The Best Business Courses For Personal Trainers

Once you’re a level 3 qualified personal trainer, you’re allowed to work with one to one clients, but the courses that qualify you for this role give next to no guidance on how to set up your personal training business, how to grow the business or how to market your services to potential clients.

In fact, it can seem like there are hundreds of nuanced things about running a personal training business that goes far beyond coaching someone through safe movements. That’s where the real learning starts.

We put together a list of some of the best business courses around to help you with this side of things after you become a personal trainer. Your particular needs might be different from another personal trainer, so you might want to look out for topics which are of particular interest to you, such as marketing, copywriting, or specific advice on finances.

FutureFit

FutureFit have an interactive e-learning course which you can progress through at your own pace. There’s no exam at the end and you can take the course as many times as you like, revisiting bits to refresh your memory as your business develops. 

The content of the course is segmented into planning your business, marketing and building a brand, sales and finally managing your business and clients. 

Planning your business is an opening module which outlines the basic considerations that go into setting up a personal training business, including a general overview of the modules that follow.

Marketing and building a brand focuses on how to most effectively use advertising, building relationships in the communities your business belongs to, sales promotions, direct marketing efforts such as email, connecting with others and getting business from online sources like social media and face to face selling on the gym floor.

Selling your services focuses on the legal control around the sale of services, as well as more skills-focused training on being a good listener and asking the right questions. 

Effectively managing your services, maintaining your database and being compliant with the legal stuff gets covered in the final module. 

There are options to pay the £259 in full or to use a payment plan to spread the cost.

Lift The Bar

Lift the Bar courses cover a huge range of topics, with some of their most useful content being delivered via courses, webinars and downloadable resource packs. The webinars are delivered on an ad hoc basis, but always involve an in-depth discussion with an expert on a given topic.

The resource packs are varied and include business - among other things. The business resources include checklists for business admin and website design, goal setting, finances and invoicing templates, and legal documents like PAR-Qs or trainer agreements.

The courses span training, personal development, nutrition, foundations, client support and business. The business content specifically includes understanding the fitness industry, building a brand, growing a client base, marketing selling and delivering services, client retention strategies, sales, writing, time management and a seven-step guide to business foundations. 

Each course is individually certificated, and you have the freedom to choose elements of the course that you specifically need help with. Meaning, you don’t have to complete the entire business module if you only want support with your sales process. But you won’t get your certificate until you finish the whole module. 

All content is available to members at £39 per month, with a 2 week free trial.

PTD University

You’ll know PTDistinction as an industry leader in online personal training software. It’s the platform of choice to delivered workouts and habit based coaching for personal trainers who have an online component to their business. 

What people don’t always know is that they also offer an outstanding education platform too. Their free content teaches users of PTDistinction how to get the most out of their user experience with the software, and how to use it efficiently. 

But they also have a number of paid courses, on topics ranging from the foundational principles of online training, getting started as an online personal trainer, online success using their “super system”, sales and marketing for online personal training, how to sell high ticket, premium online personal training packages and even a collection of webinars from some of the greatest minds in the fitness industry.

The focus on the PTD University is online coaching, but some of the principles in these modules apply to face to face personal training too. Prices range for the educational modules. There is free content to teach you how to get the best out of their software and system. There’s a premium flagship bundle for £400 which includes the top 5 must-have courses as an online personal trainer. Most modules are priced individually at £150.

This model of mixing and matching is extremely useful if you feel that there’s a specific area you’re lacking knowledge and skills in. It’s flexible in that it doesn’t require that you buy an entire course to make the most of the one topic you’re curious about.

Trainer HQ

TrainerHQ has a comprehensive package of business coaching and face to face seminars but for the purposes of this review, we’ll be focusing on their online course. The attractive thing about TrainerHQ is that they claim that they can help you to have a profitable personal training business within 30 days with their “Pathway to Profits Method”.

TrainerHQ focuses on combining the right educational resources with a supportive community. They provide frameworks that cover the essential elements of a thriving personal training business. They work alongside industry experts to deliver the pieces of training. They provide accountability with your own dedicated coach to keep you focused on the tasks that will move the needle. Finally, they provide community - both virtual and through face to face training events.

They provide not just the education, but also the accountability too. They say they’re “like a PT for your business” with five modules of education in their training. Removing mental roadblocks to success. The mindset of six-figure trainers. Business Analysis, Statistics & Figures, Finances. Attracting your ideal client through your marketing and finally, the client conversion formula. 

