5 Reasons Why I Quit My Job As A Personal Fitness Trainer

A few months ago I wrote an article analyzing the pros and cons of being a personal trainer. My life has gotten to a point where I am no longer a full-time personal trainer, because frankly the job is not nearly as cool and “dudebro-y” as every screenwriter seems to think it is—and those “smiling douchebag” depictions are probably due to the ignorance of “the man on the outside looking in.”

I am a man capable of self-reflection, so here are a few thoughts on my full-time career as a personal trainer:

1. 90% Of Being A Personal Trainer Is Being A Glorified Handyman

The majority of time you’re a personal trainer, you will not be training people. You’re mostly going to be sweeping and mopping floors, moving stuff, and repairing drywall. One of the few things you’ll be doing that is at all related to training people is making phone calls to other people. Many, many phone calls.

So essentially, after being paid crappily to be a glorified handyman/pack mule, I decided to cut the middle man and just be a handyman/pack mule, and get paid double what I was making as a personal trainer.

2. Your Pay Depends On Convincing Third World Peasants To Buy Your Services

When I would be making my 100 or so phone calls a day, I noticed that a substantial amount of my clientele didn’t speak English particularly well, or not at all. A fact that was confirmed when I would have to do walkthroughs of the gym with clients that literally spoke no English—but hey, at least I got to test my Spanish, which I haven’t spoken regularly since high school. And that was of course when they even bothered to show up at all.

I would estimate that of the 100 or so phone calls I’d be making a day, maybe 25-30 would agree to doing a walk-through, in which I would take them on a tour of the gym, give them a sample workout for 30 minutes, and try to talk them into buying a package of personal training sessions.

Of those 25-30 that I would schedule for a walkthrough, I would further estimate that probably 5-6 would actually show up for the damn thing. So just to clarify, of the clients that I could even talk into doing a gym tour, I would only actually do the tour with 20-25% of those clients. So 80% of my labor was completely pointless, and I’d be desperately trying to sell to that remaining 20%. And since my base pay was 9 dollars an hour—with the rest of your salary intended to be made up by personal training services, well, looks like I’m going home with 100 or so dollars a day at most.

(Oh, did I mention that I’d often be working 10-15 hour days?)

Of course, I’m not the sort of person who has a knee-jerk reaction to the thought of immigration (the white ethnostate isn’t likely to happen, guys), but time preference is a real phenomenon, and when your salary  depends on making appointments with a high time preference person who doesn’t really “get” the concept of making an appointment for a future date, is it any wonder that I really started to resent the customers?

On their way to a training session

3. The Industry Is Full Of Soft People

It’s a commonly stated talking point that people who don’t work out often refuse to do so because they’re afraid of showing their ignorance of the field, afraid of going to the gym and getting mocked and bullied. This is in fact the niche that Planet Fitness caters to, as seen by their commercials.

It’s almost a default assumption of gym novices that every gym is some insane Cobra Kai dojo where you’re trained by a psychotic Vietnam veteran and basically beaten to a pulp until you”git gud.”

That is absolute horseshit.

Go look up a picture of the CEO of Planet Fitness—he’s, to put it politely, a fatty. While that’s the most extreme example, a fair amount of the people who work at gyms from what I’ve seen are not in particularly good shape. Furthermore, most gyms are full of theme days and company events and all the crap that cubicle drones hate about their jobs.

You all know that I’ve argued for the Cobra Kai dojo, and while a part of me wishes that the skyrocketing popularity of the new Cobra Kai show indicates that people want a mean, “tough” gym, I wouldn’t hold my breath.

On that note…

4. Your Co-Workers Are Douchebags That Quote “The Secret”

While the “snarling madman” stereotype of trainers is largely false, the “popped collar dudebro” stereotype is largely true.

My first week on the job at the corporate gym chain which will remain nameless, I had to attend job training. This job training was administered by a gentleman named Corey, a name which should tell you all you need to know about this guy. An archetypical “smiling douchebag in a polo shirt”, Corey was a guy that unironically read The Secret and was more than happy to tell us about it.

