Group Training

Today group training has become very popular in the fitness world. I mean why would you want to train one person per hour when you could train two, three, four , five, even six times as many.

I find a lot of trainers who train on one on spend a lot of time talking about their personal lives with their clients and doing a lot of time standing around counting reps (which the clients can easily do themselves)

When it comes to healthy people who are fairly injury free (which is my target group by the way) it’s as easy to give four people an awesome workout as it is to give on, plus it’s a lot more fun and the trainer can make way more money.

I can train three to six people and give them the same quality of instruction, keep their form in check while being even more motivating by the simple fact that I’m so much more motivated. Granted it takes some practice, creativity and planning ahead but the quality of the workouts are the same.

With one on one training I’ve ran into problems such as:

1. Having to train a lot of hours just to make descent money. If I can only make 50 dollars per hour than I need to work a lot of hours to reach the kind of income I want for myself.

2. Having to charge a lot per hour which made it harder to get and keep clients. To make the kind of money I want to make I need to charge at least $75 an hour for one on one training. Now for the wealthy that might not be an issue, but the wealthy only make up a small percentage of the population. What about people who make a more average income? $600 to $1000 a month is a lot to them. With group training most people pay closer to $200 to $400 per month which is much more affordable. Plus the client retention is much higher. I like long term clients who stay with me for years.

3. Having a small referral base and since referrals are one of my main sources of new clients the less people I have the less referrals I get. If I train mostly one on one than I likely only have a referral base of 10 or 15 clients, but with training groups I might have 50 or more clients. That’s way more people getting results and spreading the word about my training. More clients equals more referrals, and in personal training referrals is one of the best generators of new clients.

4. I would frustrated with scheduling problems especially around peak hours such as mornings and evenings. If I only have one person scheduled per hour and that person doesn’t show up then I’m most likely training zero people per hour. Now if I have five people scheduled and one or two don’t show up, I’m still training three people.

5. If I would lose two or three clients it be a big loss because with one on one training my clients base was relatively small, so a few clients could equal a big drop in income. If I only have ten clients and I lose three I most likely just lost around 30% of my income. If I have 50 people and I lost three, I only lost around six percent of my income.

6. I would get very bored. Training one person at a time at least for me can get a little boring. I see a lot of trainers talking about their personal lives, counting reps and just staring at their one client already has perfect form in the exercise. Training four or five people is much more fun and the time seems to go by sooooo much faster.

7. The clients have more fun. Generally the clients build a certain level of camaraderie with each other. Plus it keeps the intensity high because no one wants to wimp out in front of the others and a lot of times a healthy level of competitiveness arises in them.

With group training you can:

• Make a lot of money per hour

• Have a very high client retention rate

• Get a lot of referrals

• Have a lot of scheduling flexibility

• Have a lot of fun

• Give the clients fun high energy workouts full of competitiveness and camaraderie

• Have time seem to fly by because you will be so busy and things will seem very fast paced

• Help a lot of people to be leaner, healthier, more fit and more confident

• Work part time for full time pay if you choose to

• Have a business that continually grow and prospers more and more as time goes on

As far as I’m concerned for the majority of my training, groups is by far the best way to go, with a few one on one sessions on the side for those who want to pay the higher cost.