The Show Up Fitness Podcast

How to raise your rates as a Personal Trainer 2025/26

• Chris Hitchko, CEO Show Up Fitness • Season 3 • Episode 279

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Want clients to say yes to higher rates without flinching? We unpack a practical, honest roadmap to charging more in 2026 by doing the one thing that always works: raising your value and proving it in the session. From smarter warmups and sharper assessments to hands-on seminars that light a fire under your coaching, this conversation tackles the skills, scripts, and mindset needed to step into premium pricing with integrity.

We start with a hard look at undercharging and why it’s usually a communication issue, not a market limit. Then we map the environments where $100 to $200 per hour is normal and show how to align your services with that expectation. You’ll hear how to swap passive foam-rolling time for targeted prep, use a simple movement screen to personalize programming, and integrate nutrition and recovery guidance without overstepping scope. We also share a reusable script to announce your rate change, timeline it, and give clients real options: pre-purchase at current rates, sponsor your education, or join a charity workout that funds your seminar travel.

Along the way, we dive into the compounding power of seminars—why two days of supervised, hands-on learning can beat months of trial and error—and how proximity to high-level coaches, physical therapists, and dietitians expands your network and your confidence. You’ll get tactics to trim an energy-draining roster, consolidate your schedule, and get comfortable with “no” so you can say “yes” to better-fit clients and higher leverage work. If you’re ready to turn passion into a durable career, this is your blueprint: learn, implement, communicate, increase.

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Website: https://www.showupfitness.com/
Become a Successful Personal Trainer Book Vol. 2 (Amazon): https://a.co/d/1aoRnqA
NASM / ACE / ISSA study guide: https://www.showupfitness.com