Oh yeah, I wasn’t being facetious in the slightest with this section’s heading. And he wasn’t alone in this respect—while the book choices may have differed slightly, the majority of your co-workers will, in fact, be loud, Type-A, “FIST POUND BROHAM” clods. And needless to say, quoting Marcus Aurelius or Robert Howard—writers that have said more about fitness and motivation in a single sentence than an asshole like Tony Robbins has said in his life—would fall on deaf ears.

I do try to be friendly with people; indeed, I never got into any altercations with anybody at the job. With that said I don’t think it’s irrational to complain about annoying co-workers. Hell, don’t we in the manosphere complain about “human resources cat women” all the time? Same deal, in my opinion.

Half of my coworkers. No exaggeration

5. Rewards Are Few And Far Between

Despite all my complaints, I do generally love helping people and seeing the positive results. It’s why I continue working in the job part time, and why I continue producing content for the internet. And my clients do enjoy the instruction I give them. But doing this full time for very little reward was just something I couldn’t do anymore.

So tl;dr if you’re going to be a personal trainer, only do it if you own the place or at the very least run your own classes. I run and administer my own martial arts classes and private clients, and I have a lot of fun with the job. But if you’re on the floor begging fat women and old geezers for training, your life is going to be real unpleasant.

Read More: 9 Reasons Why You Should Say No To Fitness Gyms

77 thoughts on “5 Reasons Why I Quit My Job As A Personal Fitness Trainer”

  1. When I think of personal trainers I just think of Brad Pitt’s character in Burn After Reading. He did a terrific job in this role. lol

  2. I lift at a serious powerlifting gym where a couple of nationally ranked guys train… and the place is still far too often filled with fat housewives and office guys trying to get in shape. I don’t know which is worse: people being scared of going to a “tough” gym, or having to listen to a bunch of obese single moms talk about their conjugate periodization training and max effort lower body days.

  3. What kind of article is this??? I thought we were onto the beta uprising… what is this here?

    1. I feel bad for us having to read this. This is one of the men leading us to the promised land. He works as a PT >.>

  4. While I was dating a personal trainer I got so sick of hearing her complain about flaky clients.
    Basically she taught them how to work out and after they figured it out they didn’t need her anymore and she was back to sweeping the place up.
    That said, having a 27 year old personal trainer as a girlfriend was pretty nice; she worked out one to three hours a day most days, never got weary in bed and looked fantastic when we went out.

    1. save the fact that she was a perfectly honed mental health weapon aimed straight at your brain with an unceasing attack in response to continued attention to her by you. the more attention you give her, the more focused that attack becomes be cause she assumes YOU LIKE LISTENING TO HER. Is the pink penispocket really that good to tolerate that kind of situation?

      1. hey! wasn’t “pink penispocket” your nickname at band camp? I remember you! the kid who kept blowing in the wrong end of the clarinets. the counselors passed your ass around man! you couldn’t even walk at the end of the week!

        1. Get it over with, douchebag. Down vote me. I analyzed his post and asked a question. Not sorry your feefees got hurt, snowflake.

        2. Deplorable mr. faggot is a depressed incel. his types are the ones who spread negativity in any possible way to compensate for their miserableness.

        3. Dnj is def an incel. Always negative on here and comments every single post! Get a life

        1. Sure they can. This is what he said “While I was dating a personal trainer I got so sick of hearing her complain about flaky clients.”
          I addressed his comment, not his conversations with her. FOCUS….and read. That help’s.

  5. Glorified ego strokers and paid “Chad” or “Tyrone” audience for those who are barely capable of finding motivation to function daily much less be dedicated at all to personal fitness improvement. 9 bucks an hour (why did I think they got paid more?) to tell flabby narcissists how to do exercises and how many (count their reps for them and give them fake verbal pushes for “One more, you can do it” while you spot the entire weight of the 10 pound dumbbells for them. But hell, they love the attention and touches from you professional Chad types they otherwise would never get a second look from.. How is it to work day to day with fake smiles to cover up your near gags on their unflattering body odor and fake smiles of enjoyment and flaky mental illness in mostly post wall fat flabby and unfit women?
    Don’t worry though, I am sure I will be blasted back into the shadows with negative ratings because for god sakes, anything I must say is now faggotry or blue pill, but funny that, that even on post military gyms have “personal trainers” working in them with clients do everything I just pointed out. Posters on here so hate the truth…but hate on. I can take it. Let me get back to my own self motivation and program and shame on me for being situationally aware..save my poor nose the torture of the stink of the uncommitted fakers.

