Fresh out of college with a degree in sports medicine after serving as an athletic trainer at San Jose State University, Mike Ibasco got a job as a personal trainer at an Andre Agassi 24 Hour Fitness Super Sport club in Las Vegas.
Ibasco spent more than four years working at 24 Hour. In one of those years, the company honored him with a client retention award. He says that although he learned a lot about how to be a trainer while there, he wanted more in his chosen profession.
“At 24, you can only go so far,” Ibasco says. “Under corporate, you can’t really utilize the skills and specialties that you originally have. I’m always about looking at how can I further my position and education. You kind of see the difference between corporate and doing things more in a specialty-type studio. If you do not produce a certain amount, you probably will find yourself being transferred to another club. It was a lot of sales, sales, sales. It definitely taught me how to become a better trainer.”
Ibasco left 24 Hour to become the director for a group of small physical therapy and fitness studios, but not long after, he went out on his own. In 2009, with the economy at its lowest, Ibasco opened his own training studio, The Fitness Source in Las Vegas.
So far, the move has paid off. After the first year, The Fitness Source revenues have grown each year. In 2010, the company doubled its revenue and doubled its size from 2,000 to 4,000 square feet, Ibasco says. The company increased its earnings by 50 percent in 2011 and by 75 percent last year.
Although employees, including trainers, leave their employers every day, Ibasco is part of what some in the industry see as a growing trend of personal trainers who are leaving big box clubs either for other professions or to open their own studios. More than one fitness industry executive acknowledged a high turnover of trainers in clubs. Jay Del Vecchio, president and CEO of certification company World Instructor Training Schools, Virginia Beach, VA, estimates the annual attrition rate of trainers is around 80 percent at some clubs and says he frequently receives calls from club operators asking him for leads on trainers. Many trainers who are leaving clubs either are starting their own studios or are getting out of personal training altogether because they did not produce enough business, Del Vecchio says.
“Selling is a dirty word to most trainers,” Del Vecchio says. “It’s definitely a turn-off on a personal level, but from a professional level, [selling is] a daunting task. They find it pretty scary, and those that are even involved at all, they don’t like to do it. They see it as the ugly side of the profession.”
Others may leave because they feel they do not have enough freedom at big box clubs. The freedom they gain by owning their own studio, however, comes with greater responsibilities that include handling rent, payroll and equipment purchasing—and that can take them away from personal training.
“When you move into the studio, more than half of [your] time is working on the business side of the company, not on the training side, and that’s something that’s very challenging for a lot of people,” says Anthony Wall, director of professional education for the American Council on Exercise (ACE), San Diego. “Most people get into the personal training industry because they like working with people and training them. They haven’t gotten into the industry because they want to be involved in budgeting and finance.”
Still, that trade-off is one that more trainers seem to be making, considering the growth in small training studios in the past five to 10 years. In a recent PFP media survey of current club, studio, franchise, boot camp and wellness center owners, 61 percent said their career began in a health club, although they did not specify if they started as a personal trainer. Eighty percent of those surveyed have been in the fitness industry 10 or more years. When asked how many years they worked in a health club before starting their own business, the respondents’ answers varied from less than a year to as many as 25 years. Thirty percent had worked at a health club for 10 or more years before starting their fitness business. Ninety-three percent still train clients.
This data and the growth in small training studios may not necessarily mean more trainers are leaving big box clubs. Instead, the growth may be a case of more personal trainers in the employment pool, Wall says.
As Club Industry reported in January’s State of the Industry story, The New York Times, citing information from the U.S. Labor Department, reported that from 2001 to 2011, the number of personal trainers increased by 44 percent, to 231,500. Furthermore, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported last summer that the employment of fitness trainers and instructors is expected to grow by 24 percent from 2010 to 2020, faster than the average for all occupations.
“Turnover [of personal trainers] in gyms has always been an issue,” Wall says. “I have a feeling that with that turnover, where they’re going when they leave is perhaps shifting and changing based on the economy. Three or four years ago, when the economy was sour, people were going, ‘Well, I can’t work in my financial job anymore, but I can still be a personal trainer.’ Now that the economy is better, they’re saying, ‘I’m ready to go off and do that on my own.’”
Former 24 Hour Fitness trainer Mike Ibasco opened this studio, The Fitness Source, in 2009 in Las Vegas. Photo courtesy of The Fitness Source.
Examining the Shift
Compensation and working conditions may be factors in this possible shift. In a 2010 salary survey of fitness professionals conducted by ACE, the average annual salary of full-time personal trainers with an ACE certification was $53,323 ($25.71 an hour) while the average annual salary of part-time trainers with an ACE certification was $18,650 ($25.14 an hour). Part-time ACE-certified trainers worked an average of 16 hours per week, according to the survey. However, in the category of Most Popular Fitness Job Titles, ACE listed personal trainers at the top with a lower average annual salary of $42,204 ($18,648 for part-time trainers). Overall, 51 percent of personal trainers surveyed said they worked for a club or a fitness facility while 49 percent worked independently, according to ACE.
