Personal Training Business Names: Examples & Ideas

We’ve put together a step-by-step guide to naming your personal trainer business, including plenty of examples from existing businesses so you can rest-assured you’re heading in the right direction. 

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Personal Training Business Names: A Step-by-Step Guide 

If you want to make money as a personal trainer by creating your own business, one of the first things you'll need to do is come up with the perfect name.

The best approach is to have patience and follow a step-by-step process, rather than taking the first idea that pops into your head and running with it (unless it’s a great one!).

This way, you avoid any pitfalls that might crop up along the way and send you straight back to the drawing board. 

Going through the proper naming process can save you a good deal of time and effort, and ensure that you end up with a great business name that you can forever be proud of. 

Thankfully, we’ve done most of the hard work for you! 

#1 - Competitor Research 

This is a great place to start, and definitely makes the most sense when you think about it. Just as you would compare personal trainer courses before signing up to complete one, you should take a look at who your competitors will be once you're qualified. 

If you name your business blindly without any insight into existing business names, then you’re going to have a hard time figuring out where it fits into the market. 

This can cause serious problems for your overall strategy and branding, as you can’t plan on outshining something that you don’t understand! 

If you do your research you can begin to recognise which business names are successful and why, which is the most important aspect here, and also get an idea of those that aren’t as successful.

Instead of rambling on, let’s take a look at some examples of personal training business names from existing PTs! 

A good place to begin is with the location that you wish to open your PT business in. For this example, we’ll take a look at businesses in London since it’s a pretty popular location for personal training in the UK (which makes for a better comparison). 

As you can see here, some of the highest ranking businesses when we search for ‘personal training London’ have pretty innovative names. They hold strong connotations with fitness while sounding quite ‘fresh’ and modern. 

‘Embody Fitness’ for example has a nice ring to it, and gives the impression that their clients will literally ‘embody fitness’ after training with them. Likewise, ‘SW Fitness’ rolls off the tongue nicely, is a simple concept, as conveys exactly what service it provides to potential clients. 

After performing a quick background search on ‘Embody Fitness’, we discovered that their website embodyfitness.co.uk was nicely designed and had a DR (domain ranking) of 25. This is a good indication that their business is pretty successful, as well as the fact that they are mentioned in various news publications online for their work in transforming their client's lives.

They clearly have a strong brand identity, which stems from their successful business name. 

To prove further than competitor analysis can be a helpful place to start in this process, we also researched ‘Dan Roberts Personal Training’, another PT business in the centre of London. 

The main reason we chose to look at this business is that many articles online claim that using your own name as your brand is a bad idea, and can come across as being generic in comparison to other brand names. We wanted to see how true this was… 

Right off the bat, we saw that ‘Dan Roberts Personal Training’ had one of the best designed websites we’ve seen in the industry. They also hold a DR of 30, which is impressive for a small business! 

They also have a profusion of great reviews across the web, along with brand mentions left right and centre. In this case, it seems as though both methods of naming your business can work out for the best, but we’ll speak more about this in our next section. 

So, what should you take from the competitor research that you complete? 

We know that it can sometimes be intimidating to perform this research, especially when there are incredibly successful competitors out there. 

BUT, we’re here to guide you through how to take this information and use it to make your own business shine, so push that imposter syndrome to the back of your mind. 

The good news is that successful competitors such as the ones we’ve mentioned here are few and far between, especially in areas outside of London, and even then they have taken ideas and concepts from each other! 

Your mission should be to blend together some of their ideas with your creativity, and come up with your own concept, starting with clever names for your personal training business. 

Competitor research takeaways:

1. See what names & subsequent branding methods work, note down why 
2. See what names & branding methods don’t seem to work, note down why
3. Highlight the successful ideas that you like, particularly the ones that you feel fit with your own brand visions
4. Brainstorm!

During the competitor research, you can go into as much detail as you want to get a real feel for which concepts work and which don’t. You can even look up the revenue of the businesses that you’re analysing! 

