Building Your Business as a Personal Trainer of Older Adults

Two slightly different groups of personal trainers will probably be interested in learning to work with older adults: (1) those of you who are not specifically targeting the senior population but who work with older clients on occasion and (2) those of you who want seniors to be your main clientele.

In either case, you should be aware of how appropriately-designed your facility is to the older population. Review information from the International Council on Active Aging that lists 99 questions you can ask as you survey your facility. Click here: http://www.icaa.cc/Facilitylayouts/checklist.pdf Completing this survey will help identify areas that need to be addressed in order to make your facility more sensitive to the needs of older people. Ultimately, the goal is to appeal to a greater number of senior clients. Although not everything in this survey will be relevant to your situation, using it should help focus you on steps you can take to provide an inviting, safe environment for older adults.

Check Out Your Local Health Clubs

If you are interested in working as a personal trainer at a health club, visit clubs in your area to check for opportunities in the senior market. Assess the facility first to see if it is compatible with senior exercise by using the survey just mentioned. If you narrow your search down to a specific facility, investigate the willingness of its employees to work with you at establishing a solid senior fitness program. You can do this by simply making a minor suggestion or comment and observing what kind of reaction you get. In the long term, you will want to be associated with a facility that responds to the special needs of your target marker -- seniors.

Become Familiar With the Senior Community

For those of you who would like to make the senior population your main clientele, you need to find prospective clients. Once you find them, ask yourself how you will go about informing them of your services. To begin with, you should become familiar with other individuals and organizations that provide services to seniors in your community. Basically, you need to become a part of the “senior scene.”

Get to Know Your Medical Community

Some of the most important relationships to foster are with the medical community. If a relationship of reliability and trust exists between you and various physicians, chiropractors, and physical therapists, many will refer former patients to you as those patients become less dependent upon medical care. Oftentimes, physicians and other health professionals will even make your flyers or brochures available to patients. If they do not offer this service to you, make a request; it never hurts to ask. Remember that your marketing information should be informational, educational, and targeted towards seniors. Always emphasize the benefits a senior can expect from your personally designed exercise program. Without overwhelming them in one single piece of advertisement, provide as much information as you can about the aging process and how exercise can delay or prevent many negative outcomes.

Get Expert Advice on Building Your Business

A common misconception is that first-rate personal trainers will immediately and always have clients waiting to train with them and willing to pay for this professional service. Experts will tell you, however, that there is really no direct correlation between your skills and the number of clients you have. What do you think is the biggest difference between trainers who charge $50 per hour and those who charge $350 per hour? Is it the number of degrees after their names? Is it the total number of training hours they have provided? Or is it the number of qualifications and certifications that they have? According to research, the answer to all of these questions is no. Marketing experts suggest that it is all about publicity and name recognition. These are what will convince prospective clients that you are better than the competition.

Kelli Callabrese, well-known personal trainer and speaker, once said she was surprised by how much time trainers spend honing their technical skills for personal training, but how little time they spend learning to promote and build their business of personal training. To illustrate her point, she described two presentations she recently led at a conference. One of the sessions focused on effectively training the female client; the other concentrated on effectively promoting and building a personal training business. The first session was standing room only with approximately 150 people attending; the second attracted only 30 people. What does this tell you about the focus of average personal trainers?

Obviously, you need to be well-educated about personal training in order to be safe, effective, and successful. However, you also need to set yourself apart from your competition in order to build a strong business. If you are not knowledgeable on how to do this, seek expert advice in this area. For a list of resources, visit our site's Resource Center.