u/larpcentral

Just got a new client and I'm a little nervous — would love some advice!

She's already very active: trains 7 days a week, takes active rest days, and walks 10–15k steps daily. Her goals are to build strength and muscle while losing some fat, though she's already quite lean.

I haven't met her yet — first session is tomorrow. My plan is to start with a full body workout to assess where she's at. She's also mentioned wanting to learn dumbbell workouts she can do at home, so I'll dedicate a separate session to that.

A few things on my mind:
- How would you approach programming for someone already training this frequently?
- Any tips for balancing strength/hypertrophy goals with fat loss at a low body fat percentage?
- What would you prioritize in a first session with an experienced client?

Any advice is welcome — still early in my career and want to make a great impression!

First PT job at LA Fitness — is this normal?

Hey everyone, I just started my first personal training job at LA Fitness and I'm curious about your experiences getting clients.

We have a dedicated sales team responsible for bringing trainers clients, but my manager is also training me to go after my own leads — phone calls, floor pulls, giving out free sessions, then forwarding those clients to the sales team to close.

The catch: all of that prospecting work is unpaid. I only get paid $15 when I'm actually conducting a free training session, not for the time spent acquiring them. That can easily be an hour or two on the floor or on the phone.

A few questions for those who've been here:

1. Was this your experience when you started out?
2. Should I keep grinding these free sessions hoping my PT director notices my effort and rewards me with clients he closes on his own?
3. Or should I pull back and wait for him to bring clients to me — and if I do, will that hurt my chances of getting them?

Appreciate any insight from people who've been through it!

New trainer here — how do you guys spend your unpaid floor hours?

Just got started and trying to be smart about my time at the gym when I'm not with clients. My plan is to get my own workouts in and just be present on the floor, talk to members, make some connections, maybe hand out some free sessions.

For those who've been through the early grind — what did you actually do during those unpaid hours that helped you build your client base? Any tips on approaching members without coming off too salesy?

Appreciate any advice

As the title says, I trained my very first client and this client is now on my books!

Thanks for all the tips from everybody!

https://www.reddit.com/r/personaltraining/comments/1t5rftu/new_trainer_training_my_first_clients_tomorrow/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

As the title says tomorrow i start at a big box gym, and I’m going to be giving out free training sessions to clients and in hopes of passing them off towards the sales team after I’m done so they can sell them on training packages.

This is my first time ever training anyone, and I am excited and nervous at the same time.

I have been watching YouTube videos on how to train first clients and this is what I have gathered

First: Ask them how their doing (small introduction), then ask them if their sore anywhere today and then go hit the warm up.

Do an all body workout, the goal is for the client to feel good after the workout, not burnt out

Do 2-3 sets of each workout, with 90 second break in between

Workout should consist of compound movements so the client:

Squats, bench press, lat pull down, rows and if time left ask the client what’s something they want to focus on (example: want bigger biceps) we will hit arms until we are finished

That’s the conclusion of our workout.

During the workout, you also want to be a “friend” and build some rapport with them, as if you were working out with a buddy. But make sure the workout is good.

My question for this subreddit is:

Would you make any tweets or suggestions to this? Your help and experience would be great for me.

Thank you in advance

I've already done some digging through old Reddit threads on this topic, but things change and I'm hoping to find some more recent info.

For those who have worked (or currently work) as a personal trainer at LA Fitness — can you speak to their pay structure?

- Do they offer a base hourly rate on top of your training session rate?
- Do they cut your hourly rate once your training income exceeds a certain threshold?
- Does LA Fitness assign you clients, or are you expected to find your own?

Would also love to hear any recent firsthand experiences working there. I'm considering starting at LA Fitness as my first PT job mainly to build hands-on experience, so any insight would be appreciated!

As the title says, this is my first personal training interview, and the first one is a 30 minute online interview.

I will be learning online all day about how to ace PT interviews, watching videos ect,

But i also wanted to hear directly from you guys.

Can you tell me what sort of questions to expect? And any tips to get prepared?