We talk more about this in our Personal Trainer Business Plan guide, but as we’re strictly talking about naming your PT business, we’ll move swiftly onto our next point...

#2 - Your Own Name VS Business Name 

As we mentioned earlier, this can be a confusing step for trainers, no thanks to the conflicting information out there. 

Some sources state that using your full name as part of your personal trainer business name can be detrimental to its success. They say that it can come across as being ‘bland’ or ‘unimaginative’, and prevent your business from standing out against competition. 

The flaw with this idea is that it’s pretty one-sided, and doesn’t lend any consideration to those instances where this could be beneficial to a business. 

For example, while having your personal training business name as ‘Your Name PT’ or ‘Your Name Personal Training’ could be seen as a common trope, it also shows prospective clients exactly what you provide. 

So, when it comes to the big question of whether you should use your own name or your business name, there are a few things to consider:

What are other PTs in your area naming their businesses?

If the other personal training business names in your area are mostly made up of personal names, or vice versa (brand names), then it might be best to go with whatever style isn’t being overused. 

That being said, it could also be beneficial to name your business in the same style as the others, especially if they are the most successful PT businesses in the area. 

If you did this then you would have to ensure that your branding was exceptional and overtook theirs in every way possible, but this is something that you should aim for regardless of which style you pick!

What is your overall business plan? Freelancer, or gym business? 

If your overall goal is to work as a freelancer in your hometown, then it’s perfectly fine to use your name for your business. 

It could actually be beneficial to name it this way as it gets straight to the point, and let’s your prospective clients know who they will be dealing with when they do business with you. Another way to do this, despite what type of PT business name you go with would be to have a great PT business card design before you hand those out!  

However, if you’re thinking bigger and writing a Gym Business Plan then you might want to use a more brand-centred name to appeal to a larger pool of clients, and to give your business room for growth. If you’re looking at eventually opening a chain of gyms, for example, then there won’t be a need for your business to be named after you anymore. 

We’re definitely not condemning the use of your name for a larger scale business by saying this,  as many have been incredibly successful in the past (Les Mills being a great example). We’re just saying that it could make things less complicated for you in the initial growth period!

While we remember, one thing to note if you're setting up your own business is that creating a personal trainer business checklist is vital, especially if it's the first time you've done this. It will help you to organise when to do what, but luckily coming up with a PT business name is one of the first steps (so you still have plenty of time!). 

Is your name quite popular? E.g. ‘Tom Smith’? 

One last thing to mention is that if your name is super popular, then it might be a good idea to opt for a brand-centred name, or even a hybrid between the two (like using your initials and a fitness-centred keyword, like the ‘SW Fitness’ brand that we mentioned earlier).

This will ensure that your personal training business name is unique, and stands out from the crowd of people that use ‘popular’ names, or a similar name to your own. 

The main problem that you will face by choosing an already popular name for your business is that it could be hard to create a real brand identity on a number of levels. 

You might have difficulty buying a domain name, or finding available personal training business names/usernames that span across all social platforms, which are two very important points when it comes to creating professional continuity online. 

Without continuity, you’ll struggle to successfully market your brand, so keep this in mind!

To give you a better idea of what we mean by all of this, think of Joe Wicks, the incredibly successful fitness coach. 

One of the main reasons for his success is that he absolutely nails his branding. His domain name is thebodycoach.com, his Instagram handle is @thebodycoach, etc. so his brand is instantly recognisable, memorable, and conveys strong connotations with fitness to those who come across it! 

#3 - Brainstorm & Shortlist Personal Training Business Name Ideas 

Now for the fun part. 

Once you’ve got a good idea of the style that you want your business name to have, it’s time to put what we’ve discussed into practise and start getting creative! 

The first place to start when brainstorming names for a personal training business is with the services that you’re offering. It definitely makes the most sense, as this is what you’re trying to sell to prospective clients through your business. 

If you’re a PT who holds a specialist body weight training CPD qualification for example, then you should make sure your name and branding reflects your niche.