    1. DNJ,
      I agree, ‘Personal Trainer’ fake jobs for the unemployable.
      They probably work as a ‘barista’ in their off time.

  6. Any job where you have to deal with the public sucks. Peoples’ rudeness and irresponsible attitudes, coupled with a “I’m the customer so I’m always right” mentality, are infuriating.
    There was probably a time where it was worth serving the public, but I’m thinking that era died with Service Merchandise.

  7. Personal Fitness trainers = Narcissists ego stroker and punching bag.
    What other profession gets paid for personal intimate attention services…Hmm?
    Part of the problem of people having the current overinflated sense of persona and value is the blowhards who pumped them up in person in addition to their online social communities hyper-inflated anonymous validations. The least you could do is ENCOURAGE them to take more selfies so that unfortunate accidents will befall them as part of the natural course of Darwinism and save us from their insufferable asses emanations.

  8. Whining like a little bitch!
    Whatever job you do which involves human interaction will have elements of pain and frustration – it comes with it. But the better you become the more bearable it is.

    1. Whenever customers bombard you with irrational request instead of getting frustrated, thank them for the opportunity to humble yourself.
      Never expect that your customers will be good and know what they want. Always look at them as if they are little children and you need to calm them down with a deep and soothing voice. You need to be like a supportive father to them. Show them gently where they could be wrong and correct them with confidence.

  9. What I find amazing with this author is that he complains about how many of the personal trainers in the fitness industry are out of shape, but he published an article on benching tips a few months back while only being able to put up two plates! Bro, you are on of those out of shape personal trainers! If I ever saw you in the gym training an individual, I’d probably fall in the floor from laughter. A warning to all those who peruse this site: return of kings is full of boys who think they’re on the path to being a man but in actuality are just a bunch of fools running their mouth.

    1. I’m sorry, I wasn’t aware that being able to bench press more than my bodyweight was laughable somehow (I weigh 176, fyi). Or, y’know, you could go look at the pictures and videos of me doing one handed pushups, the human flag, etcetera and etcetera.
      But then again, your name is “The Dark Saint” so I’m sure you’re some *Totally awesome guy* who wears a black leather trenchcoat and a *Radical* fedora, so I should just bow to your overwhelming sense of masculine perfection, right asshole?

      1. Hey Larsen, maybe you couldn’t cut it “in this country” as a personal trainer lmao.
        All I read is complaining. You just figured out the ‘cost’ of customer acquisition and customer retention.
        We could also determine ‘cost per notch’ in America but you wouldn’t want to hear about that.

      2. “…I wasn’t aware that being able to bench press more than my bodyweight was laughable somehow (I weigh 176, fyi).”
        Exactly. You’re not aware. You’re a small fish in an even smaller pond complaining about other small fish. You’re still a small fish. Lol
        Notice how I dealt with reality. One of your actual gym “feats.” You delved into fictitious arguments about who I am and what I wear. Very feministic tactic consider this is supposed to be a manly site.

    2. Thedarksaint
      I’m willing to bet you’re a depressed incels who likes to keep people down so you can feel good about your miserable life. I’ve seen these pathetic behaviors many times by your kind in attempt to sabotage ROK site. while you’re sitting in your basement talking others are not being manly enough. [email protected] boi…

    3. Two plates ain’t bad for a 170# dude. Without gifted genetics you are headed straight for benchers shoulder/thinning bicep tendon insertions with the traditional straight barbell. Eventually, It will fuck most dedicated lifters right in the asshole.Dumbell press is where it’s at. I bet you have lopsided tits and a sore ass. Be well friend.

    1. Hmmm. “White Goodman” acts like a d-bag and a-hole who is overcompensating for a small package. I wonder (((who))) would have written such a script and why?

  10. The only personal trainers ive met who enjoy their job are…
    1. Drug dealers.
    2. Physical therapists…seeing people with jacked up injuries recover is very rewarding.
    3. Sport specific coaches….guys that do baseball private lessons and stuff like that.
    Everyone else seems to not enjoy it. They have a cool instagram, but life sucks.

