How to get Personal Training Clients at a Gym - Equinox Life Time Fitness Crunch LA Fitness Genesis

Tired of feeling invisible on the gym floor? We share a practical, no-fluff playbook for new and rising trainers who want to fill their books fast without turning into pushy salespeople. It starts with presence: show up early, stay late, and learn the living rhythm of your gym. Map traffic patterns, make eye contact, and smile more than anyone else. Members trust the faces they see every day—so be the person who offers a quick warm-up tip, a towel when it’s needed, and a calm answer when someone looks lost.

We break down a simple programming framework—CCA: Core movement, Complementary movement, Accessory—that lets you design effective workouts on the spot. Whether you’re helping the arm-day regular or the machine-loving 70-year-old, CCA keeps sessions focused, scalable, and aligned with real goals. We also dig into light-touch sales that don’t feel slimy: front-desk rapport, micro-education moments, and fun calorie-estimation games that spark nutrition chats. Instead of lecturing, invite members into a complimentary assessment to review goals, stress, sleep, and training history. The tone stays friendly, curious, and helpful.

Mindset sets your ceiling. Use a Kobe-level work ethic to stack tiny wins: chase floor shifts, learn from the top and bottom performers, and invest downtime in anatomy and cueing. Bring your food, manage your energy, and radiate gratitude. Then commit to 90 days of rinse-and-repeat consistency and run a quarterly review to turn weaknesses into strengths. If you’ve been waiting for permission to step forward, here it is: be the most present, prepared, and positive person in the room. That’s how strangers become clients—and clients become long-term success stories.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome & Mission
• 0:27 Main Goal: Get Clients At Big Box Gyms
• 1:09 Learn From Top And Bottom Performers
• 2:00 Map Traffic And Be Visibly Present
• 3:16 Conversations Over Textbook Assessments
• 4:40 Work Ethic Lessons From Kobe
• 6:03 Mindset, Gratitude, And Smiling
• 8:03 Program On The Spot With CCA
• 10:10 Front Desk Rapport And Light Touch Sales
• 12:10 Food, Pop Ups, And Calorie Education

