You want to get a personal trainer, but you don’t know which one to choose. Do you go for the cheapest one you can find, and save some money? Or go for the most expensive one, and get a better service?
That’s what we’ll discuss in this article.
But let me state my bias up front. My own rates are high. Really high. And getting higher all the time (except for existing clients, for whom, I grandfather them at whatever price they started). The rates of my team are not quite as high as mine, but certainly on the higher side of average.
However, there’s a time and a place for a cheap trainer.
In this article, I’ll outline when it makes sense to get a cheaper trainer, and when it makes sense to get a more expensive trainer.
When a Cheap Trainer Makes Sense
I can see a time and a place when a cheap trainer makes the most sense. A cheap trainer makes sense when:
- You’re a healthy individual, with no injuries.
- You don’t have any chronic conditions (diabetes, high blood pressure, arthritis, etc.).
- You’re not on medications.
- You don’t have a particular goal. You’re happy with your body fat and muscle mass. You don’t really want to increase your muscle or decrease your fat. You just want to exercise.
- You just need accountability – not education, or heck, even effectiveness.
Really, the only reason to use price as your main criterion is when your only issue is motivation/accountability. In other words, you know that if you don’t have an appointment with someone to exercise, you’ll let yourself off the hook.
This trainer may make a bunch of the mistakes that I write about in my articles on the biggest mistakes personal trainers make.
When a More Expensive Trainer Makes Sense
In general, price and quality are inversely related (I talk about this much more in my article on personal trainer cost). Wouldn’t it be great if we could get Rolls Royce cars at Kia prices? Wouldn’t it be great if we could get Lululemon clothes at Wal-Mart prices? But that’s life. You either get a great price, or you get great quality. Not both.
And that’s certainly the case with personal trainers. Generally speaking, a more expensive trainer is a better trainer, for many reasons:
Reason #1: More Educated
As I’ve mentioned in other articles, the majority of personal trainers have a 3-day certification. No 4-year degrees, and no 2-year diplomas. Just a 24-hour weekend certification.
Granted that a degree or a diploma doesn’t necessarily make you a great trainer, and as someone with a 4-year degree in kinesiology myself, I’ve been critical of how little real-life material is taught in school, but nonetheless, a 2-year diploma or a 4-year degree shows more commitment to the industry than a weekend certification. This person has a deeper, greater interest than someone with a weekend certification. And they’re more likely to learn more after they finish school compared to someone who just got a weekend certificate.
Not to say that there aren’t some great trainers with a weekend certification, but by and large, that’s the exception, rather than the rule.
Reason #2: More Curious
To go along with point #1, more expensive trainers tend to want to learn more about conditions/goals relevant to their clients, compared to cheap trainers. Because they make more, they don’t have to work as many hours. So many of them spend additional hours educating themselves.
It’s no secret that I read 70-80 books per year, and many of those are about topics relevant to clients: menopause, PCOS, arthritis, diabetes, high blood pressure, etc.
That’s just informal education. Then there’s semi-formal education, which is pursuing additional certifications. More expensive trainers can reinvest some of their earnings into greater education in the form of certifications that are narrower in scope, but very deep, like:
- Precision Nutrition, which goes deep into behavior change psychology.
- Fascial Stretch Therapy, which goes deep into fascial health.
- Dr. Stuart McGill’s certifications, which are all about lower back pain.
- Z-Health, which is all about the neurology of pain and movement.
Or, in my case, in addition to certifications, I have a formal researcher that I’ve hired to research topics in very great depth, like osteoarthritis, how to predict injuries before they happen, and others. Why those topics? Because they’re relevant to clients. I wouldn’t have had the money to afford a researcher if I charged a very low rate. Because of the results of this research, it’s allowed my team and I to help clients like Stellis get rid of the knee pain of arthritis in just 8 workouts, or helped Pat avoid a hip replacement surgery, and many other great client success stories.
Reason #3: Specialization
As a rule, a specialist gets paid more than a generalist. The cheap trainer will take on any client – athletic performance, fat loss, muscle gain, rehab, etc. This trainer is kind of so-so at a lot of different things, but not really great at anything.
But because this trainer doesn’t make a lot of money, they feel the need to take on any client.
By contrast, the specialist will tell their client honestly if they can help them or not. Money is less of a concern for the specialist, because they make more. For the generalist, they need that money, so they’ll take on a client even if they’re not the best person for the job.