    1. Yeah, pretty much. Even when I was doing it full time, I only really enjoyed the martial arts classes I did. And wouldn’t you know it, I’m still teaching those.

  11. Personal trainer isn’t a monolithic phenomenon and occupation – neither are being a teacher, academic, influencer, doctor, entrepreneur, actor or whatnot. There are many levels of success (and failure), as well as stream of income, in this regard. Some people can become really successful personal trainers and don’t work at a particular gym as a mere employee but as a free-lance PT with 20 000 followers on Instagay or more. They can also get paid much better per client and/or diet or training program. Those who are less successful know much about these things about flaky clients, frustration and low ROI and even those who are more successful to some extent, but perhaps the headline should be “Why it’s not worth being an underpaid gym instructor”.
    Personally, I already have a main occupation that pays quite good so PT has always been a side thing. If someone pays for my services I will create high-value content but being in the gym with some fatty or even semi-celeb? No, not really.

    1. “Personally, I already have a main occupation that pays quite good so PT has always been a side thing.”
      Doing it as a side thing – very smart.

  12. Planet fitness has pizza nights. Youre better off working out at a playground at dawn.

  13. I’m a personal trainer for Goodlifefitness in Canada and I get 10%of sales on top of hourly payment. Last year I made $76.000 and the year before 72.600.I have 14 steady clients 8 of them lifers.I have benefits and pension compensation.It is a great job.

      1. He’s not bragging. He’s simply declaring that he makes a respectable income – more than $9/hour. Not sure if he’s talking Canadian money or real money, though.

    1. Hardcore Lifter- How do you manage to live on just $76 a year? It’s not like Canada is Mexico or something.

  14. I used to be a personal trainer…for 3 weeks lol. Worst job ever. It’s like being a car sales man except worse. By the way, since we are talking about personal training I just found out LifetTime fitness has blocked access to ROK and all other masculine websites. I’m not sure why, but that’s just BS..

    1. Lol. Dick Masterson is the man. Way back when I was a purple pilled noob, Dick’s appearance on Dr. Phil had me in stitches!! Viva El Dick!

  15. Fuck gyms. Used to powerlift at my school gym until I kind of snapped out of it one day and looked around like “what the fuck is going on here.” Working out in a poorly ventilated, florescent-lighted room with type A dudebros, attention whoring women, physically inept soy boys, and spatially unaware pea-brains is not my idea of self-development.
    Do bodyweight training instead. It’s free, gets you lean, and you need virtually no equipment to do it. It’s good to be versatile and keep your workouts portable – a gym isn’t necessary and these exercises can be done pretty much anywhere on the globe.

    1. But you develop tolerance for it and eventually you can gain no more . Body weight exercises complimen weight training . They are both necessary

      1. Hammerd shit- Body weight training limits your size potential, but not your strength potential. And keeps you within the boundaries nature intended.
        If you only want to get big, then weight training is the way to go. If you want to get strong, then body weight exercises are all you need. I got in better shape using the Charles Atlas method faster and easier, than I ever did with weights or equipment.

  16. “So essentially, after being paid crappily to be a glorified handyman/pack mule, I decided to cut the middle man and just be a handyman/pack mule, and get paid double what I was making as a personal trainer.”
    – Here’s a thought for some of the younger guys here. Instead of seeking out “dude-bro” jobs, how about going to college and getting a meaningful degree (STEM, Medical, Law, Business/Finance), dressing well and looking presentable for an interview (no piercings or noticeable tats), and becoming what many here would call the dreaded “cucked corporate worker”? When you think about it, who is the cuck?
    The personal trainer / MMA instructor making $45K/year? Or the Programmer/CPA/Trader/Analyst/ect.. making 6 figures? Or if you are good with your hands, then the trades. Carpenter, plumber, electrician, iron worker, heavy equipment operator, etc.. All good work with good pay.
    Larsen, not saying you are promoting this.
    Mostly seems to be a few immature commenters here equating working in an office an with being “cucked”, which of course is asinine. How can making a good living and being able to afford just about anything you want make you cucked? You want to know what cucked is? Being a trainer/MMA instructor who has to rub the feet of wrinkled 40 y/o bags to make next month’s rent. Now THAT is cucked, regardless of how muscular you are or how lethal your arm bar is.
    And I am not running down working out or fight training. I think that is great. But if it is a career where you make $45K/year…not so great.

