What Is The Future Of Personal Training? Your Questions Answered

If you’re looking for a career in the fitness industry, it is only responsible to consider the future of personal training before you take this route. This is understandable, which is why we have an extensive guide with everything you need to know including:

• Is Personal Training A Dying Career?
• How Apps And Software Play A Key Role In The Future Of Personal Training
• Moving Your Services Online Is How You Future Proof Your Personal Training
• What Won’t Change In The Future Of Personal Training
• How Can I Best Prepare For The Future Of Personal Training?

Before we get straight to it, if you’re looking to take the first step into becoming industry ready, why not browse through our personal training courses here at OriGym? Find this and many more in our downloadable course prospectus. 

Is Personal Training A Dying Career?

In short, no! If anything, it is quite the opposite, it is a booming career at present.

However, we don’t expect you to take our word for it, that’s why we have plenty of proof behind our promise that personal training is a healthy career prospect.

To predict the future, we must look at the past. This includes the development of the modern-day fitness industry and how personal trainers became so popular in the first place. 

In the past couple decades commercial gyms have blown up- they’re consistently growing at a rapid rate which means the public interest in improved health is also becoming stronger.

That being said, in turn there has been an increased demand in the desire for personal trainers, as you can see from this chart formulated from data collected from AHRefs. 

This graph shows not only the scale of growth, but also the sheer speed at which the industry recovered after the pandemic. January 2020 showed a sharp decrease in the searches for personal trainers, but this is to be expected since many industries had the same problem due to pandemic related closures all over the country.

In order to show the health of the industry, pay attention to the recovery section from 2021 to 2022- there has been an enormous increase in demand for personal trainers.

As well as the demand clearly increasing over the past few years, there are also clear signs that those demands are being met.

If you need some more convincing evidence that PT careers are thriving, and that there is a healthy income available with clients ready to pay for your services, take a look at this graph below showing the stats of the rise in PT’s in employment over the last decade or so.  

As you can see, there isn’t just a steady maintenance, there is a distinct increase in people becoming personal trainers year on year and there is no debilitating reason for this to slow down any time soon.

In fact there is more reason for it to keep increasing with the growth in personal trainers is the development of things like managing software which can play a huge role in the success of your PT business. 

How Apps And Software Play A Key Role In The Future Of Personal Training

The development of apps and software working in conjunction with personal trainers has proven extremely effective, streamlining your administrative duties to help improve and professionalise your business model. 

PT Apps and Softwares Can Streamline Your Responsibilities

By utilising software and investing in apps that are made to make your career easier, your responsibilities that may otherwise be a nagging administrative burden become organised and easy to control.

Some of the best apps for personal trainers can be utilised to ensure that as time goes on, your brand will only get stronger. There are tons to choose from, you might even recognise some names such as:

• Trainersize 
• Vagaro
• PT Distinction

These help personal trainers to hold all vital information in one place and to streamline communication from trainer to client. 

You have the ability to easily track the progress of your clients with just a few clicks. You can see below at an example from Trainersize and the different things you can keep on top of with their app.

Essentially this kind of software creates more time for trainers to put into other productive uses, rather than being bogged down by admin and becoming overrun with paperwork on clients- this is purely due streamlining essential tasks like:

• Creating workout plans
• Tracking clients’ progress
• Communicating with clients

This makes the role much more attractive for PT’s while the experience for the client is also greatly improved, as they have access to an intuitive, all-in-one system to contact you and instantly input results of their performance and dietary goals.

The good thing about apps like this is that you don’t have to pry or be invasive in person, your clients can simply input things like the meals they have eaten allowing you to view their macros easily. 

PT Apps and Softwares are Well Received and Highly Recommended

Something else that you can take a look at to feel more confident in how technology can future proof your career is the acceptance of it into the fitness industry.

You can take advice from other fitness professionals so you can get a raw unfiltered response when it comes to PT’s who have put these apps to use. 

This development has been huge for personal training in the future and you can see this through the amount of trainers actually using these softwares to enhance their clientele’s experience, not just that but the hugely positive response.

For example, take a look at the reviews on the Apple app store and how positive they are:

This is just one of 2,431 reviews for Trainersize, a popular app that can help manage just about everything you need to keep track of as a PT. 

A rating of 4.9 out of 5 is huge and these are personal trainers new and old that can see the benefits of taking advantage of software to boost your business and move with the times. 

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For some more helpful resources on becoming a personal trainer, head over to our articles below:

• The Different Types Of Personal Trainer
• Differences Between Level 3 and Level 4 Personal Training
• How To Become A Personal Trainer

Moving Your Services Online Is How You Future Proof Your Personal Training

Something you can do to feel confident about the future of personal training is to “future proof” your business. 

A popular way of doing this in the personal training industry is to move your services online as well as in the gym. 

We’ve seen first hand how many industries crumbled under the pressure of the pandemic, but the fitness industry actually quickly adapted and found a way to still bring in revenue and capitalise on something even as detrimental as a worldwide pandemic!

A really interesting point came from Bloomberg, where they explained how the norm of the ‘January spike’ in memberships was maintained even after such a detrimental dip in the industry.

This demonstrates that the pandemic made online personal training boom- while some PT’s went above and beyond with 1-2-1 sessions over Zoom, some used the staple blueprint of what it is to be an online personal trainer.