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to the Show Up Fitness Podcast, where great personal trainers are made. We are changing the fitness industry one qualified trainer at a time with our in-person and online personal training certification. If you want to become an elite personal trainer, head on over to showupfitness.com. Also make sure to check out my book, How to Become a Successful Personal Trainer. Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review. Have a great day and keep showing up. Howdy all. Welcome back to the Show Up Fitness Podcast. Day number three, 30 podcasts in a row. The ones that are labeled India, we have another podcaster, Mr. DeBang, and he has special guests in India. Sometimes they are in a different language, so that's why we are highlighting them as India. Not saying don't listen, but just be aware that you're going to hear a different voice and sometimes a different language. They're still amazing. We're working on growing the brand internationally, and they are very, very well done. Thank you, my man, for helping us out with those podcasts. And so today we're going to talk about how you can charge more in 2026. Now, do you think twice? Do you ask to speak to a manager when you go to Starbucks and they increase the prices from$350 for a black cup of coffee to$375? No, they just put that as part of their processes, increasing the pricing due to inflation. You still pay that. Why don't trainers charge more? This is something that I really get frustrated with when I have conversations and trainers have been working with clients for three, four, five years, and they do not increase their prices regularly. It comes down to communication and who you're surrounding yourself with. So I'm going to read you a little excerpt from a book I'm reading right now, The Dark Genius of Wall Street. He just rented an apartment on Fifth Avenue Hotel at Fifth Avenue and 24th Street on the western perimeter of where Broadway and Fifth Avenue cross Madison Square. Said to be the finest hotel in the city. The Fifth Avenue was itself the site for much after hours trading in stocks and bonds. Thus, it was not only convenient for everyday living and dalliances, but for business as well. That is a great word. It's the word of the day if you want to hear the proper pronunciation. Dalliance. Dalliance. That is a casual or romantic sexual relationship. Fisk held regular open houses at Broad Street offices, treating fellow brokers and speculators to choice liquors and indulgences. Now, I really like this part from the book, not because he's talking about hookers and stuff, but because of the mindset. He wanted to become a big player on Wall Street. So he surrounded himself with the best of the best. He did whatever it took so he could be in that environment. Now ask yourself as a trainer: is your book of business the type of clients you want to be working with? I'm not saying only working with affluent people. We got in this to help people. So look at your market and who you enjoy training. Are you constantly involved in that market? When you go to a lifetime or equinox, that market can afford$100,$150,$200 per hour. So if you're charging$130, you absolutely can increase the prices 10 to 20% every year, but you need to have the right conversations. And that's why it's so important for you to get out there and surround yourself with great trainers to find out what they're doing for their success. Yeah, reading my book, Volume Two, How to Become a Successful Personal Trainer, that helps because you're getting an insight into my life and what I did as a trainer, as a teacher of trainers, not only building my book of business at different gyms, building certifications and teaching at schools, you're getting excerpts from trainers that I interview in my book, top names. You need to also go out there and be around those trainers. Get to seminars. If you haven't been to a seminar in the last year, that is your biggest fuck up. Hands-on learning with proper supervision allows for your confidence to increase. It lights a spark under your ass. So you come back and you provide better for your clients. And then you are going to be able to charge more. I was at an Equinox today. I got there at six o'clock, bright and early. My client canceled. I don't take that as an opportunity to sleep in. Got to the gym, ran for three miles. Before my run, I was doing some mobility work because my knees and ankles tend to get a little jacked up when I start increasing the mileage. Go listen to that last podcast on why. There was a trainer sitting back, hands behind his back, just relaxing as his client foam rolled for seven minutes. Don't believe me? Reach out. I will send you the picture that I took. I'm great at taking photos. I'm not creepy. I got that protector screen. Looks like I'm taking photos of my giant calves, but I'm taking photos of trainers and the shit that they're not doing optimally. If this trainer were to go to a seminar, hands-on, levels himself up, now that warmup is something that is totally different than just sitting on your ass doing nothing. That client then sees, wow, I can really tell that you just leveled yourself up. I see why you were charging more. But you need to have the conversations with your clients. And that's the most important part. They will invest into you. I know for a fact because I've had numerous cases. We've had students fly out and stay in San Diego, Santa Monica, LA, Atlanta for two months and they've had their internships paid for from clients.