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

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, y'all. Welcome back to the Show Up Fitness Podcast, 30 days of podcasting. One third of the way there. Today we're going to help you get clients at a big box gym. I'm going to read from my book, page 91, how to get clients, chapter seven. Show up early, leave late, dominate the opportunity. Coach Ramsey, he's a strength coach for the Kansas Jayhawks. He also was a strength coach for the Sacramento Kings. We did a podcast a while back. I love that because that's exactly what you should be doing. If you're into the whole Alex or Mosey craze, something that he says, find out who's the best and do it significantly faster and more efficiently. So if you just started at a gym, you need to find out who the best trainers are. Ask them three to four questions. How did you become the best? What certifications do you have? What would be one piece of advice you would give me to become one of the top trainers here? What are some of the mistakes that you made? Take notes, rinse and repeat. Do it to the top three, do it to the bottom three. And now you have some data points. Find out how the gym flows. If it opens at five, you are there at five. I don't care if your floor shifts at 10 a.m., get there at five. Observe the flow of the gym. If there are seven people there in the morning, it doesn't mean you never go. You do your cardio at 5 a.m. and you get to know those seven people. And then when your shift starts at 10, you observe that time from 10 to 1, 10 to 3, whenever it is. When you are present, do not hide in the trainer room. When you are on property, you need to be present, not hiding behind the scenes. People need to see you because what the members are seeing. Uh oh, here comes another rookie newbie green trainer who's going to try to push selling on me, and then they're going to quit within a few months because that's the revolving door that members see. 90% of trainers quit within the first year. Look at the entry standards, read a textbook. Now you have to go out there and talk to people to get them to buy into your services. Well, guess what? That first person you talk to is not going to be out of your NASA Mace or ISSA textbook. You're not going to do an overhead squat on them. You have to ask them questions to see what their goals are. That's where the personality begins. They are buying you. So you need to be present and lead with a smile. You are walking up to everyone, giving compliments. You are the mayor of the town. You need to put in tons of hours to build a book of business. Those top trainers didn't show up when they were supposed to and leave when they were done. They went above and beyond, and so do you. Listen to podcasts, level up your anatomy, always be reading while you are there, smiling, shaking hands, great handshakes. Statistics are against you, so you have to prove them wrong. What did Kobe do back in the day? Practice was at 7 a.m. Was he getting there at 6:55? No. He's getting there at 4 a.m. First one to practice. Who was the first one to practice? Because whoever it was, I would get there earlier. That's why he is going to go down as one of the goats. And if you want to go down as a goat, greatest of all time, you have to be significant. You have to do the things that make you uncomfortable. Don't just clean up the gym. If your manager says clean up the gym, do it, but do it at 150% of capacity, better than they ever expected. Don't just keep your head down. Keep your head up. Observe where are a lot of people? Where's the traffic? Oh, these classes are full. I'm going to take all those classes. The cardio equipment's packed. I'm going to go walk around, observe what they're doing, their body language. I'm just going to be present. Enjoy the process. If you put pressure on yourself that you have to get clients, it's going to be challenging. Versus you're here to help people. And that's exactly what you can do. So walk around, be present, smile. Notice how I say smile a lot. I've been to so many equinoxes and lifetimes over the last 10 years. More than 50% of all their gyms, 182 at lifetime, 112 at Equinox. Majority of trainers do not smile. Resting bitch face, resting dick face. We don't look presentable. Why should someone come up and talk to you if you have your hands in your pockets and your heads down and you're frowning? Today I'm wearing some elf socks. If I'm at the gym, you're gonna walk up to me and say, those are some awesome socks. What are we training today? It's Tuesday, back and buys, what? And if they look at you and snarl, you smile and you walk away. That's it. You're not annoying people. So if that person has their hat down, headphones in, you're not waving your hand in front of them, hey, hey, look at me, look at me. No, you're just being present. Enjoy your career. If you want to turn this into a 20, 30-year career obsession, it begins now. Plant those seeds. Your mindset dictates everything. If you go into work today, oh, I got another floor shift. I hope I can change it out with someone. Negative versus I have five floor shifts this week. I'm gonna see if I can pick up three more. I'm gonna go to my manager and say, if anyone calls in sick or anyone doesn't want that early or late floor shift, give it to me. I'm all about it. I want every opportunity to be in front of people. What about a work-life balance? You just started your career. Find a lawyer who started their career that's gonna ask for a 30-hour work week. Yeah, right. They're doing a hundred plus. Find a basketball player who wants to become the best that's gonna do the bare minimum. Is it okay if I just shoot free throws for an hour a day? No, you suck at free throws, so you got to shoot all the freaking time. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds until your hands are bleeding. Those are the stories you hear about successful individuals, the hardships, not how, oh, I woke up at seven today and I took three hours to go to work, and then it was great. I had a little lunch break and I scrolled on social media. Oh, it's all sunshine and rainbows. I love being a trainer. It's the mindset. Your mindset needs to be I love what I do. I'm excited at this opportunity. Thank you, big man upstairs, if that's what you believe in, or the cosmos, or your aura and the stars, whatever. Be grateful for the opportunity to serve and help people move better, feel better, get results, get out of pain. And if you're not confident with that foundation in your free time, that's what you need to be absorbing. Learning as much as you can, mastering anatomy, 14 muscles around the knee, 17 around the shoulder. You don't know that, start there. Movement patterns, programming. Talk to five people. Go sit down and write hypothetical programs for them. If they were to turn around after you walk away and say, you know what, could you