Why Personal Trainer Insurance is Beneficial For Professionals Like You
As a personal trainer, it’s your job to team up with people who are looking to become healthier, stronger, fitter, and overall happier versions of themselves. Naturally, you become personally involved with your clients, totally invested in their well-being, and whole-heartedly committed to seeing them succeed in everything they do—especially in their fitness goals.
Like any other job, your career is filled with ups and downs, successes and failures, and wins and losses, but it’s that driving factor—that act of helping another person be the best version of themselves they can be—that serves itself as the ultimate reward.
But as we said, your career isn’t just sunshine and success—no matter how much we all wish it was. Yes, your career as a personal trainer is inherently rewarding—but it also comes hand-in-hand with a lot of assumed, inherent risk, that’s largely unavoidable.
As a personal trainer, you’re working up close and personal with your clients in almost every way—guiding them, training them, communicating with them, and helping to lead them toward their ultimate fitness goals with as much support as possible.
But no matter how skilled, professional, or trained you are as a personal trainer, the fact of the matter remains—anytime you’re working closely with people, accidents are bound to happen.
Even if you’re taking every safety precaution, teaching your clients proper form, and monitoring them at all times, with humans, the improbable, unlikely, and unfortunate are all possible—and the last thing you want, as a personal trainer, is to be unprepared when something does happen.
When it comes down to it, all trainers are at risk of dealing with claims, allegations, and litigation—even if a client’s claim is unfounded, no fault of your own, or a totally random accident, you could be on the hook for dealing with the financial and legal ramifications of a client’s injury (or claim of injury).
But you can mitigate that risk in a professional, meaningful way by investing in professional liability insurance that’s specifically created for personal trainers to protect themselves.
If you’re unsure of what professional liability insurance is, why you need it, or how it could affect your career, you’re in the right place. We’ll be diving into some of the basic building blocks of liability insurance for personal trainers right here to help show you why personal trainer insurance is more than just a suggestion for success—it’s crucial to your career!
What Exactly is Personal Trainer Insurance?
Before we can dive into the most meaningful reasons personal trainers just like you need to invest in quality liability insurance, we need to start from scratch with a basic question—what the heck is personal trainer liability insurance, anyway?
We’ve got you covered.
Personal trainer liability insurance sounds complicated, but when you really break it down, it just means you’re investing in risk-management coverage where the insured party (that’s you!) is protected and relieved of financial responsibility and potential loss in the event of a claim or an allegation.
There are a few different types of liability insurance, too, but we’ll talk about the two most common—general liability insurance and professional liability insurance.
Professional liability insurance is a type of coverage that an insurer provides that safeguards you from claims of damages, injuries, negligence, and more that happens when you’re providing your service to a client—in other words, a claim that something bad happened or was caused by something you did. General liability insurance is a type of coverage that an insurer provides that safeguards you from injuries, damages, negligence, and more that occur not directly because of you but happened in relation to you.
So, which one do you need?
Spoiler alert: Both.
As a professional in the personal training industry, it’s important that you’re covered on all fronts, so investing in coverage that includes both professional liability (the type of insurance that provides protection when your client is injured during your service) and general liability (the type of insurance that protects against “slip-n-fall” types of injuries and damage) is your best bet.
If a client walks into your studio, trips on a rug, breaks their wrist, and then sues you, general liability will have your back. Alternatively, if a client is working out with you, picks up a weight incorrectly, sprains their wrist, and then sues you for fault, professional liability insurance will have your back.
See what we mean?
The Top 5 Reasons You Need Personal Trainer Liability Insurance
By this point, it might seem sort of obvious why personal trainer insurance is a solid idea—but there are so many reasons to invest in liability insurance that go far past the most prevalent. Liability insurance can be a huge boon to your personal trainer career, can ensure you’re never left in the dust, and can even show your clients how prepared and professional you are (especially when stacked against the uninsured competition).
1. Professional Liability Insurance is Going to Protect You—And You Alone
Investing in liability insurance is hugely important for personal trainers of every kind—whether you work for yourself, in a small studio, or for a large corporation.
If you’re running your own business, it’s likely that you’ve thought to invest in professional liability insurance before—and you should! That being said, trainers who work for gyms, salons, shops, spas, studios, and more don’t always consider themselves to be candidates for personal trainer liability insurance.
Why? Because it’s likely that they’re covered (somehow) under their employer’s insurance.
But here’s the thing—if you’re covered under your employer’s umbrella for insurance, that means your employer is the one holding the umbrella. You’re just standing underneath it, allowing it to cover you, waiting for a storm and anticipating that you won’t get wet. But when the storm does hit and allegations and claims do begin to rain down, that insurance is going to do what it was made to do—protect your employer. And sometimes, that can mean kicking you out from underneath the protection of the umbrella, leaving you to weather the downpour all by yourself.