There are a few things that you can do to get your creative juices flowing and start the brainstorming process, many of which are outlined in GoDaddy’s guide to brainstorming business names. 

However, one of the most appropriate methods for PT business brainstorming (and one of our personal favourites) is using word associations. 

Brainstorming with Word Associations

If you were an S&C coach, you could start with the word ‘strength’ and go from there! Or, if you’re a PT, you could simply go with ‘fitness’ as a starting point. 

If you’re stuck, you can try out online word association generators such as wordassociations.net. There are plenty of free tools like this online which are incredibly useful for giving your imagination a boost! 

We performed a quick search using the keyword ‘strength’, and picked the following words from the results:

• Vigour 
• Vitality 
• Fortitude
• Agility 
• Endurance 
• Reflex
• Concrete 
• Shear
• Alloy 
• Ferocity 

Hopefully you can see how a quick search can make a big difference when brainstorming personal trainer business name ideas. While they’re not much on their own, they’re certainly an improvement on the word ‘strength’ paired with nothing else! 

Now that we have a pool of words to choose from here that are directly related to strength, it’s time to have a go at pairing them with other words that are related to personal training or fitness in general to make them a little less abstract. 

You might come up with something like:

• Ferocity Fit 
• Concrete Training 
• Endure Fitness 

While they’re not the finished product, they’re certainly a good starting point! 

Brainstorming with Visuals 

You can use this as a separate technique, or to even improve on what you already have in front of you from initial word association or free writing ideas. 

You may find it especially useful if you don’t feel inspired by a bunch of words in front of you, and you’re more of a visual learner! 

There are a few places that you can go to online for instant visual inspiration, the most popular being Pinterest and Google Images (but Pinterest is the best in our opinion). 

If you type in ‘keyword + aesthetic’ for any topic in Pinterest, you’re bound to find something of interest. To show you what we mean, let’s take a look at the results for the keyword ‘fitness brand’ on the platform: 

As you can see there are logos, business names, branding pack examples, you name it! 

It’s a great way to gain some quick ideas for your business name or brand, or to embellish those that you already have from other brainstorming sessions. 

Say you have a vague name or concept in mind, this could give you the final touch that you need to transform it from a fuzzy idea into something more formed. 

Due to it being a visual method of harnessing ideas, it can force you to think about other elements of your business, such as branding, and therefore take you in the right direction to creating a name that is super relevant to your overall PT business plan. 

REMEMBER: these are only two methods of brainstorming amongst countless others. 

However, brainstorming with words alongside visual prompts is a good combination, and we find it helps us to come up with the best personal training business names! 

Brainstorming is a great way of finding words and associations that you and your business identify with, and having fun with them. It’s not the place to start getting critical with yourself as this will only hold you back. 

Don’t fret if the names you have seem vague or stereotypical, they’re just the foundations of the ideas that you will shortlist! 

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Check out these guides below to develop your personal training business and find success:

• 7 Simple Steps for Writing a Personal Trainer Business Plan
• Starting a Personal Training Business Checklist
• 9 Key Personal Trainer Business Tips

Tips for Shortlisting 

Don’t worry, we’re not going to send you off with a ton of vague ideas and expect you to know exactly what to do with them. This wouldn’t be a step-by-step guide if that were the case. 

To make things easier for you, we’re going to go over how you could gather up your ideas and create a shortlist of those that sound more tangible and unique, and will ultimately help your business to stand out amongst the crowd. 

Again, this is something that can be done in various ways but we’ll talk about the method that we find the easiest…

Setting Yourself Boundaries

This is the polar opposite to the floaty phase of word and image association. It involves setting up rules in your search for the perfect business name, so that you’re not overwhelmed with every possible avenue that you could go down. 

You’re essentially using restrictions to trigger your inventive nature, as we’re usually more inventive when we have limited resources!

It may seem like you’re making things more difficult for yourself, but bear with us; we promise it can work wonders for finding the ideal name for your business. 

