

I've twice had people in the big gym tell me PT was too expensive and then when I saw them next a month later and asked where they'd been, it was a family ski holiday to Colorado. I had one woman ask to pay in instalments. Don't drive from your $1.5 million home up to my place in your BMW and cry poor, please. It's quite possible to be asset-rich and cash poor, but that's because you don't manage your money. My pricing can not be based on your inability to handle your own money.

There are genuinely poor people out there. I know, I used to be one. In fact at one point I was homeless and slept on the street (no, I didn't pull myself up by my own bootstraps, I got help - like everyone else who's improved their lives). But they are not gym members at all, nor are they posting on bodybuilding.com.

[jwarrenfit]

1- i do about 25 hours a week at a private gym. my rates are $110-155 of which i only keep 45%. Pmt is upfront and the minimum to purchase is 37. I train another 25 hours a week out of my own gym and i charge $60-80 depending on frequency per week, i keep it all. its done monthly

2- 50 minutes

3- 10 yrs

[JohnSmeton]

Hey guys,

I want to know more about all you PT's out there!

1 - How much $ per session?
2 - How long is each session?
3 - How many yrs xp do you have?

For me:

1 - $45
2 - 45 minutes
3 - 3 yrs

Super interested to know your answers!!

If you aren't a PT let me know what you thinks a fair price!


Thanks,
Sam

1. generally 25-30 an hour depending on packaging
2. 60 minutes, this includes physical therapy , as I always do a bit of physical therapy before warmups
3. five years

[Ronin4help]

I have a student discount, but this is out of kindness rather than commercial necessity. The students I know all do one or more of - drinking, interstate or overseas holidays, fashion shopping, new smartphone every 6 months, frequent and upmarket restaurant meals, movies, and so on. They have money for luxuries, the only question is whether they want this luxury or that luxury.

I've twice had people in the big gym tell me PT was too expensive and then when I saw them next a month later and asked where they'd been, it was a family ski holiday to Colorado. I had one woman ask to pay in instalments. Don't drive from your $1.5 million home up to my place in your BMW and cry poor, please. It's quite possible to be asset-rich and cash poor, but that's because you don't manage your money. My pricing can not be based on your inability to handle your own money.

There are genuinely poor people out there. I know, I used to be one. In fact at one point I was homeless and slept on the street (no, I didn't pull myself up by my own bootstraps, I got help - like everyone else who's improved their lives). But they are not gym members at all, nor are they posting on bodybuilding.com.

Often, it isn't that people who seemingly have money suddenly cannot afford personal training. It can be because they are smart with their money. They clearly know something about finance to have acquired high-priced possessions. Many people work within a particular budget from which they have deemed personal training to be a part of that budget component that may have little left in it to spend. For example, they may have a misc. budget or a personal fitness budget, or an extra curricular budget or whatever they call it... Let's say it's a $500/mo budget and she bought some fitness apparel or the gym membership of whatever and there is now only $300 left in that budget. To afford you (in relation to her budget, not her net worth), she may need to split the payments.

[KyleAaron]

You don't have to be smart to accumulate expensive assets. From my experience with high-income people, you just have to have some combination of being really good at one thing and connections. This leads to a higher income. You don't need to be smart with money to be smart enough to get money. If everyone who was smart enough to get money was good at handling it, we wouldn't have any millionaires become bankrupt.

With PT as with anything else, it's not the price, it's the value. And the tricky thing about training is that you don't know its value until you've had it. So we as trainers have to find other ways to demonstrate the value when we meet someone who's never had it before. And this is why we try things like testimonials and free trials, and why word of mouth referrals are so important to us.

Most people can afford the price of personal training, the question is whether they see value in it, or rather value equal to or greater than the price. Most trainers struggle to get people to pay their price even when they discount, simply because most trainers aren't offering much value - they're not very good.

Most trainers are crap. Largely this is not their fault. Schools don't make the trainers good, managers and potential mentors don't offer them training to make them better, and because they're not earning they don't last the years it takes in a job to learn on your own. This culture is so ingrained that newbie trainers don't even realise their gaps, their egos won't allow them to address it. So far this year I have had 12 trainers or would-be trainers contact me asking for advice about their careers. I talk to them a bit and then say, "Come along Sunday, we'll talk in person, you can see what training people in a small gym looks like."

Only one has come. One out of 12. I didn't chase them, they asked me for help. I offered it. 11/12 didn't take it. With trainers as with clients: the real challenge is getting them to show up in the first place. Though clients are more likely to show up.

But again this is not really their fault. Their schools, managers and so on did not tell them they had anything to learn. Their whole environment tells them that you can sit around behind the gym desk surfing ******** and clients will just come to you, and that if they do get clients, random circuits of bosus and burpees and selling them supplements is good enough.

It's not price, it's value.

[Ronin4help]

Where I live, people aren't posers. They have money, they spend money. It really is that simple. Personal training is a luxury, not a necessity.
Selling personal training in an area where a good portion of the people resist the service simply means the service doesn't coincide with that community's spending habits. Drive through your poor neighborhoods. You won't see any Audi dealerships or Country Clubs. The service needs to coincide with the communities spending trends or it will not flourish.