A personal trainer is a qualified fitness instructor who helps people get fit, gain muscle, or lose weight, and increase their willpower and physical stamina. They make their clients sweat one-on-one, accept no excuses, and give personalized dietary advice, as well.
As a personal trainer, you might work in a gym or take your clients outdoors. But wherever the training takes place, what really matters is creating a trusting relationship with your clients. Setting realistic goals and designing a tailored and effective exercise plan will be crucial as well because nothing is as motivating as seeing your own progress.
This is a currently booming profession that may be rewarding both monetarily and personally because no one decides to become a personal trainer overnight without having experienced the numerous growth opportunities working out can lead to. Not just thinking about your biceps here, obviously.
Personal Trainer Overview
Working as a Personal Trainer
There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a personal trainer. For example, did you know that they make an average of $18.65 an hour? That's $38,796 a year!
Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 13% and produce 45,700 job opportunities across the U.S.
What Does a Personal Trainer Do
There are certain skills that many personal trainers have in order to accomplish their responsibilities. By taking a look through resumes, we were able to narrow down the most common skills for a person in this position. We discovered that a lot of resumes listed customer-service skills, communication skills and listening skills.
When it comes to the most important skills required to be a personal trainer, we found that a lot of resumes listed 19.8% of personal trainers included cpr, while 17.5% of resumes included customer service, and 11.9% of resumes included fitness programs. Hard skills like these are helpful to have when it comes to performing essential job responsibilities.
When it comes to searching for a job, many search for a key term or phrase. Instead, it might be more helpful to search by industry, as you might be missing jobs that you never thought about in industries that you didn't even think offered positions related to the personal trainer job title. But what industry to start with? Most personal trainers actually find jobs in the hospitality and education industries.
How To Become a Personal Trainer
If you're interested in becoming a personal trainer, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 57.0% of personal trainers have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 11.4% of personal trainers have master's degrees. Even though most personal trainers have a college degree, it's possible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.
Choosing the right major is always an important step when researching how to become a personal trainer. When we researched the most common majors for a personal trainer, we found that they most commonly earn bachelor's degree degrees or associate degree degrees. Other degrees that we often see on personal trainer resumes include master's degree degrees or high school diploma degrees.
You may find that experience in other jobs will help you become a personal trainer. In fact, many personal trainer jobs require experience in a role such as internship. Meanwhile, many personal trainers also have previous career experience in roles such as sales associate or cashier.
What is the right job for my career path?
Tell us your goals and we'll match you with the right jobs to get there.
Personal Trainer Career Paths
As you move along in your career, you may start taking on more responsibilities or notice that you've taken on a leadership role. Using our career map, a personal trainer can determine their career goals through the career progression. For example, they could start out with a role such as instructor, progress to a title such as consultant and then eventually end up with the title director of sales.
What is the right job for my career path?
Tell us your goals and we'll match you with the rights job to get there.
Average Salary for a Personal Trainer
Best Paying Cities
Recently Added Salaries
Job TitleCompany  | Company | Start Date | Salary |
|---|---|---|---|
South Suburban Parks and Recreation Personal Trainer Personal Trainer | South Suburban Parks and Recreation South Suburban Parks and Recreation | 01/29/2021 01/29/2021 | $41,74001/29/2021 $41,740 |
South Suburban Park & Recreation Personal Trainer Personal Trainer | South Suburban Park & Recreation South Suburban Park & Recreation | 01/28/2021 01/28/2021 | $41,74001/28/2021 $41,740 |
Crunch Personal Trainer Personal Trainer | Crunch Crunch | 01/27/2021 01/27/2021 | $37,56601/27/2021 $37,566 |
The Denver Athletic Club Personal Trainer Personal Trainer | The Denver Athletic Club The Denver Athletic Club | 01/27/2021 01/27/2021 | $31,30501/27/2021 $31,305 |
Retro Fitness Personal Training Sales Personal Training Sales | Retro Fitness Retro Fitness | 01/26/2021 01/26/2021 | $41,74001/26/2021 $41,740 |
Calculate your salary
Use Zippia's Salary Calculator to see how your pay matches up.
Personal Trainer Resumes
Designing and figuring out what to include on your resume can be tough, not to mention time-consuming. That's why we put together a guide that is designed to help you craft the perfect resume for becoming a Personal Trainer. If you're needing extra inspiration, take a look through our selection of templates that are specific to your job.
Learn How To Write a Personal Trainer Resume
At Zippia, we went through countless Personal Trainer resumes and compiled some information about how best to optimize them. Here are some suggestions based on what we found, divided by the individual sections of the resume itself.
View Detailed InformationTop Colleges for Personal Trainers
1. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, NC • Public
2. Northwestern University
Evanston, IL • Private
3. University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA • Private
4. California State University - Bakersfield
Bakersfield, CA • Public
5. San Diego State University
San Diego, CA • Public
6. Stanford University
Stanford, CA • Private
7. University of Minnesota - Twin Cities
Minneapolis, MN • Public
8. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Champaign, IL • Public
9. Howard University
Washington, DC • Private
10. SUNY at Buffalo
Buffalo, NY • Public
Top Skills For a Personal Trainer
The skills section on your resume can be almost as important as the experience section, so you want it to be an accurate portrayal of what you can do. Luckily, we've found all of the skills you'll need so even if you don't have these skills yet, you know what you need to work on. Out of all the resumes we looked through, 19.8% of personal trainers listed cpr on their resume, but soft skills such as customer-service skills and communication skills are important as well.
- CPR, 19.8%
- Customer Service, 17.5%
- Fitness Programs, 11.9%
- New Clients, 9.9%
- Small Groups, 6.3%
- Other Skills, 34.6% See All Personal Trainer Skills
Best States For a Personal Trainer
Some places are better than others when it comes to starting a career as a personal trainer. The best states for people in this position are Massachusetts, Vermont, California, and New York. Personal trainers make the most in Massachusetts with an average salary of $50,975. Whereas in Vermont and California, they would average $50,751 and $47,019, respectively. While personal trainers would only make an average of $46,897 in New York, you would still make more there than in the rest of the country. We determined these as the best states based on job availability and pay. By finding the median salary, cost of living, and using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Location Quotient, we narrowed down our list of states to these four.
1. Massachusetts
$50,976
Avg. Salary
2. Rhode Island
$44,233
Avg. Salary
3. New Jersey
$45,933
Avg. Salary
How Do Personal Trainer Rate Their Jobs?
Top Personal Trainer Employers
Personal Trainer Videos