This included providing individually tailored workouts and plans for clients to complete in their own time using whatever means they had to do so, and keeping in good communication via online messaging services.

This method has earned the title of ‘future-proof’, as the trainers working in the industry adapted to sustain themselves during a time when people weren’t even allowed to see each other face-to-face. 

This shift in the industry prompted many trainers to move at least some of their services online and has proved to be successful due to convenience on both ends. For example look at this snippet from an article in The Guardian speaking to a PT affected by the pandemic. 

This trainer (Irina Allport) actually shifted all of her services exclusively online, a huge step that actually worked wonders for her business. 

Gym business models and thus personal trainer business models have shifted, they’ve changed for good and have adapted to fast changing environments seamlessly. Therefore, you can rest assured that you will be able to feel comfortable in your career prospects should any unprecedented event crop up again. 

What Won’t Change In The Future Of Personal Training?

There are some things that simply won’t be going anywhere and are areas of the fitness industry that you can feel confident in no matter what. The good news is that these are the key principles of what personal trainers do, meaning you should always feel confident in your future as a PT.

Providing Tailored Sessions for Clients

At the heart of your job is designing and implementing personal training sessions that are tailor made to your clients and this is something that will never change whether the client and trainer relationship is in the gym, or online. 

The USP of personal training is that it isn’t a one size fits all, you don’t hand out generic exercises to all of your clients and hope for the best; you use your expertise and training in order to design client-specific programmes that are going to be effective in reaching their goals. 

That being said, this is something that if you’re working as a PT, will simply never change. 

Communication Between Trainer & Client

As we’ve touched on previously, personal training communication has gone through enormous change over the last decade or so due to the impact of apps and software, making contact with a client seamless. 

Whilst methods of communication will always evolve subject to technological advances, one thing that won’t change in the future of personal training is human communication.

You’ll always need to maintain the fundamentals of building a relationship with your clients, building rapport and adapting your personality to better relate to them.

Finding a connection with your clients despite differences in age, culture, gender or anything else has been, is currently and always will be integral to the role of a PT, and isn’t going to change anytime soon.

The Development of Gyms and the Fitness Industry

Gyms simply aren’t going anywhere, they’re just getting started in fact.

According to research conducted by IbisWorld, the stats for the growth of gyms and fitness centres in the UK is huge, you can take a look at some of these key stats below for reference.

Below, you can see a graph measuring the increase in market size, measured in GBP. The noticeable dip takes place in 2020, when the pandemic hit; however, you can see how fast the recovery process was with a steady incline restarting the year after. 

This incremental increase in market size is predicted to maintain growth, meaning that the industry is expected to continue to thrive. 

This report also mentioned that the measurement of revenue regarding the market size in the gym and fitness centre industry in 2022 is a huge £1.8 Billion. This is an astounding number and just goes to show what a stable industry this is to enter.

How Can I Best Prepare For The Future Of Personal Training?

If you still feel slightly unprepared for the future of your personal training career, below are two tips to ensure that should anything unexpected arise that has the potential to disturb your career path, you’re prepared for it nonetheless.

#1 - Earning Additional Qualifications Is A Surefire Way To Thrive In Your Personal Training Future

In order to maximise your income as a fitness professional, it isn’t unusual to take on further education courses in order to grow your portfolio of qualifications. 

It is never a bad idea to combine other complementary fitness courses in order to reach a wider PT target audience. Courses such as:

• Level 4 Advanced Sports Nutrition
• Level 3 Diploma in Yoga Instructing

There are plenty of other courses that you can take should you want to pursue CPD’s that can contribute to your education in teaching classes or training particular populations. 

Speaking of particular populations, a good idea if you’re looking for areas that are lacking in competition, you could become qualified to train those that are underrepresented in the fitness sector. 

For example, becoming qualified in diabetes control and weight management can be a great way to target a particular sector of people in which there will always be a demand for your services. This is a particularly good ‘next step’ for any qualified PT since it is a level 4 course, making it even more valuable for your future prospects.

Like any industry, the more relevant education and qualifications that you have behind you, the more valuable of an asset you become so keep this in mind if you want your business to thrive no matter what the future holds. 

#2 - Set Aside Time For Researching The Future Of Personal Training

Finally, another simple tip you could use in order to feel secure in your personal training future is to keep up to date with what is happening in your industry. 

This is particularly important for those who are newer to the industry since there isn’t the hands-on experience to refer back to if necessary. Research like academic papers and more importantly statistical summaries like the few that we mentioned earlier.

Some might take a little investment finances wise from time to time, depending on how extensive they are. But, they’re extremely valuable in informing your business of where the industry is heading. It can answer your questions that you might have about the future of your career. 

It is also helpful if you’re looking to train a particular group of people and you’re unsure if the demand is actually there for you. 

For example, if you’re looking to specialise in prenatal training of any kind, you should be looking into the near and far future for this sort of demand and research is going to be the best way to give you a positive start in the industry rather than going in blind.

Research should always be a starting point of any career path, but this is particularly true if you’re self-employed in the fitness industry.

Before You Go…

Hopefully you feel confident in the future of personal training and we have given you all the confidence that you need to go ahead, get qualified and start your career.

If you feel ready to take the next step, why not enquire about a personal trainer course to get qualified and industry ready? Find this and much more in our downloadable course prospectus.