Personal Trainers and Group Fitness Instructors

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BasketLady

2
I work at a local club, and we are trying to restructure our pay scale for our trainers and group fitness instructors. If I may be so bold to ask.....

For those of you that work in a fitness facility,

Personal Trainers:

1. How much to you charge for personal training?

2. How much of that goes back to the club?

3. If you typically train outside a club, and occassionally bring client in to a club, what percentage do you give to that club?

If you do not want to give actual figures, could you at least give me the percentage that you pay to the club?


Group Fitness Instructors:

1. If you teach group fitness classes, how much do you get paid per class?

2. Do you have a set schedule or do you teach different classes each week?

3. How many classes per week do you teach?

If you would prefer not to respond publically, please feel free to PM me with your responses. I appreciate any assistance I can get!

Thanks!
 
Personal Trainers:

1. How much to you charge for personal training?
At my facility I charge $85 per session for my own personal clients, but I charge $50 per session for the trainers who work for me. Actually, I just off-loaded all but two clients since management is taking so much time. This rate is very high for my market, but our reputation allows us to do that. You need to gauge this for your own market. If you are a higher population area like NY or LA, I see typical trainers charging around $100 per hour.

We offer small group training (Boot Camp) with groups of 8 people. For those I pay $7 per training client, so the trainer can make up to $56 per hour for those. Incidentally, all my trainers want to do bootcamps! Just a few of those can make them pretty serious money.


2. How much of that goes back to the club?
My trainers make $20-$25 per session for one-on-one, based on experience, education, and seniority. They are not sub-contracted any more though. They are required to go through my training and use my training parameters, they wear a uniform, and they also get floor time to help them build a clientele and generally help the members. They don't handle ANY of the money. The client pays the club directly and we pay the trainer.


3. If you typically train outside a club, and occassionally bring client in to a club, what percentage do you give to that club?
None. I don't allow outside trainers to train their clients in my gym. If a trainer has someone they want to bring in, it is in their best financial interest add to their clientele, but the sales dept gets any commissions, which they may split with the trainer if they did a lot of sales work.


Group Fitness Instructors:

1. If you teach group fitness classes, how much do you get paid per class?
In my market the typical rate of pay is $12-$15. We start ours at $18 per class up to $20, again based on experience and seniority. They have to write their numbers down for each class on a form the fill out every time they teach one. This allows us to track attendance trends, and lets us determine whether or not to keep a class or drop it.


2. Do you have a set schedule or do you teach different classes each week?
Our schedule is set, but it changes frequently based on our responsiveness to our members' requests. We are currently developing group fusion classes (like combining spinning for 30 min with 30 min of Rep Reebock).


3. How many classes per week do you teach?
We have somewhere over 20 classes per week (not including Boot Camps since those are under our PT dept).

Some additional info to keep this relavent:

We are a small gym (8200 square feet), and we have just under 1,000 members. Our main focus is personal training, and it is a very lucrative profit center.

Small bragging point, we are going to be featured in the Feb/Mar issue of Men's Health as one of the "Top 30 gyms in America," so I guess we're doing something right! :)

Hope all that helps.
 
Thanks JP, that is exactly what I was looking for. I knew I could count on you!

Congrats on the feature - I will have to look for that.
 
Hey, anything for you! ;)

DON'T do the percentage thing. You can use it as a reference, but it get's too complicated for all those people paying special rates or old clients who's rate is grandfathered in. Just set a base rate for new trainers.

I would suggest, if you have the budget for it, a head trainer who does NOT actually train clients, but designs programs and oversees/organizes your entire PT dept. They are basically the team leader, and they need to be really good. They need to be someone the trainers look to for guidance, who is far enough ahead of them in knowledge that they don't want to feel competitive, rather, they want to learn from this person. The head trainer's pay should be based on a percentage of the revenue their department generates. Establish a living wage base pay with incentive bonuses if they exceed minimum expectations.

A well run PT department could easily generate $50,000 a month in the right market.
 
questions

I hope you can give me some insight. I am a chiropractor and we own a building in which i have my office and a personal training studio rents from us. The owner was trying to sell the studio and as no one was buying basically wants to walk away from the 5 year lease, leaving us without a renter, and taking his own clients with him to a smaller, cheaper location. We are in a upper to middle class town . My husband and I are both chiropractors and both into fitness so we have decided to take over the studio which is about 1800 sq feet. His current trainers pay him 20% for their clients they bring in and 30% for anyone he sends them. It looks like two of them will be staying. We plan on implementing a boot camp a couple of days a week and my husband doing a weight management program as he has done natural body building competitions and is an expert of losing weight. My question is, where would you go with this small gym? How can I make it more profitable? The last owner was purely personal training. Any insight would be helpful.

jpfitness said:
Personal Trainers:

1. How much to you charge for personal training?
At my facility I charge $85 per session for my own personal clients, but I charge $50 per session for the trainers who work for me. Actually, I just off-loaded all but two clients since management is taking so much time. This rate is very high for my market, but our reputation allows us to do that. You need to gauge this for your own market. If you are a higher population area like NY or LA, I see typical trainers charging around $100 per hour.

