Personal Training Should Be Abolished!
Michael Hughes
Welcome back to the Gymnazo podcast. I’m your solo host today, Michael Hughes, founder and CEO of Gymnazo. And what if I told you that the standard care of personal training should be abolished? Taken away? removed from the practice of everyday personal training? If you’re a trainer, movement trainer, personal trainer? That kind of makes me a little freaked out? Like, are you really saying that, Michael, that? Do you really believe that? Well, what if I do like, what if that happened? What if we removed this job title, and what it actually did one on one training one person to one coach for one hour, one half hour? I kinda want to talk about that, because I’ve been thinking about this a lot, actually. And I think there’s quite a bit to it. Obviously, there’s not everything to it. But there’s quite a bit and I wanted to kind of just vent it out and put it out there and see what the ethos, what the industry thinks about it, because I think there’s a few points that need to be considered and thought about, for the future of the movement trainer, see the different word their personal trainer, movement trainer. So I want to go into that and join with me if you think this has any, any merit to it, or you think I’m just full of it. So come on to the space and let’s dive in.
Welcome to the Gymnazo podcast where you get to peek behind the curtains of what it takes to create and run a seven figure fitness facility that ranks in the top 5% of boutique fitness studios for revenue. But to be honest, that’s the least important thing about us. Founded by me, Michael Hughes Gymnazo has created an ecosystem of services that blend performance with restoration techniques, and attracts top coaches to its facility hosted by its owners, Paden, and myself and our top coaches, this podcast shares our best practices on everything, from how to build a sustainable fitness business, to how to program for maximum results, to how to build a hybrid training module that’s online. And in person. We have marketing secrets, movement, innovation, and breaking down trends in the industry. If you’re a fitness professional, or fitness business owner, this is where you learn how to sharpen your skills and to see maximum results. So the personal trainer of today 2000s 2022 artists, artists timestamp, this podcast, the current standard of what a personal trainer is in the United States, just to kind of put some parameters on it, the level of education, what they do, I think should be removed. I think the standard of care, the standard of education, the entry level, kind of your ability to walk in and say this is your job is extremely low, in fact, is actually too low. And for all those starting out, even for myself, who started out at that standard of care, I want to say keep going keep learning, but we needed to put a relative stop to it. And here’s why. Because what we’re doing is not even close enough to what needs to be done. The standard of care of what a personal trainer does, I believe is has a net negative versus a net positive, as a job title has someone who has that role and who tries to live their life as that. Now what we give to a client, I believe, has a net positive. But in terms of someone who calls himself a personal trainer, I think it’s a net negative. Here’s why. The role of a personal trainer, one person one hour or one person, one half hour is not sustainable. It doesn’t provide the means of a necessary career, lifelong career, to feed yourself, feed your family grow a retirement for 99% of the people who call themselves a personal trainer. It’s something that if if I really think about it, our job as a personal trainer is to really help as many people as possible, live the best physical, mental, soulful selves that they have access to. To all them, that’s what we do. That’s kind of the bleeding heart of what a personal trainers job is to help as many people as possible. Now, some people say God, I only want to help four people per per day, I get it. But you want to help the collective human being and the human world live a healthier life. So therefore, if that’s what we want to do, we have a lot of work to do. Gosh, we have a big hill to climb. So if we’re going to do one person for one hour, to get $1, quote, unquote, then we got it. We got to change it up. And so we have to think about it from a much bigger, bigger scale. And I’m a person who really loves innovation, and all disruptive innovation tech analogies and I really love the electrification of transportation, just to say I’m a huge fan of it. And if we really want to get to this kind of sustainable fuel future, and, you know, call it, call it a better environment, call it better just overall technology, we have to build so much more infrastructure to make that that possible on that transportation front. And I believe it’s the exact same correlation with the movement industry, we need to train more people. So if you’re a personal trainer, we got to leverage ourselves out, we got to push the boundaries on what we think that we can do. Because most people don’t need one on one training. They’re actually relatively doing okay, yeah, we all have movement dysfunctions, we all have things that may kind of pop up here and there, but for a trainer to put his or her programming for that one person. In that process, like, I think you can leverage yourself out a lot better. You can, as a profession, you could train more people, you can share that program with that with that particular group of people tweak on the fly, tweak in the middle of it, and help way more people. In this industry, where there’s so much burnout, there’s so much it’s like, Ah, it’s kind of a hobby job. I, you know, train a little bit here, I kind of have a few side hustles. Or, you know, I did that for four or five years. And, you know, I just wanted to get a real job. To those people that live that experience. I don’t blame them. But for someone who has made a career out of it, literally, I only feed my myself, I feed my family. And I created an environment where 12 Other people feed themselves to not end and we’re training over 400 different athletes. Like that’s like, okay, okay, cool. We’re making progress. But we got to we got to train 400,000 people, we got to train 400 million people. And that’s kind of what the scale that I believe we really need to get after, at least in the United States of America, where healthcare is really in shambles, you know, for such a powerhouse, very wealthy country, on health care’s side of things. It’s kind of pathetic, of where we’re at. And I know I’m not the only one who thinks this.