Furthermore, because the generalist makes less, and therefore needs more hours, chances are they’re doing other jobs besides personal training. Usually, completely unrelated to fitness. The more expensive personal trainer, in all likelihood is personal training full time (which, in the personal training field is around 20-30 hours per week).
Who do you think can get better results: the trainer who dabbles in fitness, but has a couple of other gigs, or the person who does it full time as a career, and not just a job?
Reason #4: More Longevity
The turnover for personal trainers is crazy high! I was at the Can-Fit-Pro (that’s the largest certifying body for personal trainers in Canada) conference in 2015, and the CEO of both Can-Fit-Pro and Goodlife was giving the audience the stats on the industry, and it wasn’t pretty. The average trainer is a trainer with a gym for about 3 months. The average trainer is a trainer as a career for about a year and a half.
Why? There are a number of reasons, but a big one is money. They just don’t make enough money to sustain themselves, so they leave (either that gym, or that career altogether), looking for higher-paying jobs.
By contrast, more expensive trainers have much more longevity. If a trainer is making on par with other white-collar professionals (say $60-$100K/year), they can have a nice, middle-class income, enjoy what they’re doing, and not be concerned about their finances. So they stay in that career longer.
So if you want a trainer who is not very likely to leave in the middle of your relationship, maybe a more expensive trainer makes sense.
Reason #5: Giving it Straight to the Client
If a cheap trainer is talking to a prospective client, and they’re asking what the client wants, the trainer will happily oblige, and promise to deliver that. Whether they can actually deliver that or not is a different story. But they often say they can, because they need the money.
If a more expensive trainer is talking to a prospective client, and they hear that the prospective client’s expectations are unrealistic, the trainer tells the client what is truly realistic, regardless of whether that kills the sale or not. If the client is willing to adjust their expectations, the trainer takes them on. If the client is unwilling to adjust their expectations, the expensive trainer will pass on working with them. Because s/he makes more money, they would rather forego a payday, rather than leave a client disappointed. For the cheap trainer, they’ll take a payday, even if they don’t believe they can deliver.
Additionally, an expensive trainer is better at identifying what a client needs when they’re talking about what they want. A big example of it is meal plans. Clients often say they want a meal plan, but what they really want is:
- To lose weight.
- To not feel deprived or restricted while they’re losing it.
- To not regain weight after they’ve lost it.
A personal trainer worth his/her salt would pick up from that conversation, that s/he doesn’t need to give them a meal plan. They say it’s what they want, but it’s not really what they need. What they need is training on emotional eating, stress eating, mindless snacking and cravings. As I write about in my article, You Don’t Need A Diet – You Need a Therapist, what they don’t actually need is another meal plan. They’ve been on a million meal plans before, and they lose weight, but always regain it. What they need is a different approach than they’ve tried before.
Reason #6: Better Service
In general, more expensive trainers can reinvest their earnings into providing better service. Not just technically better (better knowledge of exercise, nutrition, etc.), but also just a more luxurious touch. I’ve known trainers to get their clients all kinds of different gifts (and no, not just protein powders and exercise equipment, but more stuff related to their life outside the gym).
Cheap personal trainers have to really question every purchase they make. More expensive personal trainers can reinvest their earnings into offering a more high-touch service. Kind of like the difference between Wal-Mart and Nordstrom’s.
Reason #7: Between-Session Support
The cheap personal trainer has to hustle a lot. They don’t make much money, so they have a lot going on. The more expensive personal trainer can support his/her clients in between workouts. They don’t work as many hours in general, so they can spend their off time giving additional support to clients in between sessions. That’s factored into the price.
What kind of support? Maybe it’s text messages, to keep them on track. Maybe it’s finding articles/videos relevant to clients and forwarding those. Maybe it’s reviewing data that they’ve asked the client to collect (about nutrition, exercise, compliance, etc.).
Not only that, but frequently, the more expensive trainer will give priority to clients when responding to emails. I get a ton of emails every day. But the emails that I get from clients take top priority, and I respond to those a lot faster than emails from folks who aren’t clients.
In any case, the more expensive trainer offers just better overall client care.
How to Afford a More Expensive Personal Trainer
I get that money might be tight, so a cheap trainer looks tempting, and an expensive trainer might seem too out of reach for you.
You want the expertise and the qualities of the expensive trainer, but don’t want to, or can’t afford to pay their prices. What do you do?
If at all possible, just reduce the frequency. If you were planning to train with a $40/session trainer 3 times per week, you’ve budgeted $120/week. Use the same $120/week to hire a more expensive trainer, but just once per week. You’ll make better progress, more long-lasting progress, and probably get hurt less that way.