With your own personal trainer liability insurance, you’re the one holding the umbrella. You’re the primary focus. And you’re the person who the insurance was designed to protect.
It’s great to be included in your employer’s coverage, but at the end of the day, you need insurance that’s going to put you, your interests, and your future first.
2. Professional Liability Insurance Safeguards Your Career
It sure does, but it also safeguards your reputation, your finances, your future, and more. Unfortunately, when claims and allegations happen, if you’re uninsured, you’re likely going to deal with the cost of litigation, the headaches associated with court, damages to your reputation, and even a gap in your career due to time spent dealing with these issues.
With liability insurance, you’re safeguarded from court costs, from hefty litigation fees, from not being able to serve your clients, and so much more. Liability insurance can save you money, time, and ensure there are no gaps in your career, meaning your future is firmly protected.
3. Professional Liability Insurances Shows That You’re Professional
There’s a common misconception out there that says only the unskilled, brand-new, uneducated, untrained, fraidy-cat personal trainers are investing in liability insurance because they’re “slimy” or “skeevy” and want to make sure they’re covered since they know something is going to go wrong.
But that’s not the case.
Forget everything you’ve heard about liability insurance and focus on this fact: Professionals are prepared for everything—the unlikely, the unknown, the improbably, the impossible.
By investing in liability insurance, you’re showing your clients in a very real, very tangible way, that you’re prepared no matter what. You’re not saying that you expect something bad to happen, but you are saying that you realize things happen, mistakes are made, and the unlikely can occur. And by ensuring your customers—regulars or potentials—that you’re prepared for any and every eventuality puts you leaps and bounds above your competition who’s simply building their business on a wing and a prayer, expecting nothing to go wrong.
4. Professional Liability Insurance Remedies Issues Quickly & Efficiently
The fact of the matter is, even if a claim that’s brought against you is totally unfounded, getting to the bottom of it is going to take time, money, and effort. The more time, money, and effort you’re throwing into a case or allegation, the longer you’re out of work and not building your business. The longer that happens, the longer you go without serving your clients, making money, and boosting your reputation.
It can be a total domino effect.
But liability insurance, especially when you partner with a quality, reputable company, can help save you tons of time, expedite your claims, and take care of issues much faster. In the end, this will get you back to your daily routine, your business, and your life quicker than you ever thought possible.
5. Professional Liability Insurance Gives You Peace of Mind
And you know what, you need that to do your job well. You can be the most skilled, educated, trained personal trainer out there, but if you’re operating and executing your business without any type of professional liability coverage, you’re likely always going to find yourself second-guessing, fearing the unknown, and distracted by what could be.
Personal trainer liability insurance mitigates that substantially—and for some people, it can totally erase that nagging feeling of doubt and uncertainty. We’re not saying that you should do things you know aren’t a good idea simply because you have insurance, but we are saying that investing in quality liability insurance can make an enormous difference in your confidence level. And as a trainer, you need to be confident in how you’re serving your clients.
Professional liability insurance will definitely protect you in the event of claims, allegations, and cases, but more importantly, it gives you the assurance you need to do your job to the best of your ability without fear, creeping doubt, or second-guessing your own skills.
When you invest in liability insurance, you invest in peace of mind for yourself, for your business, and for your future.
The Best Deserves the Best—Insure Fitness Group Has Your Back
Come on now, you knew there was probably a pitch coming at some point, right? All joking aside, we’re acknowledging our bias here—we’re obviously an insurance company and we obviously would love for you to partner with us for your liability insurance, but at the end of the day, all we really care about is that you’re covered in a meaningful, helpful way.
The reason we’re throwing ourselves into the ring? We genuinely have your best interest at the forefront—so much so that we designed unique liability insurance specifically for personal trainers. Why? Because as you know, cookie-cutter liability insurance just won’t cut it. Your line of work has special and distinct risks that generalized liability insurances just don’t have the support for.
Our personal trainer insurance coverage was custom-made for personal trainers just like you, covering all the activities you take part in on a daily basis (and trust us, we know that means a ton).
When you partner with us, you’ll receive all sorts of member-only benefits, an affordable rate (ahem, just $169 per year), and coverage that’s no joke. Our coverage includes features like:
- Liability cover for both general and professional occurrences
- Professional & General Liability Coverage: $1,000,000 per occurrence and $3,000,000 per year
- Personal Injury & Advertising Injury coverage
- $25,000 in identity protection
Ready to get covered? We’ve got your back.