We’ve listed some examples of the boundaries that you can set up for this specific search, and how to use them to your advantage. We’ve briefly mentioned them earlier in the article, but now it’s time to make the brutal decisions and stick to them… 

Example #1 - Using Your Name 

An example of a boundary that you could set would be to commit to using your own name as part of your business name, if it makes sense for this to happen. 

Now that you’ve made that commitment, it becomes much easier to come up with viable personal training business name ideas. You can finally switch off your focus on thinking of the other possibilities! 

If your name was ‘Nick Hanson’ for example (we plucked that name from thin air), then you would obviously use that as a starting point. 

Here are some quick-fire examples of personal training business names for those looking to use their own name:

• NH Fit
• Hanson Fitness 
• Hanson Fit 
• HFit 
• Hanson PT 
• NH Personal Training 
• Hanson Strength 
• Hanson Coaching

The list goes on, but hopefully you can see how easy it is to come up with personal training business name ideas once you’ve limited yourself to one avenue. This literally took us 2 minutes! 

Example #2 - Brand Name 

So, imagine you’ve decided that you want to go for a brand name. You have a list of possible ideas in front of you amongst all the variations of your own name, and you’re swaying towards ditching the latter. 

This can be tricky, but you’re definitely more likely to shortlist good names for a personal training business if you force yourself to improvise! 

It may require tweaking those that are in front of you, but that shouldn’t be too difficult once you’ve ditched your other ideas. 

Some brand ideas may include: 

• Vigour Training
• TRAINSturdy
• SteelFit
• Robust Coaching
• BE: Robust
• VigourFIT 
• Power PT 
• ThunderFit
• GetShred 

Obviously if you’re looking to start a national/international business, you probably need to play on some of the words in your initial shortlist before you create your final draft.

Some of these come across as a little clichė, we know; but if you give it another 5-10 minutes then you’ll be surprised with what you can come up with… 

After a quick glance over this initial shortlist, we got the name:

TRAINEDGE 

This came from playing around with words, as well as our knowledge of current international businesses and their brand names, e.g.:

• CrossFit 
• LA Fitness
• Planet Fitness 
• ClubCorp
• XSportFitness

We headed over to GoDaddy.com and were thrilled to find that the domain name ‘trainedge.com’ was available! 

Not that we’re going to use it, but it’s a great example of how with a little thought, you can come up with a personal trainer business name that:

1. Fits in with the market
2. Is relatively unique 
3. Is memorable/catchy
4. Conveys what your brand is about to prospective customers 

Example #3 - Abbreviated Name 

This could work for your business if you already have an idea in mind, but it’s pretty long and you’re worried about whether your prospective clients will remember it. 

Or, perhaps you have a certain word or phrase that connects with your brand and the fitness industry respectively, and you want to incorporate it into your fitness business name. 

To give some examples of abbreviated brand names (and give you a better understanding of what we mean by this), here’s a list of existing brand names from successful companies: 

• MAC - Make-up Art Cosmetics
• ASOS - As Seen On Screen
• KFC - Kentucky Fried Chicken 
• DKNY - Donna Karan New York 
• BMW - Bayerische Motoren Werke

It’s easy to see here that abbreviations can be pretty effective when used as brand names.

This is especially true when they hold connotations with the industry or service that they represent, one example in the fitness industry being: ‘ABS’ (Absolute Body Solutions, a Liverpool-based PT business) 

The great thing about these words is that they make perfect sense on their own, as well as being an abbreviation for something else. 

Sensational spelling can also be classed as a form of abbreviation, and is a particularly creative way of naming your personal trainer business. It involves purposely misspelling popular words/phrases from an industry to come up with unique and creative personal training business names.