Enrolment is advertised at $97 with a discount code at the time of writing, although that may be subject to change.

OriGym Personal Training Business Course

OriGym's business course is written specifically for personal trainers who are starting their businesses either as self-employed freelance instructors or employed trainers in a gym. Crafted by leaders in the fitness industry, it comes from people who have been personal trainers themselves. Not people who have backgrounds in business management that are trying to make it match the needs of personal trainers.

To get on the course, you first need a recognised qualification in level 2 gym instructing. The focus on this course is on how to register and set up your personal training business. How to advertise your personal training services, and how to market yourself. The course explains how to approach the marketplace differently depending on your employment model.

It's an accredited course which is self-paced. This means it's ideal for people who need a flexible working schedule or cannot commit to regular classroom contact time. 

The course is delivered through OriGym's own multi-award nominated e-learning platform. This custom software will instruct you through interactive e-learning methods, pre-recorded video content, lectures delivered by industry experts and e-books. The OriGym course is available at £129 as it's a "bolt-on" CPD course.

The IFBA

The IFBA is unique on this list. It’s the only online learning platform to focus on three categories of fitness education: aspiring gym owners, owners of independent studio gyms, and owners and operators of large commercial gym facilities. 

It claims to be a “complete solution for building an efficient, profitable and sustainable gym, health club or fitness chain”. It offers a diverse range of services, including sharing their proven systems for success in these gym facilities.

They offer learning resources to upskill people who work in these fields - or would like to. They even provide mentoring and consultancy services which are totally bespoke and custom to owners and operators. 

The courses are tailored to the category of ownership with options to “plug a gap” in knowledge with one-off courses and total immersion seminars. You can also treat the IFBA as a continual development package with their education based around an easy-to-follow mix of theory, exercises, videos and exams. Self-directed, and mostly online this is a flexible option for busy gym owners and successful personal trainers who dream of owning their own facility.

Institute of Personal Trainers

The iPT offers the world-leading business course for personal trainers. The curriculum is split into three roughly-equal stages.

Stage one is about becoming a business owner and avoiding the potentially costly mistakes of settings your personal training business up incorrectly or missing important steps. Stage one stresses the importance of escaping the “just a personal trainer” mindset and adopting a new attitude of being a business owner in order to grow quickly and efficiently.

With detailed training on money, finances and profit and loss - as well as information about how to successfully fund a personal training business - this is an incredibly deep dive into the parts of running a successful business that most personal trainers really struggle with.

The marketing module is one of the most useful topics in stage one, with step by step lessons on choosing a niche, understanding your clients and your unique selling proposition to stand out from other trainers, designing your fitness packages and getting leads and sustaining a steady stream of inbound enquiries through how-to guides on designing high-quality lead magnets. 

Stage two is about getting your business set up (including getting leads from social media, how to get people to come to you ready to buy rather than spending all your time chasing them and how to set up systems to make your life easier, like payment systems and referral systems).

Building your brand breaks down one of the most nebulous and difficult to plan aspects of your personal training business including logos, colours, and business names. This module also includes diversification and growth, such as offering online training packages and the things you need to know when it’s time to grow your team and get some of the workloads off your plate. 

The final stage is about marketing your business. With a module on local, face to face marketing, this would suit the trainer that loves their time on the gym floor. It also includes several diverse modules about the marketing you can do through social media, through your website, via your email list (and how to get one set up) and even how to optimise these elements of your business so that you rank on Google.

The full iPT course with certificate and all the content and resources is available for $299. It’s completely self-paced, comes with actionable workbook tasks, and completion of the course is fully certified and certificated. There are no additional hidden costs, and you even get access to a supportive Facebook group where an international team can answer your questions and provide around the clock support.

Wrapping Up

Of course, completing your level 2 fitness instructor course and level 3 personal training qualifications is just the first step.

​Many personal trainers stop there and choose to stop learning after they become qualified. When it comes to business, you can wing it, and try to figure things out on your own without the help of a business course. 

But in this particular part of your personal training business, mistakes can be costly. It can even dramatically slow the growth of your business and cap your ability to help more people. In the worst-case scenario, you may even come up against some compliance issues - if you don’t know any better. Having some understanding of your business is a responsible thing to do. 

Finding a course which is delivered in a way that works for your learning style, and fits both your needs and your budget should feel easier now you know where to look.