In the 2010 IDEA Fitness Industry Compensation Trends Report released by the IDEA Health and Fitness Association, San Diego, the average personal trainer salary was $39,182. How this salary compares to the past is unknown as IDEA’s 2008 survey did not include salary information. The majority of the trainers in the study were paid an hourly rate, with 47 percent earning a percentage of the client’s fees. The fee split was at about 60/40, similar to IDEA’s findings since 2004.
Club operators around the country faced several budget decisions in 2009 when the recession hit the hardest. One of those decisions, says Michael Scott Scudder, managing partner of The Fitness Industry Council, Taos, NM, was whether to reduce the percentage of revenue that personal trainers shared with the club. Some club owners dropped the trainers’ commission from perhaps 60 percent or 65 percent to a 50-50 split, Scudder says.
“I think you started to see trainers looking around for what was the best deal in [their] particular competitive marketplace, and in some cases, trainers would just jump ship for a couple bucks more per training [session] to another club,” Scudder says.
And jumping to their own ship may have seemed more attractive when trainers heard what some small training studio owners were making. Scudder says some can gross around $100,000 or more.
According to a 2010 American Council on Exercise survey, personal trainers were listed at the top in the category of most popular job titles. Photo courtesy of American Council on Exercise.
Big Box Clubs Weigh In
Perhaps because of the perceived lack of advancement opportunities and split decreases, some big box club company executives are providing services and education to their trainers to help them grow in their position and keep them at the club.
Gold’s Gym International, Irving, TX, is restructuring its fitness business, says Tim Keightley, vice president of fitness for Gold’s. All Gold’s personal trainers will have to complete a three-day business course by October that consists of a 12-month business plan and a 12-month activity plan, along with enhancing communication skills and practical teaching skills.
Gold’s has between 700 and 850 personal trainers—depending on seasonality—at its 82 combined corporate clubs, says Keightley, who adds it might take two years before the initiative has a true impact.
“There aren’t that many world-class personal trainers knocking on your door saying, ‘I want to work with you,’” Keightley says, “but there are lots of people going, ‘I’d like to be a personal trainer. How do I do it?’”
In general, Keightley says that a club that gets two to three good years from a trainer is “pretty fair.” Many trainers are just coming out of college, and a personal training job at a club might be one of two or three jobs they hold, he adds. Their schedules, because of their part-time status, can vary greatly.
“The schedule tends to be less of an issue for personal trainers who have established themselves,” Keightley says. “The trouble with the schedule is in the beginning, when [they] haven’t got many clients, they don’t say no because they haven’t got enough clients yet to be selective.”
Scheduling was one of the reasons Erin Mellinger left a locally owned big box club to start her own Fitness Together franchises in Canfield and Poland, OH. At the big box club, Mellinger might train eight sessions in a day, but those sessions were spread over a 14-hour period from morning to afternoon to evening.
“It’s more the lifestyle that you get burned out of,” Mellinger says. “You are either training or you are going around trying to sell yourself. I felt like I was never really off.”
24 Hour Fitness, San Ramon, CA, employs about 4,200 trainers at its 400 clubs, says Josh Lyon, vice president of fitness. Lyon adds 24 Hour is not necessarily seeing a trend of trainers leaving to start their own studios. He also may dispute Ibasco’s claim about the limited growth potential at the company. Lyon himself has been with 24 Hour for 13 years, starting at a single club and working his way up through field- and corporate-level positions.
“There are countless stories like that across our organization,” Lyon says. “There’s a ton of career potential to take on different roles and continue to grow with the organization.”
24 Hour aims to hire as diverse a group of trainers as possible, from all ages and backgrounds, Lyon says. Some of those hires are people who decided to change careers to personal training. All 24 Hour trainers and their bios are featured on each club’s website.
Some 24 Hour trainers are rewarded with trips to the Olympics, such as last summer in London, to work at 24 Hour training centers in the Olympic Village. “Put me on the list for Rio” is what some trainers tell Lyon, referring to the 2016 Summer Olympics in Brazil.
24 Hour offers free continuing education to its trainers and ensures they develop new skill sets through the company’s 24 Hour University, Lyon says. According to a 2008 IDEA survey, 58 percent of respondents said their companies pay for staffers to receive continuing education in the forms of in-service training and workshops.
“What we’re starting to see more and hear more of,” ACE’s Wall says, “is those larger organizations are looking at ways to retain their trainers more effectively than they’ve done in the past.”
What is important to fitness executives, trainers and studio owners who started as personal trainers is the relationship between the trainer and the client, regardless of whether that relationship is built inside a club or inside a studio. The entrepreneurial spirit that Ibasco and others have exhibited to build those relationships and carry them into their own studios is not a bad thing, Keightley says.
“Somebody came off one of my courses I taught and said, ‘You’re not training to be a personal trainer. You’re giving them skills for life,’” Keightley says. “The ambition is, they come and work with us, work with our members, they earn a living, we earn a living from that. And if they then move on in two, three, five years time with a good rapport and with business skills and life skills that they didn’t have before, then that’s a great feeling to have.”
24 Hour Fitness employs more than 4,000 personal trainers in its 400 clubs. Photo courtesy of 24 Hour Fitness.