How to Make $100k+ as a Fitness Trainer (2024)

Fitness training attracts many different kinds of people. Some have a passion for the physical discipline of fitness and wellness. Others are motivated by helping people achieve their goals and even reach physical excellence. Sometimes the passion point is helping people with health issues recover or age more gracefully. All of these pros have different skills and fitness techniques they bring to people who need them.

Fitness is a huge and growing field with varied approaches to fitness training. There are boot camps and intensive training programs. There are also much more supportive, gentle programs that are right for a different client base. Succeeding as a fitness trainer is a lot about finding the right way to train a community and keep people motivated.

Whatever kind of fitness trainer you are, you have the opportunity to make over $100,000 per year helping people if you get your business plan down right. It’s all about knowing how many private sessions or classes you need to do every week in order to make your goal income.

The Fitness Lifestyle

Fitness is a big umbrella of lifestyles that all share something in common, namely, a love of getting the heart pumping and helping people feel great in their bodies. Whether you teach yoga, train crossfit, or help seniors increase their mobility, this industry has so many ways to serve people while making great money.

Fitness trainers also have a lot of options when it comes to training their clients. From creating workouts and doing online zoom private sessions, to big spin classes in gyms, to hosting fitness groups in parks, there are so many popular models for a fitness business. As a fitness trainer today, if you can inspire people to get sweaty, you can make great money.

The Economics of the Fitness Industry

There are an estimated 309,800 fitness pros in The United States and of those 18% are independent. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics expects the number of fitness trainers in America to grow by 39% this decade. That’s incredible growth and it means that the fitness industry will provide big opportunities to entrepreneurs in the next decade. If you are an independent fitness trainer right now or plan to start a fitness business soon, you will be well positioned to grow your business.

Thousands of fitness trainers use PocketSuite to manage their bookings and payments, so we have unique insights about the road to making $100,000 plus in the fitness industry.

The average fitness trainer using the PocketSuite app is making about $39,000 per year. However, the top 10% of fitness trainers on our platform are earning over $135,000! The following is a road map of how to level up your fitness training business.

First, let’s talk about numbers. Fitness trainers traditionally have three major drivers of income. The first is private training sessions. The second income stream for fitness pros is classes. The third is memberships in a fitness pros training space, whether that’s a gym or online community.

To make our path to goal incomes of 50k, 80k, 100k and 150k let’s first focus on a business based on private training sessions. While many fitness pros have a mix of these income streams, it’s often helpful to pick one to start with. Each of these income models includes 3 weeks per year of vacation.

When it comes to reaching your goal income as a fitness trainer, there are two important stats to keep in mind, the amount you are charging per hour long training session and the number of training sessions per week. The amount you charge varies widely among fitness trainers and depends a lot on your geographic location, level of experience, and the clientele you serve.

Whatever rate makes the most sense for your area and clientele, it’s clear you can make six figures by doing nothing but filling your personal training business with sessions.

Creating Recurring Revenue as an Fitness Trainer

The most important step in your path to a 100k plus fitness training business is creating recurring revenue and regular repeat clients. One very popular tool toward creating reliable recurring revenue is offering packages. To apply this strategy effectively, set your base price for a single session higher than you need for your average session. Then offer a discount for clients who commit to a package of 10 or more sessions bought at once.

This packaged sessions strategy works for fitness trainers because committed clients are much more likely to come back reliably and fill your booking slots every week.

For example, you can set your base training price at $100 for an hour long session. However, if a client commits to two sessions per week, offer them a package at $80 per session. Then let PocketSuite track the sessions for you and watch that client come back reliably week after week.

Better Bookings and Onboardings For Fitness Training Clients

An intuitive booking process helps new clients become repeat clients. Pocketsuite has a feature that lets clients book fitness sessions online and can even automatically charge their credit card when the session is complete. If the client has a package or subscription, it will track that a session from their package has been used. Because it’s easy for clients to book, they are much more likely to do it again.

Also, PocketSuite has an onboarding flow for new fitness clients to automatically sign contracts and answer intake questions about health information and fitness goals. Not only does this streamline that first session, but it means you are always prepared and look professional.

To get repeat bookings, we highly recommend that all fitness trainers make contracts and forms part of their digital onboarding and also let clients book them for available services online.

Packages and Subscriptions For Gyms, Classes and Online Support Groups

As you know many fitness trainers have additional income sources from classes, small gym memberships and even online fitness support groups.

Classes are a fantastic way to make great income and meet more people. You always have new people coming into your studio who may end up becoming training clients. The price point of a class is lower so it’s the first place many potential clients will engage with you as a fitness trainer.

Subscriptions are the best way to serve your clients who like classes. Offer them a discount to pay monthly for one or two classes every week and let technology track their classes for you. Incentivizing students to commit to a certain amount of classes every month is great for your business and your clients’ fitness. They’ll show up more often and be happy they did.

If you also have a small training gym, you can make additional income offering memberships for local people to work out there, even if they aren’t yet training with you. Many clients won’t even come in often and will pay you every month because access to a gym is something they think they should have. You can also send your gym members promotions on training packages offering to ramp up their fitness regime so they get more from their membership.

During the pandemic, PocketSuite saw a huge spike in fitness trainers hosting online fitness support groups for people to support each other in home workouts. The gyms are back open but these new groups are still popular and a great way to increase recurring income with subscriptions as a fitness trainer.

Text Marketing For Fitness Trainers

Past training clients, people who used to do classes or have memberships are a business asset. You can use text marketing to send out your seasonal training promotions and deals to your entire list of past clients. Text marketing is much more effective than emails and social media for filling your bookings every week.

PocketSuite has a tool called smart campaigns that empowers fitness trainers to automatically text past clients deals for doing another package of training sessions. It’s also a great tool for promoting your 1:1 training to people who have taken your classes in the past.

Text marketing does have a small cost associated with it. It’s a good investment because, on average, every dollar a fitness professional spends on text marketing with PocketSuite, they get $18 dollars back in bookings. Text marketing can help you reach your goal number of hours booked every week and make your goal income.

Getting New Clients for an Fitness Training Business

Every business needs to bring in new clients. Here are a few strategies you can try as a fitness trainer.

Referrals: Incentivize your current clients to send you their friends. Give them a free session every time someone they referred books a first session with you.

Classes: One great thing about the fitness industry is that classes bring a wide variety of people. Spend one minute at the end of class hyping your personal training practice.

Reviews: If you have a small neighborhood gym, those Google Maps Reviews can really bring in the curious people. Ask all your new clients for a review. You can use PocketSuite Smart campaigns to automatically ask all new clients for a review.

If you don’t ask for reviews, only a few people will think to give you one. And worse, the people who are upset are the most likely reviewers. The way to protect your rating is to ask all your clients for a review.

Local Advertising: Invest in local Google ads for the town or zip code where you do fitness training. Limiting your ad campaign to the hyper local level keeps costs down and finds you leads of people looking for fitness trainers

Hiring Others and Building a Fitness Empire

Once you have filled your own week of fitness clients reliably, there is no reason to stop building your business. After all, at this point you are good at it. Rather than turn away business because your book is full, you can hire other fitness professionals and repeat the process of filling their book of repeat clients.
Managing additional team members for your fitness business can be done with PocketSuite Teams. People will come to associate your gym or your team of fitness pros with a certain style of fitness and quality of results. You will also get to mentor other professionals in your field which is very fulfilling.