The Benefits Of Small Group Personal Training (For PTs And Clients)

As a PT, expanding your career prospects is a great way to increase revenue, so you’ll be glad to know that this is one of the key benefits of small group personal training. 

Here, we’ll share the benefits for you, the trainer, and discuss how this can help your clients, too. 

Before we start, to start teaching effective group sessions, you’ll need to earn the right qualifications. Download our course prospectus here to learn about the range of personal training qualifications we offer here at OriGym.

5 Small Group Personal Training Benefits For The Trainer

First, let’s focus on you, the trainer. There are plenty of benefits of small group training but we have the top 5 things that will get you motivated to take the leap.

#1 - Offering Small Group Personal Training Can Increase Your Revenue

First and foremost, we all want to be successful and if you’re a sole trading personal trainer, we’re sure that you want to do everything in your power to grow your business and maximise your income, the good news is that’s what small group PT sessions can do. 

But how? Though the price per person won’t be more than a 1-2-1 session, the affordability means more clients will be able to afford a session with you. 

Here, your revenue will be coming from the quantity of the sales you're making, not the actual price mark itself. 

For example, if you run a small group fitness session with 5-10 people max, there’s more exclusivity, and you have the time and freedom to focus on each member, which justifies the price tag being a little higher.

In London, prices per person for a small group fitness session sit at approximately £20 for 1 session, with any sessions outside of the capital costing slightly less.

Take a look at the price range of this studio that is dedicated to small group fitness and personal training.

As you can see, the more sessions a client commits to, the more discounts they're eligible for. You can use this technique too. It ensures that you’re not just onboarding new members, but also hopefully retaining their custom.

Plus, clients will pay if what you’re offering is high quality, but you might need to let them see that first. The aforementioned studio allows for two free first sessions, which is a great way to convert clients who may be wondering if £20 right away is truly worth it.

Once you have a client base built up, you could even reduce the price. With the average personal training session sitting at around £35 a session or £45+ if you’re based in the likes of London, this is a budget friendly option for many clients.

Let’s take a closer look at how the maths could work and how your revenue could benefit.

• 1 Session = £15 per person
• 10 people in the Session = £150 per hour
• 5 Session a week = £750 per week

This is just based on 5 hours a week, meaning outside of this time you could still be working as a personal trainer 1-2-1 with clients. 

Essentially, a portion of your income from 1-2-1 clients would pay for rent payments to a studio to hold your sessions, meaning this £750 p/w is all profit. 

This is how small group personal training benefits your business holistically, your client, and your revenue.

#2 - You Have The Ability To Grow Your Client Base

Working as a personal trainer, growing your business means making more connections. Whether that's in the form of other professionals or clients, running group sessions is a great way to cast a wider net to your target audience. 

With small group fitness sessions, you’re able to speak to each and every one of your members and get to know them better. This makes them feel more welcome, more comfortable, and much more likely to recommend your small group sessions to their friends and peers.

This in turn grows your clientele, and the demand can mean you can hold multiple sessions a day instead of one. 

By expanding your schedule, you’re earning more and gaining new members, while still keeping each session small and intimate.

By getting to know all of your members, you have the ability to even convert them into 1-2-1 clients. 

They may want to go the extra mile in their fitness journey, and if they enjoy your group sessions and you have made connections with plenty of members, they don’t need to look around when they know you can be trusted with their fitness journey.

#3 - You’re More Likely To Retain Your Clientele If You Offer Small Group Personal Training

As well as having the ability to grow your connections, client retention becomes a lot easier when they have more than one reason to stick around.

This means that your group sessions can be a lot easier to commit to due to a combination of reasons, like increased affordability, or the fact that it is more social exercising with friends. 

There is some intimidation that may come along with 1-2-1 training, but if your client is worried about taking that leap into personal training, suggesting that they join your group sessions can be a great start, and a way to ease them into your way of training. 

The pressure is lifted when training with other people, particularly if they’re friends or a part of a community. 

People feel less anxiety, and gyms all over the UK have members that come along exclusively for classes alone, so there is clearly an interest in working out with others - why wouldn’t you take advantage of the phenomenon?

Apart from the affordability aspect of course, clients will feel happy to return and because they enjoy your sessions for the exercise and the community aspects that come along with it.