$5,000,$24.99 for the in-person, which gets you all three certs. And then living expenses, because they had a conversation with their manager, with the members and people part of the community. I want to level up my skills. Here's what I'm going to do. This example avatar that I'm going to give could be independent or at a big box gym. Let's say you're charging$125 per hour. If you're independent,$75, whatever, same situation. You have a conversation with your clients. During the warm up, you sit down, have coffee with them, whatever makes you feel the most comfortable. I like doing it within my sessions during the rest periods. I was looking at the certification. It's one of the best that's out there. This is going to help level up my skills and nutrition, soft tissue and assessments, pain management, networking with doctors and physical therapists, RDs. This is the best that's out there. I'm really excited to take this course. It's roughly two months. It's going to allow for me to charge 20% more in the new year. Right now, my rates are 120 beginning on January 1st. They're going to be bumped up to 140, 150. Whatever you feel comfortable presenting, I wanted to be straightforward with you. The pricing is going to increase in the new year. Now, what you can do is if you wanted to sponsor this certification, flight, hotels, everything, you can also have like a little lottery. You could have a little charity giveaway. There's so many creative things you can do with this. If you wanted to sponsor me, I won't increase your pricing for 2026. And when I talked about like a charity event, you could let every single one of your clients know you're doing this and then have a free workout Saturday or Sunday where they come in and they donate for that session. If you have 15 clients, each one comes in, they give you an extra hundred bucks cash. That's 1500 bucks. Now they're aware of what you are doing and they're paying for it. So you could let them know you have an opportunity right now, today, even though you have 12 sessions left on this last package, you could reamp right now at the same price as many sessions as you want. So if you're independent, you can have a client be like, okay, I'll buy a hundred of them. 100 at 100 bucks, that's 10 grand. Most trainers struggle in December and May and June because that's when their clients don't train as much. You could come up with creative pitches to increase your prices two times a year in December before the new year, and in May before the summer break, because this is when you are continuing your education, which allows for you to provide a better, safer service to get your clients faster results. You are helping them. But then you have to actually do it. So go back to the trainer example where they give you$500,$1,000,$5,000, and you come back and you're sitting on your ass when you're foam rolling, you're doing straight sets with lap pull downs and you're doing the pull-up machines and you're doing all these abduction, adduction machines. They're gonna be like, wow, that was shitty. I'm never gonna invest in them again. I'm not gonna re-amp my next package. But if you come back and you implement what you learn, they're gonna say, wow, that was a great investment. I can see that you're a different trainer. That's what we need more of. To go back to Fisk in this book that I'm reading, he surrounded himself with the brightest minds of the time. So ask yourself, who are you surrounding yourself with? Most trainers clock in three minutes before their first session. They train them, then they go home and they isolate. They go to Reddit, they go to YouTube, and they just fuck around. So hard to make money as a trainer. Oh, I need to find a new career. No, your mindset isn't right. You have that victim mentality. Level yourself up. Worst case scenario, client says, I'm not interested. And since you're going to increase your prices, I'm not going to work with you. That's okay. You lost one client, but you had five go up from 120 to 140, which means you can work less and make more and trim the fat. Those clients you don't like training, Fred who farts and Maggie who has terrible fucking breath, you can fire them respectfully. You set those clear expectations so your life is a lot easier because your schedule isn't all over the place as well. That 5 a.m. client, the 10, the 3, and the 7 p.m. That can burn the candles at both ends. So you level yourself up, you get to a seminar, you take a course that makes you think bigger and innovatively. You talk to your clients about a Swift. I learned this really cool thing during the last seminar. We went through a Swift analysis. We talked about our strengths and our weaknesses, action items with the eyes, innovation, implementation, how we can improve. What are our fears internally? Who are our threats externally? My trajectory. And I came back so fired up. You show your clients new techniques, exercise you've never seen before, soft tissue mobilizations you've never even dreamed about. And your clients are holy shit, that was impressive. You are the best freaking trainer in this gym. I want to invest in you. That's what happens when you invest in yourself by surrounding yourself with great trainers, people who are thinking bigger than I want to go from 20 sessions a week to 25. I just need to show up and do more floor shifts and walk around and clean up the gym. Or I'm going to post an ad on social media saying, I'm looking for three clients right now. I'm not talking about buying some business coach that's going to charge you 10 grand a month. I'm talking about investing into hands-on learning under proper supervision. There's a post from Dr. Russen that I commented on today. Trainers need more continued education. And someone on there said, I disagree. They need more experience. Get into the trenches. And I commented, I disagree. And he used this analogy with welding. If you're a welder, how do you get better at welding? Of course, you need to weld more. But I pitched a thought experiment saying, well, what if you come up to, I don't know welding. So I said move. What if you came to a move or a trick of the trade that you didn't know? You don't just keep on doing it and pounding your head into a wall. You go seek someone who's done it before, who has that experience, and you learn from them. We don't need more experience. We don't need more textbook specializations. You need hands-on learning under proper supervision. So when you get to a seminar, you're seeing the trainers and what they're struggling with, their fears, and you go, holy shit, I'm not alone. And that actually excites you. That lights a flame under your ass to do more, to help more, to build a career from your clientele that you want to work with. Because you absolutely can. I hear and see so many trainers struggling. One, it's the entry standards, it's the foundation of what you were brought into. You don't know how to program, you don't know how to assess, you don't ask for money when it comes to nutrition. That's why you should get the nutrition certification that we offer. Because we show you the value and why you should charge for nutrition. Trainers don't do that. I've interviewed so many freaking trainers. I feel like I'm beating a dead horse. How many of you have a