    1. It doesn’t matter how much you earn or how good you are to her, she’ll always end up banging the pool boy. This is one of the inevitable rules in life I have learned. If you ever have a relationship with a woman (beyond pump and dump or pay for play) you will be cucked. AWALT.

      1. @ JD
        Correct sir.
        To hell with her.
        That’s not why you want to earn.
        You earn to be able to bang hot young girls whenever you want so you don’t have to give a damn about her or what she does.

      1. Some do, some don’t.
        Yes, programmers tend to be introverts, but an introvert is not necessarily a “cuck”.

    2. White collar jobs are only great for a few. Sure you make more but these days the competition is fierce and you’ll most likely do overtime all the time, be managed by man hating harpies, need to be super PC, pretend to be just like all other blue pilled drones, dressing like a drone and job security ain’t all that.
      Next thing you know you’re balding and limp dicked from all the stress, out of shape cause you have no time to work out and you’re often forced to live in crazy overpriced hellholes like the bay area.
      Low stress, ample free time and no female superiors should be the priority, next thing maximized savings. Better to be relatively poor and healthy than flush, worn out and mentally cucked from all the harpie managers you had to put up with.

      1. @Larry
        In Tech fields there are almost no females. About 90% male.
        I have always said what I want. Of course I don’t go spouting off like a crazy man, but over the years the people I have worked with know exactly what I think about welfare and food stamps. And illegal aliens. And the H1B program — who account for many co-workers BTW.

        1. I worked in tech for a top 4 company and pretty much all managers were women or some old cucks. They can’t find female programmers but catlady managers are dime a dozen and pushes up the numbers of women in the company.

        2. @Larry
          I’ve worked with Wall St firms for 30 years. Female managers are rare. Also, as an independent consultant, I don’t get involved in the corporate touchy feely BS.

        3. I work in tech, women managers are totally incompetent and lazy. Guess who is supporting the multi billion dollar app on a Saturday night when all your pals are at the pub picking up chicks ?

        4. If you were to end up poor with no family to take care of you, I bet you would eat that welfare and food stamps up AutomaticSlim. It’s there for a very good reason; so everyone can live a dignified human existence while they’re in a rut and the better off ones can walk the streets without being mugged by by desperate homeless people with nothing to lose.
          Nobody chooses a life of dependency but for some it’s the best they can do right now. There’s no envying the little hand-outs they get compared to what white collar corruption and crime pays real low lives.

        5. @DepressedGuy1985
          I have no family.
          And unless I get crippled, or sued for doing something horrible, I ain’t going broke anytime soon.
          But if I did…I would absolutely NOT take handouts.
          I don’t ask people for help. Never did.
          If my situation was that desperate I would go to Home Depot and buy a nice strong rope, go into the park and find a nice strong tree (I already know which park), and end things honorably.

      2. @ Larry
        “Low stress, ample free time”
        That will nearly always equate to low income. What “cushy” job is out there that pays well? People pay $$$ for the difficult stuff.
        As far as being out of shape, that can happen to anyone.
        Think about how many fat cops you see, or construction workers with beer bellies. I get up at 5:20 AM to exercise before commuting to work. Early 50s and still 170 lbs.
        “no female superiors”
        If you work in the fields I mentioned (STEM/Business/Finance/Law/Medicine) the female supervisors will be rare.
        Sure, let a kid waste his time and money getting a liberal arts or “social science” degree and related job and the cat lady bosses will abound. Jobs to especially avoid are public school teacher and social worker.

        1. “If you work in the fields I mentioned (STEM/Business/Finance/Law/Medicine) the female supervisors will be rare.”
          Not in Canada man, it’s actually the opposite. I give these industries 1-2 years before going south.

        2. Be a municipal firefighter. They “work” 2 days a week (24-hr. shift, with 8 hrs spent sleeping), work out on duty (never see a fat fireman), everybody loves them (the opposite of cops), and best of all — there are no house/building fires any more (which is why they scramble pumper trucks so that seven firemen can go to a two-bit medical aid call — gotta keep the ol’ stats up).
          Seriously, these feather-bedders are the best kept secret in modern employment. Visit a fire substation someday. Note the leatherette recliners arranged in a semicircle around the big-screen high-def TV. Admire the universal gym in the fire station. Read about the wages, pensions, and benefits.
          Something may occur to you.

