How to Become a HIIT Instructor

If you love an intense workout and want to inject this into your career, you may be interested in how to become a HIIT instructor. If so, we have all you need to know, including:

• What Does the Role Involve?
• How Much do HIIT Instructors Earn?
• How to Become a HIIT Instructor: The Two Essential Steps

Before we begin, if you’re looking to become a HIIT instructor, read about our level 2 gym instructor qualification or learn about our other fitness courses by downloading our free course prospectus here.

What Does the Role Involve? 

So when you become a HIIT instructor, what will your day to day look like? 

In order to be instructing any kind of fitness class, including HIIT, you can expect to be fulfilling the general duties of a fitness instructor. This could include of course teaching classes, but also some general responsibilities. 

Some of these responsibilities could include:

• Cleaning the gym / studio you work at
• Conducting inductions for new gym members
• Help members to stay safe in the gym
• Hold the responsibility of first aid if necessary
• Basic administrative tasks if necessary

Whether you’re teaching classes or completing these tasks in between teaching, this is the general overview of what kind of jobs you could expect to take on, particularly if you work in a commercial gym.

This would be a face to face role, meaning that you should be confident and have the personality traits that you need to succeed and make members feel comfortable. Before you become a HIIT instructor you may find it useful to gain some experience as a fitness instructor since this could help you to build confidence and meet potential clients before holding classes. 

This is generally the route that you would take regardless, but ensuring that you have this experience prior to planning your classes and starting is a good way to do some self development and build up the right attitude and confidence.  

How Much do HIIT Instructors Earn? 

You are probably wondering how much you could actually earn before we go through how to become a certified HIIT instructor. So, we’ve done the hard work for you, here are the salary expectations based on our research.

There are a couple of different routes to becoming a HIIT instructor, so with that in mind, you can expect to earn different levels of income depending on the route you end up choosing.

First, let’s take a look at the employed route. 

Getting Employed as a HIIT/ Fitness Instructor at a Commercial Gym

Dedicated HIIT instructor roles are more rare to come by, since HIIT classes are usually one among a variety of fitness classes provided at commercial gyms. This means that it is typical for HIIT instructors to also teach other classes or personal train clients within the other working hours of the week. 

For example, commercial gyms like PureGym or even the higher end commercial gyms like Virgin Active have positions for ‘fitness instructors’ this could see you teaching HIIT among other classes too. 

The salary for these commercial fitness instructor roles are typically at an hourly rate, you can see below what Indeed’s data on salaries say about gyms like DW and Virgin Active:

As you can see, there is an average hourly wage of approximately £25.00 per hour across the large gym chains. This is a healthy hourly wage, it is more than double the national average and so while you may not be working as many hours you wouldn't be losing out. 

Getting Employed as a Freelance HIIT Instructor

On the other hand, a more popular approach when becoming a HIIT instructor is to take the steps to become a freelance personal trainer with a business of your own. 

Of course, you'll need to be appropriately qualified in Level 3 Personal Training, which we'll touch on in the next section. 

This could lead you to hold your own classes in your own studio space rather than being under the orders of a commercial gym with a capped salary of £25.00 an hour. 

For example, if you build a loyal client base, you could rent a studio space on the likes of UKTherapyRooms once, twice or three times a week depending on the demand. 

Similarly, you could also choose to operate out of a commercial gym as a freelancer and pay your rent from the income that you earn from your clientele. Or, you can work hours in the gym to ‘pay your rent’ while you can then keep your total profits from your HIIT sessions.

During this time, you could charge clients to maximise your net profit overall.  

HIIT classes, (subjective to where you’re located) can range upwards of £10 a class, in some more quiet areas you may find prices for around £6 / £8 a class. In order to earn more than you would hourly in a commercial gym you would only need around three clients through the door!

With an average class size being around 15 or more people, you could be earning upwards of £90 - £150 an hour for your HIIT classes. 

That in mind, holding HIIT classes can be a hugely rewarding career prospect, particularly when paired with other roles within the fitness industry. If this sounds like something for you, let’s find out how to become a HIIT instructor in 3 simple steps.