Community is huge in the fitness industry, it’s not often you’ll see any clients choosing a personal trainer outside their local area, the whole point is to be close to home and accessible. 

With that in mind, the chances of people enjoying group personal training is much higher since they’re probably going to know somebody else in the group.

Maybe they work with one another or are neighbours, whatever it is the community aspect and bringing clients together is going to certainly increase the chances of them sticking around.

#4 - Instructing Small Group Personal Training Varies Your Schedule

One of the most sought after career prospects in any industry is to have the freedom to vary your schedule.

Arguably one of the greatest benefits of small group personal training is that it can keep your work routine fun and exciting.

1-2-1 personal training is still an exciting career nonetheless, but there is nothing like changing up your schedule to keep you motivated and progressing in your line of work.

You could dedicate your evenings to group sessions or your lunch time afternoons when you would otherwise be quiet due to off peak gym times.

By filling in that gap between personal training clients, you could vary up your work day with a 45-minute HIIT / cardio group PT session for people between 12:30pm-13:15, giving people time to freshen up afterwards and head back to work!

It not only varies your schedule, but it shows to potential clients and even employers (if you’re wanting to work with a prestigious health and wellbeing business) that you broaden your career prospects by being proactive and exploring new routes of revenue. 

The more experience the better in the fitness industry and if you can show that you train multiple people simultaneously then it goes to show your versatility in instructing types while also keeping your schedule exciting.

#5 - Small Group Training Benefits Your Confidence

There is no doubt about it that to be a successful personal trainer, you must be able to work with people. You could have every ounce of education behind you, but you need to have likeable characteristics to match.

Having the right attitude is one of the most important traits of a personal trainer, though many people may need to practice this.  Like anything, practice makes perfect and it's rare that somebody can enter the fitness industry and be confident straight away. 

One of the main benefits of small group training as an instructor is that it can provide the practice to instruct. 

The more you teach, the more comfortable you become with 1-2-1 personal training and though instructing more than one person at a time may seem daunting, once you break it down it is less intimidating.

For example, if at the start of your career you’re thrown into the deep end by teaching a class of 30 members, it is going to be demanding, but starting your career by offering small group personal training is a great way to become accustomed to working with people on a small to mid scale, before you move onto the likes of big classes.

It will certainly require more planning on your end, but it is going to be incredibly rewarding in more ways than one. For example, you can plan what works best for each client, thinking about how to tackle machines or equipment being in use. 

Ultimately, you may need to think on your feet from time to time, but planning prior is a must to ensure everyone is getting equal attention. 

This can really help to boost your confidence as an instructor, it makes you a better planner, organiser and overtime thinking on your feet and coming up with solutions will become second nature. 

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For some useful resources on how to up your game as a personal trainer and group instructor, take a look at our articles below:

• 7 Key Skills of Successful Gym Managers
• How to Instruct a Spin Class: 11 Tips to Help You Stand Out 
• Full Bootcamp Equipment List (Buy on a Budget) 

5 Benefits Of Small Group Personal Training For Your Clients

Now that you’re aware of how small group training benefits you as the instructor, what about the all important members?

#1 - Taking Part In Small Group Personal Training Is More Affordable

We’ve briefly gone over the affordability aspects of small group training, but for your clients this is going to be one of, if not the, biggest selling point.

Small group training works as a comfortable middle ground between costly personal training sessions and general gym memberships. 

Though gym memberships can be cheaper, there is the element of self motivation that can restrict clients from making progress, but that's where small group training can help.

This makes the middleground price between the two justifiable - it’s the perfect balance between accountability and affordability.

As we mentioned earlier, there are various price brackets depending on which area of the UK you actually operate from. Let’s take a look at the prices in smaller cities like Liverpool.

LivFit is a fitness company that offers small group personal training, along with other benefits like nutritional coaching, and they provide their services for an affordable ‘middle ground’ price.

As you can see, we have highlighted the price and the amount of sessions you will receive. 8 sessions for £149 works out at approximately £18 per session. 

This is a good price for somebody who can’t quite commit to a minimum of £35 per session 1-2-1 but wants more than your average commercial gym class.

What makes this unique is the fact that along with the session itself, you get all of the other benefits that you can see below. 

This is a great price point, and is certainly fair for the service they’re providing.