        3. @ Steve
          Yes, I know this and have seen it.
          Firemen, especially in the suburbs, have it quite easy.
          But they make sh*t pay. Perhaps if you become a Lt. or Capt. or something, but that would take quite a long time.
          The only way that would work is if the guy had a side business, like running a lawn service or something.
          But the thing is, do you really want to encourage young guys to apply for municipal positions??? The benefits and pensions you mention are the biggest reasons so many cities and counties are over their heads in debt. Public employees are takers, not producers like those of us in the private sector. The kid will learn to be a parasite, voting for liberals who promise higher taxes. Yes, I know there are decent cops and firemen and other municipal workers, but for the most part they support politicians who raise taxes to give them higher salaries and more benefits. We don’t need boys aspiring to these types of jobs.

      3. Larry,
        “Better to be relatively poor and healthy than flush, worn out and mentally cucked from all the harpie managers you had to put up with.”
        I endured that but saved for 22 years (23-45), then lived the rest of my life on the money I made in that 22 years. The last 17 years was party time.

  17. How about you show some character and do a good job no matter what your current occupation is? I am in business and I see this attitude all the time: flaky employees who are “too good” for the job and who are “doing you a favor” by accepting such a lowly position. Because they are unwilling to give it their best, they never get promoted, thus becoming trapped in the low-wage zone for ever.
    Customers know when you have contempt for them or when you lie to them. Those people who never returned to your gym after you showed them around never needed it in the first place. You should have told them “Look, you probably don’t need a gym membership, you can just jog outside or lift weights at home for free. But a lot of people quit when they exercise home alone. So if you like company while you work out, this is the right place for you. We will keep you on track.” People appreciate honesty and they will often give you business for that reason. If you don’t care about your job or business, your customers won’t care about it either.
    I find big commercial gyms to be phony and overpriced. Instead of paying $300 a month for a gym membership, pay $600 a year to a local dojo, where you will see true dedication to the sport.

    1. “Customers know when you have contempt for them or when you lie to them.”
      I have contempt for nearly everyone, no need to be my customer, no need for me to lie, I won’t bother to hide it.
      Why? purely because most people are contemptible.

      1. The reason why people come to gyms is because they want to have less contempt for themselves. If you know that, you can help them. That’s the basis of any business: filling needs.

  18. Obviously Larsen, you have got to see “Pain and Gain” as soon a possible. Not only does it show how awesome working in a gym can be, it is filled with great tips on how to increase gym membership. Along with some very clever sideline ideas you might want to think about. I’ve seen a lot of movies, Lars, I know what I’m talking about.

  19. Why the fuss? A 5-6% conversion rate, your doing much better then the average PUA Day Gamer…

  20. In the age of the internet, any intelligent person can become their own personal trainer.

  21. stop whining, how many cougars do you bang per week ?
    Look I was a pool guy, I get it.

  22. Whenever I see a fat, out-of-shape person at the gym, I figure, at least he/she is at the gym.

  23. I’m sorry but that roid rage guy is just an asshole. If I had set off the lunk alarm, I would have just laughed and graduated to a real gym. I hope they prosecuted his ass and his 2-inch chode.

  24. The goal of every personal trainer is to open your own gym and then have the trainers working for you or you do both but at least getting well paid for it.

  25. an asshole like Tony Robbins
    Whoah, chief. Ease up on the angry words there. You might not agree with or benefit from Tony Robbin’s materials and information, but quite a bit of it is solid, practical, and helps people where the traditional routes don’t.
    I know for a fact some of his most recent events were really beneficial. Expensive, but the real deal.
    Never diss something that has value & can help us improve ourselves. Being open-minded is a crucial charateristic.

  26. “the white ethnostate isn’t likely to happen, guys”
    With restrictive and regulated immigration it could happen. And rest of non-white criminals deported to Third World shitholes from which they came from or where they belong by ethnicity and race. Non-white born in Sweden does not make him or her Swedish.

Comments are closed.