Personal trainer/working in a gym.

[bgmnts]

Is it an actual job? Or is it just an easy way for men to shag?

Has anyone here (lol) ever pursued or contemplated this line of work, i'm genuinely intrigued as to what scientific knowledge one needs to be a certified one of these.

[Cuellar]

I think they have very strict professional ethics, much like a doctor or a psychiatrist, and if they sleep with any of their clients they WILL be struck off.

I'd imagine there are easier ways for buff men to pork the overweight and/or depressed.

[Huxleys Babkins]

If you go to a gym regularly you'll see the faces on the personal training/instructor board change with alarming frequency.

I'm not saying all of them have been moved on due to sexual misconduct, but based on the experiences of far too many female acquaintances, I'd suggest that quite a few of them have.

[Dr Trouser]

When I used the local gym a few times last year the personal trainer was a 45 year old, bald, over weight man who would look bored while flicking through tinder while some poor lass struggled on a cycling machine.

Not a great advert for personal trainers, but then this is Glasgow so who knows.

[Pijlstaart]

They lack discipline, you wouldn't think so, but they do. They can't go off-script, they come in and do the exercise, and it's easy, but no initiative, when a genuine problem arises they'll collapse remarkably quickly, you can force the matter through a targeted campaign of misinformation and bullying. Only men like me are disciplined.

[Icehaven]

When I swapped gyms a few years ago the new one had some equipment I'd not used before so I booked a one-off induction session with a trainer just so I didn't do myself a mischief. He was without any shadow of a doubt the most self-obsessed, unaware, useless waste of flesh I've ever encountered. He immediately launched into a long spiel about how he'd come to be a personal trainer (I never asked) and what his ultimate 'goals' were (I didn't give a fuck) as if it was a job interview or something, which at the end it transpired it sort of was as I was handed a card with his details on in case I wanted to book more personal trainer sessions (which unlike the induction would cost extra, obviously).

I think he might have shown me how to use one machine, a vibrating plate type thing that he cheerfully told me almost definitely didn't do anything anyway, which I could clearly see for myself and had no intention of using.

I avoid any interaction with them at all costs now, if I bust a gut I bust a gut, it's better than risking having to go through anything like that 15 minutes again (which was actually supposed to be 30 but I sent him away early.)

[imitationleather]

My dad is a personal trainer. Looking forward to taking over the family business when he retires.

(This isn't a non-sequitur. It actually is his job. Not that I'd ever take over. I've never even been to a gym. Looked through the windows that they have that go on to the street quite a few times and they don't look my scene at all.)

[Red Lantern]

I see a personal trainer on Tuesdays. He hasn't sexually harassed me yet though.

[touchingcloth]

I think you need to be a army.

British Military Fitness used to run sessions in the park near us, which comprised people doing press ups while overseen by a man in camouflage pants shouting "come on guys" but pronouncing it "goys". Feel the burn goys, good work goys, give me five more reps goys, goys get in grave.

[amputeeporn]

I go to a gym in central London, where the trainers are all pretty good. Very professional, ridiculously fit and friendly people.

I really cringe at the women (and I'm sorry but it genuinely always is women) adopting weird quasi-relationships with them. Like, treating their hour with them as some kind of date practice, flirting disastrously while their shredded trainers just sort of plead with them to finish their work out before they start talking for another fifteen minutes.

This may be a product of a unique ecosystem- handsome trainers, moneyed young women - but it's excruciating.

[Icehaven]

I go to a gym in central London, where the trainers are all pretty good. Very professional, ridiculously fit and friendly people.

I really cringe at the women (and I'm sorry but it genuinely always is women) adopting weird quasi-relationships with them. Like, treating their hour with them as some kind of date practice, flirting disastrously while their shredded trainers just sort of plead with them to finish their work out before they start talking for another fifteen minutes.

This may be a product of a unique ecosystem- handsome trainers, moneyed young women - but it's excruciating.

Blimey you're paying a lot of attention to what other people do in your gym. I'm usually so busy trying not to fly backwards off the running machine or die from puffed outness I couldn't even tell you what colour the walls are.

[Voltan (Man of Steel)]

I personally train myself in my own garage gym, equipped with my own weights. I don't need a "personal trainer". (I'm also overweight, have high blood pressure and my joints are fucked).

[Shit Good Nose]

Working in a gym full time you typically do quite long hours and are expected to take your turn on the roster - i.e. start mega early or finish mega late (most gyms open between 6 and 6.30am and close at 10 to 10.30pm), or clear shift work if it's a 24hr gym.  If the gym is part of a chain/network you would also probably be expected to work in other locations as required, and some of those other locations can be quite a jaunt.  Pay can be okay and you get free use of the gym whenever you want of course, but after spending your day fixing equipment, teaching old people how to use it, and taking part in the challenges, I doubt most gym workers want to go there in their free time as well.

As for being a personal trainer - as others have said, they change with alarming regularity (although it's usually because most personal trainers are doing it with an eye to opening their own independent gym and taking the customer base they've built up with them, but that seldom happens so they just slope off to something else) and whilst the money is good (£40 an hour seems to be the lower end of what they charge) you do need a consistent regular customer base, which is very difficult in most places as 75% of people who go to gyms are "Gym Idiots" - i.e. they join up after christmas with the intention of going every day during the week, but three weeks down the line they're down to one 20 minute session before sacking it off altogether.


I don't work and never have worked at a gym, nor am I a personal trainer, it's just what I've gleaned over the last couple of years from the people working at my local gym at the times I go.

[thenoise]

I presume they are all like the guy in Peep Show who Mark sees who just says 'Don't you want it?' In a slightly gay way while Mark uses the stationary bike. Seems a bit pointless to me.

[imitationleather]

YOU CALLIN MY DAD POINTLESS?

[king_tubby]

Surely personal trainers have no interest in humping the customers as their genitals have been shrunken due to years of 'roid abuse?

[imitationleather]

SHUT UP MY DAD'S GOT A MASSIVE COCK

[Voltan (Man of Steel)]

Surely personal trainers have no interest in humping the customers as their genitals have been shrunken due to years of 'roid abuse?

Well decades of 'roid abuse didn't stop Rainier Wolfcastle (or was it Arnold?) from fathering a child with the family housekeeper at the age of fifty.