For some more helpful resources on getting into the fitness instructing industry, head over to these articles below:

• How To Start A Fitness Boot Camp Business
• UK Fitness Instructor Salary Explained
• How To Become A Barry’s Instructor: Step-by-Step 

How to Become a HIIT Instructor: The Two Essential Steps

So, once you have established if the role is for you, you need to gain your HIIT instructor certification (UK) which is what step 1 is all about. 

Step 1: Make Sure You’re Qualified 

You first need to get the correct qualification before you can apply. In order to teach any kind of fitness class you will need a minimum of a level 2 fitness instructor qualification. 

This grants you the ability to teach any fitness classes and this includes HIIT. This is the minimum to work in gyms and teach classes, for example, take a look at this job advertisement below for a fitness instructor:

As you can see, as a gym instructor it is your job to instruct classes as well as other responsibilities and to do this you need a minimum of a level 2 to be qualified for the job. 

It is within this job role you can teach a range of different classes, you can see from gym to gym what classes they offer on their websites to see if HIIT is on the list.

Something to consider however is that many are indeed HIIT classes with different names, like this scheduled class at PureGym:

As you can see, this class called “burn it” is simply a HIIT class. As a fitness instructor, you would be qualified to teach this and would be expected to as an employee. 

You don’t need a specific HIIT instructor qualification to teach these classes, like we said, you only actually need a level 2 in fitness instructing qualification!

Some employers may ask you to hold a level 3 diploma in personal training but isn't a requirement that's set in stone across the industry. Instead, you'll typically see this advertised on job applications as a 'desirable' quality for candidates to have.

The Level 3 PT Diploma will also allow you to work with clients on a one-to-one basis, meaning you can offer personalised HIIT sessions tailored specifically for them. 

Essentially, if you become a personal trainer, you have much more opportunity to build your class base and make more money all the while. So while it isn’t a requirement, it is certainly desirable.

Step 2: Finding a Job as a Qualified HIIT Instructor

After that, you should begin searching for a job as a qualified HIIT instructor. The best job openings to look for are general holistic fitness instructor jobs. 

These are going to grant you more opportunity to teach a range of classes and often, in commercial gyms, you can work as a fitness instructor and a personal trainer. 

So, this is why specific HIIT instructor courses are relatively unnecessary, since the jobs that allow you to earn a good income are the fitness instructors and personal training vacancies. 

One of the most popular business structures within commercial gyms is to work 12 or more hours a week depending on the gym, within this time you can teach HIIT classes among other classes and responsibilities too. 

Outside of this, you can use the pay that you earn from these hours to pay for your rent in the gym to train personal training clients. This gives you the best of both worlds and is what we would strongly recommend for a successful future. 

Below, you can see the kind of job opening to look for:

As you can see, they do state that you need to be working towards your level 3 personal trainer qualification to be eligible for the role. So while for private gyms it is desirable to have a personal trainer certification and not a necessity, double check for each job role that it isn’t a requirement. 

This isn’t the case for every job, so don’t worry if you only have the level 2! 

Once you know what type of role you’re looking for, where do you look for it?

You should use job boards like:

• Indeed
• Glassdoor
• Google Jobs

As well as that however, you should look directly at the source. For example, think about what gyms you want to work for. We have linked some of the careers pages for the most popular gyms in the UK to help you get started finding relevant job openings:

• Virgin Active Gyms: Careers page
• PureGym: Careers page
• David Lloyds: Careers page
• JD Gyms: Careers page
• The Gym Group: Careers page

These can always be a great first point of contact, you can see relevant openings and often you will avoid the task of applying for job vacancies that have already expired. 

Be sure to check these regularly or where possible, set up alerts for your emails.

Before You Go…

Now that you know how to become a HIIT instructor enquire today about a level 2 fitness instructor qualification here at OriGym with no entry requirements so long as you are at least 16 years old.

Don’t forget that if you want more information on the level 3 diploma in personal training and many other health and fitness courses, you can download our course prospectus here.