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Five reasons S&C coaches should consider personal training
- cillianoconnor94
- 9 hours ago
- 5 min read
Introduction
In my previous post, I outlined why I think S&C is a burning dumpster fire of a career choice. That is, for anyone who cares about professional integrity, financial security, and having a work-life balance.
The good news is, I think there's a great alternative that has some clear remedies to those problems, while allowing you to coach for a living.
There are major positives I'm going to outline in favour of becoming a self-employed personal trainer/online coach, along with some cons that you need to be aware of before making the jump.
My story
In 2019, I had finished my MSc in Strength and Conditioning at St Mary's University. For the past 7 years, I had tried to work toward S&C as a full time job. During that time period, I learned the negatives that I outlined in my previous article, and began to really wonder if this was the career for me. I had been doing some personal training on the side, but not really seriously.
Then the COVID 19 pandemic hit. A terrible tragedy, but looking back, a huge turning point for my career. With no S&C work available, I had no source of income save for the PT clients I continued training in the park. This was the break from S&C I needed to make me realise that PT was more enjoyable AND more reliable.
Fast forward 5 years, and I am a full time PT with in-person and online clients. Here at the 5 major improvements from when I worked in S&C:
You can charge what you're worth
Unlike working for a team or sporting org, you get to decide how much your time is worth. Building positive testimonials and referrals with a niche who love what you do, allows you to increase your rates over time as you become the expert in that area.
You make a real, measurable difference
Working with athletes is cool, but unless they're powerlifters, it's pretty hard to show a direct cause and effect between training with you and reaching their goals.
Regular people, however, have much more tangible goals that you can have a huge impact on. Get stronger, lose fat, lower blood pressure etc. A great personal trainer can drastically improve someone's quantity and quality of life.
Even if you're working with more advanced lifting hobbyists, you can at least clearly see a link between your work and the lifts you help people achieve.
You won't find a client with a Hobbiton background and a coach with an Elder Scrolls background on any elite sporting org Zoom calls 3. Clients value you
When you charge what you're worth and work with the right niche, people really value what you are doing for them.
Gone will be the days of having to convince a head coach that you'e more qualified than the charlatan they saw online. You'll have people who believe in you so much that they're willing to invest significantly in your knowledge and skillset to help them.
4. Less stress / more financial security
When you're an S&C coach, your entire livelihood is in the hands of a single person, who typically has no idea what it is you do or how to assess whether you're any good at it.
As a PT, each client is like a mini employer. While losing a client hurts your bottom line, it's extremely unlikely that every single person on your roster is going to stop working with you all at once.
In this sense, you're somewhat waterproofed from having all of your income pulled out from under you. Whether people join or leave is much more within your control by providing a great service, upskilling in sales etc.
U.S. Army Reserve photo by Master Sgt. Ryan Matson, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons 5. Better work/life balance
I'm not going to lie and say that personal training offers the best work/life balance possible. Certainly not when you're starting off anyway.
In general, the price for being your own boss is that you lose the privilege of doing normal work hours. Your friends might hate the hours between 9-5 more than you, but being an employee means they also get to switch off more on evening and weekends.
While you'll find yourself having to work late and do stuff on weekends here and there, I think it's better than doing all of that for an organisation that gives you none of the benefits we've already discussed. Plus, if you grow your PT business enough, you can very feasibly get more of your time back eventually, by reducing your hours or hiring employees.
BUT, it's not all sunshine and rainbows
I want to be very clear in saying that all of the above assumes that you are willing to get on with the uniquely hard, unsexy aspects of this job.
Being self-employed is NOT for everyone. So read my caveats below and really consider if this is the right career path for you.
Discipline
The great thing about being self employed is you're the boss. And that's also the downside.
If you start work late, if you take a day off, if you don't stay on top of your tasks - there's nobody to answer to but yourself.
If you're the kind of person who slacks off the moment they're not being supervised, ask yourself how well you're going to run a business when it's all on you, all the time.
Sales / marketing
Whether you like it or not, at least 50% or more of your success will be determined by your ability to market and sell yourself to potential clientele.
Realistically, you need these skills to excel in S&C as well, as a lot of your success will come down to 'who you know'. So for me, it's really just a case of pick your poison.
S&C have a very toxic culture around the business of coaching. It teaches young coaches to undervalue their time and knowledge. This can make the idea of selling yourself very challenging at first.The bottom line is you'll have to get comfortable with charging what you're worth, selling, branding yourself, making content etc.
Many a great coach has failed in the private sector because they couldn't let go of their limiting beliefs about their worth.
Soft skills
Most people work with a personal trainer for accountability to another human.
They don't need a programme fully optimised with the most cutting edge sport science. They need a guide to their fitness journey who will meet them where they're at, be relatable, easy to get on with, help them set realistic goals, etc. These are the things that people will measure your coaching skill by.
If you're only in this to write programmes and coach technique, your job will be easily replaced by a robot.
Still onboard?
If you think this is still the better option for you, I have a course coming at the start of June that will equip you with the all real-world, practical knowledge on how to be a great personal trainer, as well as how to navigate the nitty gritty of sales and marketing.
Stay tuned for an outline of the course in my next article.
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