#2 - Exercising In Small Group Personal Training Creates Healthy Competition

There is nothing wrong with some healthy competition and you may even find that it helps your clients get their results faster than if they were alone!

This doesn’t mean that you have to create a group fitness session that runs like some sort of competition - it’s naturally occurring. 

There is a natural sense of competition that comes with working out with other people, particularly if your members are friends and are having fun with this friendly competition too. 

This means that, when you ask your members to hold a plank for 1 minute, the chances are there are going to be less clients giving up after 30 seconds if they’re in a group together, the motivation is being passed from one another.

Your clients are going to know this feeling, which creates a good and healthy level of competition equating to them pushing themselves further than they would if they were working out alone. 

In turn, results are arguably going to become apparent sooner!

#3 - Small Group Training Benefits Accountability Prospects

Another one of the benefits of small group training for your clientele is the level of accountability that comes with this type of training. 

Simply put, there is minimal accountability that comes with training alone, it is easier to give up and there is a lack of external motivation. Luckily, this is what group training can help with.

Whether your members are coming along with their friends, or they have formed friendships with others that go to your sessions there is much more accountability there.

For example, if your clients are coming along with their friends, they always have a motivational being who can be the extra push they need. 

Similarly, say a client misses a session one week, if they have built up some sort of friendship and community within your training community, chances are there will be questions the week after like:

“Where were you last week? We missed you here!”

Though this is a friendly comment, it is still a sense of accountability. It works hand in hand with what we were talking about earlier when it comes to healthy competition - you don’t want to miss a session when everyone else is working hard! 

It’s a gentle push in the right direction and to get anywhere on a fitness journey some level of accountability is necessary.

#4 - During Small Group Personal Training Session There’s Less Pressure & More Enjoyment

For clients, taking the first step to 1-2-1 personal training can be daunting, but having others there in the same boat can make all the difference.

Some people like to take a back seat, but still want some level of input from a professional, and this is the balance that small group training can provide. 

It wouldn’t be unusual for the small group training to have a different structure from 1-2-1 training, meaning that instead of moving from one machine to the next, there is the involvement of music or working together. 

Your clients will feel less pressured in making their next PB since they will have support from their peers who they’re training with, instead, they may approach the session as a fun stress outlet, similar to how they may feel in a fitness class.

This is what makes the sessions enjoyable and what creates the momentum of the same members coming back week on week. As the instructor, you may even want to get yourself an exercise to music qualification.

This will help you to help your members get the most out of their session, and to make sure that you and your clientele are consistently enjoying the sessions week on week without getting bored. 

It moulds the sessions together as one so you don’t have any of your clients standing around waiting for another client to finish the set. Ultimately, more effort goes into keeping the energy high since you have to distribute your attention across more than just 1 person at a time.

#5 - In A Small Group Session, Clients Will Receive More Attention 

Finally, one of the things that make large scale classes so easy to neglect is the fact that there is a lack of attention. 

This is no fault of the trainer or the class but it isn’t plausible to expect 1 trainer to check 30 members while teaching a class simultaneously.

However, this becomes much more manageable when there are only 5-10 people in your training sessions.

Training with a group this size means that your members are getting enough attention so that they will genuinely progress and any habits will be broken.

For example, if you’re doing a session that involves free weights, you as the instructor have the ability to fix postures if necessary in the same way that you would in a 1-2-1.

This attention to detail is a contributing factor to the price tag, plus there are some other areas of health and fitness that need to be addressed too in order for clients to feel like they’re progressing.

For example, like we mentioned earlier, LivFit offers services related to nutrition and health and lifestyle, this is certainly possible for you to do too and is attractive for clients who want more than your average class. 

It helps your clients to formulate an overall healthier lifestyle and it increases chances of them seeing results faster. 

Clients are able to come speak to you 1-2-1 if they have any questions or want some guidance on their dietary habits. 

This could otherwise be difficult if there are 30 members trying to talk to the instructor before or after a class! 

Small group training clients would certainly feel more exclusive and included and it benefits their confidence and their overall fitness progression.

Before You Go!

With so many benefits of small group personal training for you and your clients, there is no reason to wait around!

Get started with offering classes and build your reputation in the industry. If you want to excel in your sector, why not take an advancement personal training course with OriGym.

Find our PT courses and many others (like yoga and nutrition) in our course prospectus here.