We’ll give you some examples from our own brainstorming session in the personal trainer business name ideas section below, but for now here are some examples from household business names with ‘sensational spelling’:

• Flickr
• Reddit
• Krispy Kreme
• Spudulike
• Weetabix
• Rice Krispies
• KitKat

If you want to have a go at creating catchy personal training business names like this when shortlisting, you should take some of the ideas that you got in your initial brainstorm, pair them with well-known fitness-related words and see what you can come up with! 

NOTE: One thing to remember in general when setting up your business is that you should ensure that you are always complying with GDPR laws. 

To conclude our section on shortlisting your ideas, Ivan Bulatovic et al in their essay ‘Branding a Business Name’ write:

The psychological effect on consumers and their perception of the business entity - whether it can be easily remembered, if it is likeable and, as we have already mentioned, catchy. 

Subsequent business reputation is built upon that psychological and emotional aspect of the business name, and sometimes also corporate brand as well.

This stresses the importance of creating a business name that is memorable and sports what your brand is about, and we couldn’t agree more. 

Remember to take into account all that we’ve covered so far when shortlisting your ideas. That way, you’ll be able to reel in those great but vague ideas you originally had, and transform them into unique personal training business names that are tangible and will make your business stand out! 

#4 - Personal Trainer Business Name Ideas 

To give you that final push into naming your personal training business, we’re going to give you some examples from our own brainstorming session.

However, we don’t believe that ideas should be limited to categories of business names, so feel free to think outside the box when you’re shortlisting your own ideas. 

You can combine elements from the two different categories or think of a brand new method of naming your business as you go! 

Name-Based Personal Training Business Names

If you’re set on using your own name for your business, then here are some examples and ideas off the top of our heads! Try playing around with your own name in the formats that we’ve used and seeing what you get: 

• Ash Training 
• Body by Noah 
• GS Health 
• Mason Coaching 
• MFit 
• Instructor Mia
• TN Fitness 
• Coach Carter 
• ED Endurance
• Ava Strength 
• Trainer Lila 
• MiaPT
• Sophia Health 
• Max Trainer 
• LS Coaching 

Obviously you’ll use your own name or variations of it in this context, but play around with your name, middle-name, surname and initials to give your personal trainer business name a personal touch! 

Brand Name Ideas 

We mentioned earlier that brands are usually made up of a fitness-related word alongside a verb or adjective that relates to the brand, or they’re a completely unique word created by the brand owners (that usually holds connotations with fitness or health). 

Looking to create a brand that doesn’t use elements of your name? Hopefully our personal training business names list below will give you some inspiration! 

• VitalFit
• Tailored Fitness 
• OvercomePT
• TrainAgile 
• FitFlex
• Alloy Training 
• FortFitness
• FortiFit 
• FeroCoach
• AlloyPT
• NDure Fitness 
• 4TRAIN
• VitaTrain
• ConquerTraining 
• CoachEndure
• XCoaching
• ShearFitness
• Endure PT
• SheerTraining

Disclaimer: Some of these name ideas may bear resemblance to existing brands, but we’ve listed them for the purpose of giving an example to our readers. You should always double check for existing trademarks before you name your PT business!

Abbreviated Name Ideas 

When we spoke earlier on about abbreviated brand names, it became evident that they come in different forms, be it a stand-alone abbreviation that makes sense on its own, an individual abbreviation (BMW for example), or even a sensational spelling. 

We’ve listed some ideas of each style below to give you an idea of what these kinds of personal training business names might look like: 

• BUFF 
• METABOL
• PLYO
• XRCISE
• PWRBell
• KORE
• PlyoMet 
• LEEN 
• Activ
• NDure
• TONE
• BodComp

Before You Go!

With our ideas, it won’t take you too long to brainstorm names for a personal training business.

REMEMBER: once you’ve come up with the perfect brand name, don’t forget to trademark it!

Continue developing your business by offering clients more, starting with our Level 4 Sports Nutrition Course. For more information on what else we offer, download our FREE prospectus!

References

1. Bulatovic, I., Škorić, S. and Jovanović, V., 2016. Branding a business name. Economics of agriculture, 63(4), pp.1323-1332.