Freedom to Choose Your Trainer

I live in the country. For the majority of my life, the nearest gym was 20 minutes away. . .depending on who was driving. About 5 years ago, a gym opened up near me. I didn’t hear about it til about 2 years ago when I was advised to contact them for a job, which I got. The reason that gym closed – 6 weeks before Christmas – was the same reason I didn’t hear about it for 3 years: poor management and lack of marketing. 

A month after it closed, the gym re-opened. Some investors recognized its potential to be huge as it is the only gym within a 30 minute drive in 3 out of the four directions. None of us who had been laid off returned. Now, the members who didn’t follow their trainers had to go through the entire process of deciding on a trainer, and, because it is a small town where trainers aren’t exactly plentiful, their options are limited. 

Even if it were a large gym with 30 different trainers to choose from, you still don’t have complete freedom to choose your trainer. 

Think about it. You go into a gym, and some salesman talks with you about the different training packages. You pick the one that works best for your budget and your goals. Maybe they have a website or Facebook page where you can browse through the trainers, read their bios, before you go in to sign up. But it comes down to this: 

when you sign up for a trainer at a gym, you are limited to choosing a trainer from that gym.

Maybe you picked that gym because you saw a trainer you wanted to work with, but most likely it’s because it’s close to home or affordable or your work pays for your membership.

What happens when none of their trainers work with you? They don’t understand your goals. They can’t relate to you. They frequently cancel. They don’t explain things just expect you to blindly follow what they say. Their schedule changes or your schedule changes.

You bounce to another trainer. There may be a fee for changing trainers; there may not be a fee. It is, however, a waste of your time, and regardless of whether or not your change is justified, it’s frustrating for the trainers too. At that gym, when I first started, I got all the clients who were not happy with ANY of the other trainers. Some of them weren’t happy with me, but until another new trainer came in, they were stuck with me. 

You might be saying, ok, yeah, this sounds about right. What of it? Well, that’s online training comes in. The online client I have that lives closest to me is 12 hours away. They’re a member at a local gym that fits their budget, but they have me as their trainer. They’re not paying per session, they’re paying per month. They can tell me that they will definitely be in the gym 4 days a week, so I will have sessions planned for them 4 days a week. If they were training with me in-person, my schedule might have only given us 2 sessions a week to train. 

Do you see the freedom you get with online training? It’s more budget-friendly; it allows for surprise scheduled changes like family vacations or work trips. More importantly, you have hundreds if not thousands of trainers to pick from to help you reach your goals. You’re not limited to the trainers in gym.