take me through a workout right now? Would you be able to design a program for them? Boom, right there on the spot. Okay, give me, give me 15 minutes to go ride out. I need a foam roll. I need, no, yeah, absolutely. What do we want to train? Chess, cool. Let's come over here. Quick little warm-up. Let's get after it. What's your PR? Add the weight, take them through one of the best experiences they've ever had. And if that's scary to you, then do a bunch of practice runs. Hypothetical avatars. Sit down with a notepad and look at someone walk up the stairs if you're an equinox. So they have three stories. Here's a guy in his 40s. Looks like he's gonna probably hit some arms. Watch what he does. Okay, he does bicep curls, tricep extensions. And then as you're doing your floor shift, you notice he leaves 90 minutes later, he just did arms. How could you hypothetically build a better arm program for him? I would start with some chin-ups, close grip bench press, do some ab work. I would do a CCA, pushing, triceps, pulling, biceps, compound movement first. After that, first CCA, I'm gonna do a bunch of isolation stuff because he wants specific arm work, strip curls, overhead tricep extensions, do some drop sets, get a burn, take him out of his comfort zone, isometric holds, doing things that he's never done before. So he thinks of you as the resource when it comes to a giant arm farm. If it's a lady in her 70s and she just goes over there and does machines, how would you train her? What would that look like? CCA, show her a core movement pattern on one of the machines. Start with a leg press or a hack squat or a Smith machine squat. Complement that with a machine press into some ab work or some isolations. If we did a push and a squat, now we're gonna do a pull and some unilateral stuff. Unilateral squat on the Smith machine into some T-bar rows, into some more ab stuff. Maybe they have a hip thrust machine. Do that with some shoulder presses. Do a little circuit at the end. Use the CCA because it's gonna make your life so much easier. Core movement pattern with their goal, opposite or lower or upper body for the second core and an accessory, something that they want. Three circuits, three rounds. You're gonna build your confidence. So no matter who the avatar is, you are prepared for it. To provide the excitement of that hour workout that they're blessed to work with you. Go down to the front desk, sit there, smile, read a book, get my book, volume two. As I said, there's an entire chapter on how to get clients, the 10 Rs of Getting Clients. While you're reading, you notice someone check in, look at them, smile, ask them what they're working out today. Hey Matt, if you have any issues, let me know. Shoulder, knee, back, I got you covered. I got some amazing warmups. Whenever you want to change the game and take it to that next level, let me know. I got you. Hey, Susan, have fun in your aerobics class. Let me know if you really want to level up and take it to the elite level, which I can help you with. Have a great workout. Bring people towels, smile. You are providing a service in those high-end environments. If you're at a YMCA, where is everyone hanging out? If you're at a crunch, it's more salesy. Don't be like every other aggressive trainer walking up to people. Have you used your session yet? Let me take you through a workout. And you just crush them because they've had that happen 30 other times. Be different. Smile. Oh my gosh, that goes so far. I would be willing to bet majority of trainers who quit, they're not smiling regularly. Just work on smiling. Go in the mirror, smile. It's gonna feel weird, but just do it. It's almost like you're the Joker with a smile. Constantly have a smile on your face. You are approachable. You're relatable because the gym is scary and everyone looks scary. They're in their head, they're thinking, I don't want to be here. This sucks. They're going through a bunch of negative turmoil. So when you're smiling, they see you as that positive ray of light. You're the beacon of success. That is you. Be present all the freaking time. And then when you get tired, work out. Go into the steam room, go in the sauna, bring your food to work. Don't be that trainer who lives two miles away. You go home and then you relax for four hours fucking around on social media, doing nothing. Eat at work, not smelly salmon bullshit where everyone's now pissed off at you. Have a bar, make smoothies, bring in bites and fun stuff. Do one of the pop-up events, put a bowl, have a bunch of Skittles in there. How many Skittles? You how many calories are in this? Maybe you make a burrito, freeze it, bring it in, put a cover on it so it doesn't smell. Ask how many calories are in there. This morning I didn't made a burrito with five eggs, a giant tortilla, 350 calories, and three one-ounce slices of cheese. 1,000 calories. I guarantee you, majority of people will be significantly off. Because the average person over consumes and they underestimate how many calories they're consuming. Americans today, 3,500 freaking calories are what we're getting. That's what linemen get. You're not a lineman, you want to lose weight. So let me educate you on calories. I'm a nutrition coach as well. Let's get you in for a complimentary assessment. I'll review your goals. We'll talk about nutrition, your workouts, your stress, your sleep. I'm gonna bring you to that next level. 2026 is your year, and I'm excited to help you. You need that energy and excitement in your voice.

SPEAKER_00: 12:29

Another day, you walk in, I'm so tired. Oh, there was traffic. Oh, my boyfriend said this. Uh Debbie Downer, don't be them.

SPEAKER_01: 12:42

Be that excitement. People look at you and go, Oh, I see something special about that young hunk, that young hunk at you are special. You need to believe that. And then rinse and repeat for 90 days. That's quarter one. At the end of quarter one, you will be significantly further than when you started today. And at the end of quarter one, do your Swift. What were your strengths? What were your weaknesses? How could you turn those weaknesses into strengths? Action items, things you can improve, implement, innovate. Don't focus on innovating until you have a full book of business. Get that 60, 30, 10 revenue split ready to go for 2026 because it is your year. Don't let those ants, automatic negative thoughts, hold you back from getting whatever the hell you want. Your career as a trainer is 100% in your hands. And you need to level up your confidence by being the most knowledgeable person there, getting to hands on learning opportunities, seminars, live workshops, asking questions, mentors, reading great books, always be learning, and you can absolutely turn your passion for fitness and career. It all begins by showing up. And remember, great smiles are better than resting, bitch face, resting, dick face, and keep showing up.