I read Scott Hopson’s feature on personal training with interest (see HCM Sept 12, p54). While I agree with many of the points raised, I think there are more fundamental explanations and solutions to the challenge of making a successful career as a personal trainer.

We must first consider the environment newly qualified PTs enter. In the current economic climate, more gym operators are erring towards self-employed, rental-based models which guarantee revenues, as opposed to high quality service and continued employee training and development. This means graduates face a ‘cliff’ following qualification, having to fend for themselves.

At The Training Room, we’ve bridged this gap by being a full-service careers provider rather than merely a training company. You can have all the knowledge, qualifications and client skills in the world, but if you don’t understand what’s expected of you in the real world, you’re being set up for failure. We focus on an academy environment where students adhere to strict codes of conduct (similar to those of top club operators) and uniform standards from day one. We provide additional business training, presentations from large corporate operators and work experience during training to ensure that all our graduates are industry-ready.

I totally agree that making money from PT alone is challenging – we’ve always taught our graduates to work the different income streams available to them. We insist all our students study group exercise classes such as group cycling and boxing circuits, and also strongly encourage external income streams such as boot camps and weight loss classes. This leads to an interesting and lucrative initial career which can become more specialist in later years.

Jonathan Davies, Founder & CEO, The Training Room