This year marks 12 years since I started working in the fitness industry as a personal trainer. Over those 12 years, I’ve learned a lot, changed a lot, and hopefully become a much better coach along the way.
The fitness industry is constantly evolving. Exercises become popular and disappear, new training methods come along, and what’s considered “optimal” seems to change every few years. But through all of that change, I’ve found that some of the most important principles of being a good trainer have stayed pretty much the same.
After 12 years of coaching people, running gyms, continuing my education, making mistakes, and figuring out what actually works, these are 12 of the biggest lessons I’ve learned.
1. Your Clients Matter
I got into this career because I wanted to help people. Those people eventually become your clients, and without them, you don’t have much of a career.
Treat your clients well. Listen to their feedback. Appreciate the fact that they choose to spend their time and money with you. Most importantly, take care of them. When people know that you genuinely care about them and their success, they tend to stick around.
2. Take Care of Yourself
When your career revolves around taking care of other people, it becomes really easy to put yourself last.
Don’t fall into that trap.
Your own health and well-being have to remain a priority. You can’t continually give your best to other people when you’re exhausted, burned out, or neglecting yourself. Make time for your own workouts, relationships, hobbies, rest, and life outside of work. Taking care of yourself allows you to keep showing up for everyone else.
3. Follow a Schedule
Routine is everything, especially in a career where your schedule can easily become chaotic.
Personal trainers often work early mornings, evenings, split shifts, and everything in between. Using Google Calendar was one of the biggest game changers for me because it allowed me to organize my clients while also protecting time for everything else I needed to accomplish.
When you know where your time is going, it’s much easier to take control of your day instead of letting your day control you.
4. Train Full Body
As I’ve gotten older and taken on more responsibilities, I’ve realized I don’t have unlimited time or energy to train.
Switching to full-body workouts has been one of the best changes I’ve made to my own training. Instead of feeling like I need to lift five days a week and dedicate an entire workout to individual muscle groups, I can train my entire body three days per week and still accomplish what I want.
The best training program isn’t necessarily the one that looks perfect on paper. It’s the one that fits your life well enough that you can consistently do it.
5. Education Matters
Learning has always been something I highly value, and continuing my education has made a massive difference in my career.
Courses, certifications, books, workshops, and conversations with other professionals have all helped shape the trainer I am today. Continuing education has also introduced me to other trainers who challenged the way I thought and exposed me to different ways of doing things.
You don’t need to know everything, but you should never stop trying to become better at what you do.
6. Always Show Up
Your clients depend on you to be there, so become someone they can depend on.
There will be mornings when you’re tired. There will be days when you’re stressed. There will be times when you’d rather be anywhere else.
Show up anyway.
We ask our clients to be consistent even when motivation isn’t there, and we should be willing to hold ourselves to that same standard. Being dependable might not be the flashiest quality a trainer can have, but it’s one of the most important.
7. Listen More Than You Talk
Your clients are paying you for your expertise, but part of that expertise should include knowing when to shut up and listen.
Training isn’t about you. It’s about the person standing in front of you.
Get to know your clients. Learn what’s happening in their lives. Ask questions and actually listen to their answers. Sometimes what a client tells you before a workout is more important than anything you had planned for them that day.
Taking a client-centered approach means understanding the person first and the workout second.
8. Meet Them Where They Are
Not everyone walking into a gym has years of experience. In fact, many of the people who need our help the most have very little.
Your job isn’t to make clients perform at your level. Your job is to meet them at theirs.
Start with the basics. Give them exercises they can be successful with. Progress them at a pace that makes sense for them, and help them build confidence along the way.
People don’t need to be reminded of everything they can’t do. Good coaching helps them discover what they can do.
9. Don’t Get Bored
Everyone moves a little differently, but the basic movements we need to train don’t change that much.
That means you’re going to coach a lot of squats, hinges, pushes, pulls, carries, and other fundamental movements throughout your career. You’re also going to repeat the same cues thousands of times.
Don’t get bored with what works.
You might coach an exercise every day, but your client might only see you once or twice a week. They don’t need you constantly changing exercises because you’re bored. They need you to help them get better at the things that matter.
10. Consistency Always Wins
No amount of intensity can make up for a lack of consistency.
Training is a marathon, not a sprint. One incredibly difficult workout doesn’t matter much if someone doesn’t want to come back afterward.
I want my clients to enjoy training, feel successful, and continue showing up week after week. That’s where results come from. You don’t need to prove how hardcore you are as a trainer. You need to help people build something they can sustain.
Consistency will beat intensity almost every time.
11. How Clients Feel Matters More Than What They Do
Your clients probably won’t remember every exercise you programmed for them, but they’ll remember how you made them feel.
They’ll remember whether you listened to them. They’ll remember whether they felt supported. They’ll remember whether they felt more confident walking out than they did walking in.
If someone tells you they’re hurting, dismissing them with “no pain, no gain” isn’t coaching. Listen to them, adjust what you’re doing, and show them that their experience matters.
The goal isn’t just to create a good workout. It’s to create an experience that makes people want to come back.
12. Never Stop Giving a Shit
I got into personal training because I love helping people, and I know firsthand what fitness has done for my own life. I wanted to help other people experience some of those same benefits.
Twelve years later, that’s still what matters most to me.
There are plenty of ways to become a better trainer. You can learn more about programming, biomechanics, nutrition, business, or any number of other things. But none of it matters very much if you stop caring about the person you’re working with.
Once you stop giving a shit about the people you serve or the impact you have on their lives, you’ve lost sight of why you started doing this in the first place.
Keep learning. Keep showing up. Keep listening. And never stop caring about the people who trust you to help them.
That’s what I’ve learned after 12 years.