registered dietitian on your team, a physical therapist? No and no. When was the last hands-on seminar that you went to? No, but I'm struggling right now. So be creative. If you can't afford getting out of state, ask your clients. Put it on a credit card. A debt is going to be serviced so you can charge more in the future. You're planting seeds now, so then it grows bigger in the future. I'm not talking about maxing out all your credit cards on a$25,000 Alex Romrosy course. I'm talking about$500 to$1,000, leveling yourself up. So you have more awareness of what the environment in the industry is like. Because you can go online to Reddit and Facebook and you hear all these victims talking about how hard it is to train, but they have a textbook certification. They're prideful and they're NASA and their bio, but all that says is you are a new trainer. You're scared. You're struggling. I got my ace. Can you assess a client in pain? Do you know the 14 muscles around the knee? Can you tell me 17 around the shoulder? So you don't have the foundation. You want to be charging$100,$200 per hour, but you can't speak to that level. Get to a seminar. I guarantee you, two days will change your trajectory of your entire training career. I reflect back on my career. In the first hands-on learning one that I did, I went to a Tony Gentlecore and Dean Somerset seminar. Two days I was able to interact with them. I learned how to squat better, opened up my eyes versus the NSCA. You have to squat 10 to 15 degrees with your feet out. I always did that because that's what I learned with my degree in kinesiology. But they opened up my mind to different techniques, different bodies. I met trainers 20 years ago that I'm still in contact with today. But the connections I set with them as I opened up gyms, I reached out to them. Hey, would you guys want to have a seminar at my gym? Doors were opened. I went to the ISSN. That was like a$4,000 weekend because I like to stay in swanky hotels. I like to drink expensive whiskies. I'm not going to the bar where it's$5 beers. I go to the expensive places because I like that environment. I'm a bougie dude. That's just what I do. When I was there, I linked up with some of the best doctors, kinesiologists, dietitians in the world. International Society of Sports and Nutrition. International, literally worldwide. That set the stage for me starting our own certification because I surrounded myself with individuals who got me to think bigger. Chris, why don't you do this instead? Why don't you do that instead of this? They're giving me suggestions on how I can level up my career. And then I would go back to the next one and link up with them. And it was more of a retreat. It was fun to get back in the trenches, provide a better service to my clients when I was training in the gym. Every three months, I would take that as a little vacation, meet up with these doctors and these trainers and strength coaches, people who I enjoyed being around. And that allowed for me to level up my business. I credit my success with Show Up Fitness to the seminars and the people who I met at those events, 100%. I met Dr. Waterbury from John Russon. I met the prehab guys from Dr. Waterberry. I would have never met these individuals if I just sat in my little circle and didn't expose myself to people who are thinking bigger. I know for a fact when you go to a weekend seminar, you are surrounding yourself with the one percenters. These are the people that are thinking significantly bigger on things that you haven't even imagined yet. You're going to learn how to start a gym. You're going to learn the struggles of having a gym, partnerships, what are physical therapists doing? What are RDs struggling with? What are their fears? And so the debriefing process, when you hear what other people are struggling with, it kind of calms your nerves. So when you get back into the trenches, you do it more effectively. You're more efficient because you have a purpose. Your vision is getting clearer. I know a lot of you right now listening to this, you're like, well, I have this anxiety. You know, what's next? You need to be around people who are doing big things. Our seminar schedule for Q1, Atlanta, the 9th and 10th of January, Phoenix, the 23rd and 24th of January. February, we're heading back to Jersey, Red Bank, the 6th and 7th. Dumbo, not the flying elephant, Dumbo, New York, the 20th and 21st of February. March will be in Houston the 13th and 14th. And we're going to end off one more. It's still in the play. We don't know when that's going to be in March. But our goal, as I set within my Swift, two seminars per month. If you reflect back on three years ago, it was to start seminars. And then we got a partnership with Lifetime and Equinox. And we've built our brand because we're getting out there, making ourselves uncomfortable, and letting people know about our product. You can get access to these for this month at a discount. Make sure to check out our Instagram,$4.99 across the board. That's certifications and that's also seminars. You can bundle them up, get two or three seminars, and get a discount on those. But I guarantee you, and I'm obviously biased because this is our product, but I've seen what the competition is. What seminars does NASAM offer? What seminars does ISSA ACE? NSCA and ACSM, they have conferences. Those are great to go to. Go check out a perform better. Get to a seminar from Doc Farnsworth. Look at people who have a proven track record and be in their presence because their energy, their competence is going to level you up so you're more confident. And I want to hear your success stories for 2026. How you're able to get over that hump, charging 75 to now 100, or 100 to 150, or 150 to 200. There's a trainer I was talking with a lifetime. They charge 190. And I said, that's great. Why not 200? Well, it's just because that's where I'm comfortable right now. Put out there 225. Get comfortable with the nose because that's what's going to level you up. You can absolutely turn your passion for fitness into career, and we're here to help you. 30 days of podcasts, DM us, reach out on Facebook, qualified personal trainers community. If you like today's podcast, I love that five star review. Hell, share it in your story. I might send you something. Who knows? We're going to be in your area soon. Remember, big biceps are better than small ones, and keep showing up.