Or Have We Given Away One of Our Biggest Commercial Opportunities?

Over the past decade, one of the biggest shifts in fitness hasn’t been technology, AI or budget gyms. It’s been the move from employed personal trainers to freelance models. Walk into most commercial gyms today and you’ll find trainers running their own businesses, paying rent to the club and working independently rather than as part of the team.

It’s easy to see why. For operators, freelance PT removes financial risk. Payroll falls, rental income is predictable and management is simpler because trainers build their own client base. After COVID especially, many operators understandably looked to cut fixed costs.

On the surface, it’s a sensible decision. But the more I look at the numbers, and the more clubs I work with, the more I wonder whether we’ve given away one of our biggest revenue opportunities.

The Numbers Don’t Add Up for the Club

Take a typical example: six freelance PTs each paying £400 a month rent. That’s £2,400 a month guaranteed. Now suppose each averages around £3,500 a month in PT revenue, which is realistic for an established trainer. Together they generate around £21,000 a month, and the club still gets £2,400.

To be clear, great coaches deserve to earn good money. Personal training changes lives. But it’s worth asking: who created the opportunity?

The club invested in the building, equipment, marketing, membership base, reception team, utilities, cleaning and maintenance. Without that, there’s no platform for the trainer. Yet once rent is paid, most of the commercial upside goes to someone else.

That’s how many operators unknowingly cap their own earnings. Once every PT space is rented, income stops growing. If a trainer doubles their client base or builds a waiting list, that’s great for them, but it barely changes the club’s income. Imagine telling your sales team that once they’ve hit a certain number of memberships, every extra sale belongs to them. It sounds absurd, but that’s effectively the model many gyms have accepted for PT.

The Real Opportunity Is Retention

For me, the bigger issue isn’t revenue. It’s member retention. Too many clubs treat PT as a secondary income stream when it’s one of the most powerful retention tools available. Members who are coached attend more, get better results, build stronger relationships with staff and become more invested in their journey. They’re less likely to cancel and more likely to refer. PT doesn’t just generate coaching income; it protects recurring membership revenue.

Who Owns the Customer Relationship?

When a member achieves an incredible transformation, they rarely tell friends how great the gym is. They tell them how amazing their PT is. Their loyalty sits with the individual, not the business. If that trainer leaves, the client often goes too, and you lose both in one go.

An employed coaching model changes that. The trainer still gets the recognition, but their success becomes the club’s success, and every transformation builds the reputation of your business rather than an independent brand operating inside it.

Consistency, Standards and Marketing

Not all freelance trainers are the same. Some are exceptional ambassadors who embrace the club culture and contribute far beyond their own clients. Others arrive, train their sessions and leave. Standards, consultations and communication vary, and the member experience becomes fragmented. When coaching sits inside the business, the club owns the systems, standards and customer journey, so the experience is consistent whoever the coach is.

Marketing becomes easier too. Clubs rarely invest in promoting freelance trainers because every extra client benefits someone else’s business. When coaching belongs to the club, transformation stories, specialist programmes, weight-loss packages, strength coaching and Small Group Personal Training become products worth promoting, because every sale adds to your profit.

Small Group PT may be the biggest opportunity of all. Instead of selling one hour to one person, you sell it to four, six or eight. Clients still get expert coaching, trainers earn well and the club’s margins improve significantly. These products are far easier to launch when coaching is controlled by the business rather than several independent operators with different priorities.

What About the Risk?

The obvious counterargument is risk: employed trainers mean payroll, and there’s no guarantee they’ll build a client base. Fair, but it doesn’t have to be all or nothing.

Many clubs recruit fitness instructors with the ambition of developing them into full-time coaches. While they grow their PT business, they teach classes, deliver inductions, coach on the gym floor, carry out programme reviews, make retention calls and support sales. You’re not just employing a PT. You’re employing someone whose job is to improve every stage of the member journey while building a profitable coaching business over time.

I’ve seen how powerful this can be. At Holmes Place we regularly generated around £50,000 a month in PT revenue. Yes, it was a large 8,000-member club, but it showed what’s possible when coaching is part of the club’s strategy. Later, at Fitness Space, around 40% of total club revenue came from one-to-one and Small Group PT. Almost half the business was driven by coaching, not memberships.

Is Freelance PT Helping Your Business Reach Its Potential?

I’m not saying the freelance model is wrong. There are outstanding freelance trainers who build brilliant businesses, deliver life-changing results and are fantastic ambassadors for their clubs. For some operators, it’s still the right decision.

But it’s worth asking whether we accepted the model because it reduced short-term risk, without fully considering the long-term opportunity cost. The question isn’t whether freelance PT works. It’s whether it’s helping your business reach its full potential.

If coaching can be one of your largest revenue streams, strongest retention tools, most effective marketing assets and biggest drivers of member success, maybe it’s time to ask whether it should stay someone else’s business, or become one of your greatest strengths.

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Want help putting this into practice in your gym? Black Raccoon Consulting are gym and fitness business consultants with over 25 years’ industry experience in sales, marketing, member retention and operations. Book your free 45-minute business call or explore our services.

Ryan Charlesworth, Founder, Black Raccoon Consulting