So since sick care, or aka the medical established system already, is doing doing their, their their job, they’re fixing things when they get broken. Us on the on the training side of things were really the the front lines were the pawn were the infantry of the preventative, preventive health care system. Because so many people look to exercise as a means of starting their health care journey. Yes, nutrition is a huge point. Yes, mental health is a huge point. But I think more people have this kind of notion that like exercise is probably a huge place to start. And the cool thing about exercise is that when you start to mess with the physical, it automatically taps into that person’s mental, and then that automatically taps into that person’s soulful, whatever that means that particular person, right, and it’s very accepted process, versus to go the opposite end first physical is a little bit harder, and a little less accepted a little bit more confident. You’re getting too personal, too, too fast. So if we stop personal training, and we start doing semi private training, if we start doing way more group training, we’re gonna therfore push the needle much, much faster. But going back to the very beginning of what I said, the barrier to entry is so low that our educational content that we’re putting out the problem we’re putting out, is, I think doing a lot of harm. Now, again, it’s not you know, exercise on any sense is relatively good. But we can do so much more to help so many more people if we understood better Chain Reaction biomechanics, if we better understood the physics, principle based thinking, which would mean truth. I mean, principle equals truth, like actual hard physics, truth of physics, biology and behavioral science. If we really understood those things, as a industry of trainers, the impact we could have is a massive, absolute massive versus like, Okay, here’s a workout, let’s just go burn some calories. Okay, here’s a workout, let’s just get your body to look physically physique better, which is kind of where our industry is currently for, I would say the vast majority of our rap. And again, I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. But we have like I said, we have a huge hill to climb. And we have, I believe a huge responsibility on our shoulders to be the people who press for that. No one’s going to give the trainer this access. There’s no legislative body, legislative body scuze me there’s no you know, certification body there’s no government agency that’s gonna say, You know what trainers? I think you guys deserve more. I think you guys are really the ones who really are the ants you know, in a sense meaning like that. workforce, the worker bee of the healthcare industry, you deserve this. Now they actually say the opposite. You guys are not intelligent enough, you don’t have enough ethics, you don’t even have an organized system. And in fact, you’re just the wild west of people who think fitness ism is important. And in fact, you probably hurting more people than you’re actually helping, that’s probably what they think. And to all what they say, I say, well, you’re actually probably correct on a lot of those fronts. But there’s a whole wave out there. And if you’re part of this wave, then I’m talking to you. And if you’re not part of this wave, I’m not judging, I’m just saying, there’s a there’s a bigger box of thinking out there. And it’s called the movement specialist. It’s called whatever you want, even that, that term will eventually get junked, just like the functional trainer term got junked. But what it really means is that is that we’re going to put more of an effort, we’re gonna blend risk restoration with performance, we’re going to be able to take movement dysfunction, and pair it up with relative movement performance. And those are, those are huge, huge spectrums. But we’re gonna see that, you know, the most trainers just want to train those who have money, who have motivation, and who are not in pain. But the people who need fitness or people who don’t have that much money, are in a lot of pain and have low motivation. So how do we how do we span that, that spectrum. And that’s what we have to do. That’s, I believe, what’s what gymnasts was doing, and we’re trying to share it or trying to shout it out as much as we possibly can. And, you know, bring it out there to the training masses, because we’ve learned something that we can’t hold on to. Because we need to change the, the wavelength needs to become more frequent, basically. So if we abolish personal training, meaning one person for one half hour or one hour, I know, this just takes a lot of context to get into this one, right, and we went to much more leverage training, than we have much more sustainable careers, we’d have much more freedom. I always call that the trainer is a slave to the trade, especially for a lot of those, those colleagues in mind that are literally like, gosh, I wake up, they’re at the gym at seven, I don’t leave till five, I got a person on every half hour. Yeah, take an hour or two off in the middle of the day when it’s dead, kind of, you know, get a little lunch with cases, but then I’m back back at it. I’m like, is that really a career of, of legacy? Or are you just get home and you’re burnt out. And you spend very little time relatively speaking with your family very little time, even with yourself. Because we can’t give a health care practitioners what we are, eventually our cup will run dry. And if you’re extremely good, which I bet you are, then you’re just going to burn yourself out, versus providing a legacy of other people that come behind you be like, wow, look what that person’s done. Here, she’s done. And look at the life that they provided them selves, and look at the life that they provided their athletes, because they’re gonna look at the whole spectrum. And they’re gonna say, is that something that I want to do? Because most people don’t say, Gosh, I want to burn myself out. I want to work nonstop inside of gym. And just to serve others constantly. And get paid. The mean average of a personal trainer is 40,000 or less. The cool thing is that the mean average of the trainers that I work with, is double that.