We offer small group training (Boot Camp) with groups of 8 people. For those I pay $7 per training client, so the trainer can make up to $56 per hour for those. Incidentally, all my trainers want to do bootcamps! Just a few of those can make them pretty serious money.


2. How much of that goes back to the club?
My trainers make $20-$25 per session for one-on-one, based on experience, education, and seniority. They are not sub-contracted any more though. They are required to go through my training and use my training parameters, they wear a uniform, and they also get floor time to help them build a clientele and generally help the members. They don't handle ANY of the money. The client pays the club directly and we pay the trainer.


3. If you typically train outside a club, and occassionally bring client in to a club, what percentage do you give to that club?
None. I don't allow outside trainers to train their clients in my gym. If a trainer has someone they want to bring in, it is in their best financial interest add to their clientele, but the sales dept gets any commissions, which they may split with the trainer if they did a lot of sales work.


Group Fitness Instructors:

1. If you teach group fitness classes, how much do you get paid per class?
In my market the typical rate of pay is $12-$15. We start ours at $18 per class up to $20, again based on experience and seniority. They have to write their numbers down for each class on a form the fill out every time they teach one. This allows us to track attendance trends, and lets us determine whether or not to keep a class or drop it.


2. Do you have a set schedule or do you teach different classes each week?
Our schedule is set, but it changes frequently based on our responsiveness to our members' requests. We are currently developing group fusion classes (like combining spinning for 30 min with 30 min of Rep Reebock).


3. How many classes per week do you teach?
We have somewhere over 20 classes per week (not including Boot Camps since those are under our PT dept).

Some additional info to keep this relavent:

We are a small gym (8200 square feet), and we have just under 1,000 members. Our main focus is personal training, and it is a very lucrative profit center.

Small bragging point, we are going to be featured in the Feb/Mar issue of Men's Health as one of the "Top 30 gyms in America," so I guess we're doing something right! :)

Hope all that helps.
Click to expand...
 
advice:

drkimmymaz said:
I hope you can give me some insight. I am a chiropractor and we own a building in which i have my office and a personal training studio rents from us. The owner was trying to sell the studio and as no one was buying basically wants to walk away from the 5 year lease, leaving us without a renter, and taking his own clients with him to a smaller, cheaper location. We are in a upper to middle class town . My husband and I are both chiropractors and both into fitness so we have decided to take over the studio which is about 1800 sq feet. His current trainers pay him 20% for their clients they bring in and 30% for anyone he sends them. It looks like two of them will be staying. We plan on implementing a boot camp a couple of days a week and my husband doing a weight management program as he has done natural body building competitions and is an expert of losing weight. My question is, where would you go with this small gym? How can I make it more profitable? The last owner was purely personal training. Any insight would be helpful.
Click to expand...


Hey guys, new to the forum. I've been a certified p.t. for about 8 years, i think the longer I'm in this business the more i realize that if a trainer stops learning new methods of excersising their clientelle they are doomed to fade away like the billy banks tybo! Sorry to sound harsh, but i say this because in our industry possibly more so than any other change is constant. People respond better to new exciting work out routines, so do their bodies. when i run a 6 week boot camp i try to make sure the client never has the same work out twice. Ofcourse this is sometimes a challenge as a trainer, but hey no body said it was easy :) with all this said in regards to the above post i train at a cosmetic surgeons office very similar situation. We occupy a small room in their office and do very well with their referrals. a few basic pieces of equipment, and some excersise bands and we're able to offer nice one on one training, without the overhwleming (for some people) nature of a large gym. I think the way of the future is going to revert back to smaller, more intimate "gyms" that are actually more like small studios. I say this because people are more conscious now of germs, allergies, and cleanliness of large group setings. There's also the social aspect and the fact that people in general are becoming less social with more online and electronic communication. Only time will tell, I've been wrong before :) walt-inshapeinhome.com
 
I am current training toward my level 3 personal training qualification, as I want to be a freelance personal trainer.

To be honest, as a London personal trainer I would not want to work in a gym. The costs for rental are too high on an ad hoc basis, and the hourly rates as a freelance using parks and commons are much higher, and much less hassle.

If as a gym owner you can make it attractive for the personal trainer, then, great. But the cheapest deal I could see locally as a London personal trainer was £300 per month with a requirement to work a few hours for the gym itself. No point, especially as the hourly rate provided by the gym is pittance!
 
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I train at my local Y. They charge $30 an hour per training session and I get half of that. I'm relatively new at this and my manager said she will up my hourly cut every six months. We'll see what happens.
 
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