Knowing what to expect for a Pilates instructor salary can help you plan a successful career path. This post covers average earnings, key factors that impact pay, and tips to boost your income. Whether you’re just starting out or have experience, these insights will help you understand salary expectations and grow your career in Pilates. With the right approach, you can turn your passion for Pilates into a profitable and rewarding profession.
Average Pilates Instructor Salary
Salary data for Pilates instructors is extremely promising. While salaries do vary based on geographic area, demand, and other factors, across the US, high-demand instructors are able to command excellent rates. The popular job-posting site, Indeed.com, puts the average base salary for certified Pilates teachers at $34.83 an hour.
There’s a number of really exciting facts about this figure including:
- Additional compensation above a base salary: the base rate for the average salary does not include all the awesome benefits that are usually included in an overall compensation package for Pilates instructors. Pilates teachers across the U.S. are receiving additional benefits like employee discounts, flexible schedules, a free gym membership, health benefits, paid sick time, a 401K, and more.
- Double the national average: Statista.com pegs the average hourly wage in the U.S. at $15.35 an hour. That means Pilates instructors on average are making more than double the average hourly wage in the U.S.
- Chance to make even more: the $34.83 per hour is an average salary across all of the U.S. Different locations can command much higher than this with Indeed reporting a top-earning salary of $56.72 per hour in certain cities.
- Top earner among similar professions: Even taken on an average basis, Pilates instruction is one of the highest paid positions among similar health and wellness professionals in the U.S. A yoga instructor, for example, earns an average hourly wage of $29.85 while a personal trainer earns $22.41 on average.
With incredible popularity that continues to grow, Pilates instruction can make for a very lucrative career no matter what your parents say. By becoming certified and building a solid reputation, you increase your earnings potential in this extremely popular field.
Ways to Increase Your Earnings Potential as a Pilates Instructor
Once you’ve developed your career path as a Pilates instructor, it’s time to get serious about maximizing your career development to increase your earnings potential in the field. There’s several strategies you can adopt to help build your reputation and your personal brand as a top-notch Pilates instructor no matter where you’re located.
Strategies to utilize to help build on your earning’s potential include:
Focusing Your Offerings
Old school marketing used to rely on a “scattergun” approach where companies spent a lot of money trying to get their message in front of as many people as possible with the hopes that their target audience would be engaged in the process. Time has taught companies that this approach is both costly and not very effective. Take a cue from strategic marketing and target specific markets to focus your offerings. This will help you build up a great reputation with a singular mission and can help you really focus on areas that you actually love. Segmenting your market works like this, group your ideal clients into categories and then launch specific campaigns to get them engaged, with the ultimate goal of having them sign up for classes.
Market segments can be done a few different ways such as treating specific conditions (think Pilates for spine health or Pilates for post-Cancer patients), age, fitness level, or even particular Pilates routines. For example, if you truly love working with older clients, work to reach this market specifically. You can partner with assisted living facilities, gyms that offer programs like SilverSneakers®, and host workshops just for this segment. Over time, you’ll build a solid reputation within your specific niche, helping your suite of services stand out from the competition and building your brand as an authority in the space.
Getting Certified
Going ahead and getting your Pilates certification helps to provide both the educational foundation required to teach the many different forms of Pilates safely, it also sets your services apart. As a certified Pilates instructor, you are demonstrating to potential students that you’ve done the work to master tough Pilates certification courses. Most courses are taught with a blend of in-person and online learning that can really expand your knowledge in the practice of Pilates.
There are a number of really high-quality PIlates certification courses out there including through the Athletics and Fitness Association of America (AFAA) and Pilates Method Alliance (PMA). You can also earn specialist fitness certifications which include education modules on Pilates through the National Association of Sports Medicine (NASM), the American Council on Exercise (ACE), and others.
Asking For Referrals
One of the most powerful marketing techniques for your Pilates classes and a very localized level is through word-of-mouth. As you build your practice, you’re building dedicated students that see the value in the services you provide. These students are usually more than willing to share their good experience with others. You can help encourage this by incentivizing referrals. Consider an offer like a free or discounted class when a new referral signs up for classes to turn all of your students into some of your best brand evangelists.
Expanding Your Online Presence
These days just about every company has a web presence in order to reach customers. According to Pew Research, 9 out of 10 Americans own smartphones which means the first thing most potential students are doing when searching for new Pilates classes is to enter “Pilates instruction near me” into their search engine. If you don’t have an active and vibrant online presence, you’ll be missing out on these students to your competitors that do. A sweet added bonus to IFG’s pilates instructor insurance is a shiny, new professional website that comes ready to launch after you become a member.
Attending & Hosting Workshops or Retreats
Getting your name out there helps to solidify your brand and workshops are a great way to meet a lot of different Pilates-focused individuals at a single event. You’ll meet folks interested in classes, different vendors that can help build your service offering, and other like-minded Pilates instructors to help build your personal brand. As your confidence level grows, consider hosting workshops or even Pilates retreats which can command big profits for a short, intense period.
Protect What You’ve Built with Pilates Insurance
Building out your brand, developing your Pilates prowess, and strategizing how to up your game are all excellent ways to maximize your earnings potential in the industry. However, there’s one more piece of the puzzle that can spell long term success as a Pilates instructor.
Pilates insurance is your career-long protection that follows you wherever and however you choose to offer services. We’ll explore a few of the many ways that securing insurance coverage early can really pay huge dividends throughout your career as a Pilates instructor.
Benefits of getting Pilates insurance include:
- Liability protection: a liability is something the law says you are responsible for paying. This could mean an accident or injury that a student sustains while under your instruction in addition to a host of other unfortunate events. Pilates insurance through IFG provides stout liability protection from the three most common forms of liability with general liability, professional liability, and product liability protection.
- Rental damage coverage: almost all Pilates instructors rent space in order to provide their classes. This may be inside a gym, an independent studio, or some other space. If damages occur while you’re occupying the space, you can be left responsible for fixing them. Pilates insurance covers this, all the way up to $100,000.
- Stolen equipment coverage: Pilates requires an assortment of equipment to pull off a great class. When this is taken from you in a robbery-by-force, it can be devastating to you personally and financially. Covering our members for this unfortunate event, IFG includes all the way up to $1,000 with a low $250 deductible to replace what was stolen.
- Identity protection: more reliance on the web to run your Pilates business simply means more chances for identity thieves to compromise your private data. IFG includes up to $25,000 in identity restoration services with every policy.
- Member benefits: aside from all the great protections you get with Pilates insurance, there’s also a host of additional benefits that truly maximize the value for the investment. Awesome discounts, curated content, and more are all included with the cost of your Pilates insurance policy.
By getting insurance early, you’re helping yourself beat the odds should an unfortunate event ever come up. Even for the most practiced Pilates instructors, the risk remains that an accident or other unforeseen event could pop up unexpectedly. Without insurance, these events would require a Pilates instructor to pay any costs out-of-pocket.
The best part is, Pilates insurance with IFG takes just a few minutes to sign up, check out, and enjoy complete coverage.