Okay, cool. It’s possible. Now let’s scale it, let’s put some some massive throughput into a system that we believe can really dive in and make some make some serious waves. Because it’s really about that. It’s really about saying, Okay, this is what we were taught. And this is where we have evolved to, and the technology advancement in how we’re taking, training and conditioning. It’s growing so crazy, and it’s so unfortunate that it’s like really grassroots, I wish there was some like venture capitalist personnel third, like, this is the way and I’m gonna put 100 million dollars towards it to blow it up. It’s not how the fitness industry works, unfortunately. Least that’s not how I see it working at this particular time. So we’re gonna have to make it come up from from from the roots, and start packing it on, because it really comes down to what is the result? And again, not necessarily of the athlete, even though that’s very important, but what’s the result for the trainer for the person who wants to do this as a lifelong career? So I’ll say it again, we have to stop training one on one, again, context is important. Yes, there are clients who need one on one training for a time being but once they’re good enough to manage and understand and have the awareness of movement, push them to a smaller group. So my private is what we call it here. Then once if they want to go further than that could go one on one, or assuming go go into group, because training conditions are relatively expensive. Now in terms of your ticket, like a hospital bill, from like type two diabetes and stuff like that, like, okay, training is very inexpensive. But we’re really thinking about it, like, we have to train more people, we have to see more people as go through the movement factory, our throughput has to be higher. And we have to have people that want to join this this career field, and have the education to have the background and have the intelligence from the escapes, caught from the human side, but also from the operations and the business side. Because no matter what every personal trainer runs their own business, not in the truest sense, but they have to manage their own their own selves. And so if we can, if we can break down those those barriers, I think we might, in fact, I know we can do it, and I think we are going to do it. In fact, we are going to say it, we are going to do it. I’m gonna spend the rest of my life in this career, making that as possible for as many people as I can conceive of. But again, I’ll say it for the last time, we have to start thinking, okay, leverage, leverage, leverage. And I’m not saying let’s become better marketers, I’m not saying let’s go hire Jim lords and be like, Hey, guys, get as many people in the door as possible. Retention doesn’t matter, more people. So I just use as as an example. But it’s really that kind of context of like, it’s not about more people in the door, it’s about quality people that stay in your facility. This marketing gimmicks, these sales gimmicks, that’s of what the fitness industry is well known for has to also go, if one on one train is going to go to have to go to, we have to go back to a quality experience that is value packed that connects the Mind Body Soul aspect of that athlete that builds sustainability and performance. Every session, or at least every you know mezzo cycle, we have to put those two things together. If we treat the body just as a machine, okay, we’re going to fail. If we treat the body as just as a mind and soul, we’re not going to get enough depth in what that machine cannot actually do, we have to blend those two things together be an amazing coach. And the education is there, I’m just going to say the education is coming out there and whether whether you learn it from us from someone else, I want you to kind of have the scope of like, I’m going to open up the box. Because I was taught this, and you probably got it from your CPT or maybe from your exercise science bachelor’s degree, or maybe you got it from, you know, just a quick little like, I got a kettlebell cert, or I’m CrossFit cert with cases. Okay, good start. But let’s call that like on like a satellite Google Maps view, you’re on the Street View still, like you’re still looking like, whatever it is directly in front of you, we got to zoom out, we got to see this whole thing, and that we are in a significant player in it. And if you love helping people, if you love training and conditioning, for yourself, and more important for other people, than I believe that this should be a job. Like I look forward to the title of a human engineer. We have civil engineers, we have mechanical engineers, we have electrical engineers, we have aviation engineers, we have Space Engineers, we have rocket engineers, why don’t we have a human engineer or by mechanical engineer, licensed, whatever, I don’t care, it’s good. And the more the more, no hoops, you got to jump through to make yourself prove that you’re badass, the better. Perfect, but we have a huge problem in front of us. And I love how technology is solving so many different problems. But we have the human problem. And our country is V and I say V but is a huge example of that healthcare problem. And everyday I love coming to work, because I come with my cup full because I don’t work 10 hours a day training people. I work few hours a day training people. And the other days I train myself, I train my staff, I train people who don’t even live in this area. And it refreshes and it builds and it goes on so if you can spend a good quality workday training people than going home training, refreshing yourself refreshing from your family, and come back and be like I can do this over and over and over again and continue to gain the knowledge continue to push forward. And can you do gain essentially that that that wage that makes that happen which I believe we have to fight for. It’s not gonna be given to us then we can make that happen. So my last comment is about the wages. Like, we’re in an industry where, where, you know, some people are making six figures, nope, no problem with just personal training one on one training. And that’s such a small sector of the population of this industry, probably training, some very high athletes that are professional private trainings and people that are very, very well known, whether it be actors, actresses, political figures, etc, etc. People that you know, have that money to be able to put out there. So for things to go mass market for things to be truly scaled up. We have to bring down the price, we have to bring down the price. And again, I go back to again, this electrification of transportation, where are these new electric cars coming out? They’re $100,000 cars. Yeah, that’s a good concept. They have to get down to like the $30,000. So like one on one training, that’s called $100 per hour, you’re just you’re seeing a trainer two to three times a week, that’s $300 a week, that’s over $1,000 a month, okay, that’s where we’re getting close to, you know, being like the second biggest thing on some people’s budget underneath their mortgage, right, depending on on the size of the house, of course, if we get it down to like $20 a session $15 A session, what if it’s, you know, cuz that’s like group training status, but the quality that’s a quality group training session is not gonna rip people apart, and just be there to burn calories and rah rah people, but it’s actually a sound intelligent biomechanically kind of driven, principle focused workout with intention behind it. Now we’re talking. Now we’re now right now we’re talking. So trainers out there. If you’re looking to scale up, if you’re looking to get out of one on one or significantly reduce your one on one training, we got some help. We got some, we got some answers. Check us out gymnazo.edu, check out our YouTube. Thanks for listening to this pod cast, we have so much that we want to share not saying we have all the answers, but we certainly have a very good answer. And we’re always searching for the next set of answers. Because there’s a lot of ways to do this. But the key thing is and things like I’m on this rant on is we have to do it. Like it’s our responsibility. The medical system won’t do it. So we have to create ours ourselves. And I invite you to it. So I thought I’ll pop on the mic here, share a few thoughts, to hopefully inspire a few people hopefully got a few people thinking and appreciate your time, and you’re listening. Cheers.
Hey all. I hope you guys enjoyed today’s episode. And if you did, please share it with your fitness obsessed friends and peers who are also navigating this world of fitness and trying to succeed the trends and misinformation. As you guys can see this podcast is basically a masterclass for trainers wanting to level up in their coaching skills, and their fitness business model. We launched this in 2020. Because you and your fitness tribe deserve to see an unfiltered look at all the aspects of what it takes to stand out as a next generation coach, and build a successful fitness business. So share it far and wide. And please, when you do do me a favor, take a screenshot of this screen and share it to your social media accounts and use the hashtag Gymnazo podcast that’s hashtag Gymnazo podcast that way we can see you and share your post with our audience. And finally, when you’re ready to go to the next level as a coach or in your business, and to reach more people, please go check out gymnazoedu.com. We have put together the best 90 Day coaching program on the market for trainers wanting to become a masterful practitioner and build a business that gives them the freedom and impact. So let us help you do just that. We have online training and one on one coaching to guide you through a full 90 Day certification. We even get you training our clients live because it’s always better to work out your kinks on someone else’s clients than yours. But we promise you this, your clients will be blown away by the transformation our program will help you make you’ll be masterful at a whole new level and part of an incredible community of coaches worldwide, taking their skills to the next level. So if you thought today’s episode had some fire to it, and inspires you to take action, waiting to see what would deliver on this program. So just go to gymnazoedu.com. And we’ll see you on the other side. Remember that turning your passion for fitness into transformation and sustainable business is critical to reaching the people and lives you were put on earth to help it matters and truly can make an impact in other people’s lives. So I hope you do that. Keep sharing your passion and I will talk to you soon.
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