Burnout is a common challenge for personal trainers, stemming from irregular hours, emotional load, and pressure to maintain a certain image. By recognizing the signs and adopting self-care habits like setting boundaries, prioritizing personal health, and embracing work-life balance, trainers can recharge and refocus. Treating yourself with the same care as your clients ensures long-term success and well-being.
Key Takeaways
- Recognize Burnout: Look for signs like exhaustion, procrastination, and decreased creativity.
- Prioritize Self-Care: Schedule workouts, rest, and recovery for yourself.
- Set Boundaries: Limit client communication to avoid overcommitment and foster independence.
- Embrace Work-Life Balance: Streamline work processes, say no when needed, and pursue outside hobbies.
- Invest in Growth: Continue education to keep training fresh and enjoyable.
Have you ever felt burned out? I’m not talking about the burn you feel at the end of a set. This kind of burn goes beyond the gym, the kind that leaves you exhausted, frustrated, and unmotivated. According to the NSCA, burnout affects 1 in 3 fitness professionals (Snarr & Beasley, 2021).
In a career where a major focus is bodily and mental improvement, we as trainers don’t always practice what we preach. We pride ourselves on looking out for those we work with – talking them through hard days, pushing them to do what we know they are capable of, and helping them feel good in their skin.
However, all the good we do comes with a price, and unfortunately for us, that cost is usually our own care. How often do you cut a lunch break short (or skip it entirely) to meet with a client? Do you spend time after work pouring over programs or re-hashing conversations to figure out how to solve a client’s problem? If any of these apply to you, you’re not alone, and you’re in the right place. Join Sara Jackson, a long-time fitness professional specializing in training and education for personal trainers, and get to the bottom of burnout – how to recover from it and kick the habit for good.
Recognizing and Preventing Burnout in Personal Trainers
Let’s talk about the anatomy of burnout. What does it look like, feel like, and sound like? Burnout is physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion. It may be as simple as not feeling creative in programming or energized during a
session. It can also look like skipping personal workouts, procrastinating, and the infiltration of bad habits.
Before we go any further, I want you to know one thing: getting burned out as a fitness professional does NOT make you a bad trainer, coach, or instructor. It simply means you’re human. Your body and mind are not made of the steel and iron you lift and that is okay. You are something much greater. You are the mentor teaching people how to transform their lives, and that starts with understanding your own. Fitness professionals face unique challenges that make us more susceptible to burnout. Some of those challenges include:
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- Non-typical hours and income – When you have early morning, late night, or back-to-back sessions, you have to be on your game throughout every part of the day. Without set schedules, downtime and rest are inconsistent. Trainer pay is also often erratic. One month may be packed with clients, and the next is packed with cancellations. This makes budgeting a challenge and is a top reason trainers leave the industry.
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- Pressure to stay fit or look a certain way – I once heard someone in the industry say “Our bodies are our business cards.” While that certainly sounds like a great marketing tactic, it can be an exhausting task to maintain peak physical condition all the time. This is all the more true with social media and its fluid idea of what the perfect body looks like. If we’re always changing the way our body looks to fit trends or what we think clients want us to look like, we’re not staying true to ourselves or our own goals.
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- Emotional Load – A top comment I hear from trainers across the country is “I feel like I’m a therapist as much as a trainer.” While we aren’t qualified to give life advice, trainers often hear the ups and downs of their clients’ lives – from what they had for breakfast to the most intimate details of their lives. Without boundaries or the ability to remove ourselves from clients’ emotions, we may unknowingly take their stress home.
These are just three of the many reasons a trainer may get burned out. The good news is that all of them can also be moderated or eliminated through personal trainer self-care. See our blog on avoiding personal trainer burnout for more information.
Self-Care Habits to Recharge and Refocus
Whether you’re feeling burned out or not, you still need self-care. Several years ago, I began experiencing burnout without realizing it. I had a corporate-level career with a top international fitness franchise, working 40 hours a week and traveling several times a month. A year or so into that position, I missed having personal interactions with clients, so I began teaching classes at specialty gyms with unique programs. Within a short time, I found myself teaching at 3 gyms in addition to my day job. I enjoyed every one of these positions. The class formats and atmospheres were different and the whole thing was great, until it wasn’t. I found my classes slowly becoming less creative and realized that I wasn’t even getting to use the facilities I was working at. After a particularly difficult day, I decided to take a hard look at the life I had created for myself. I had memberships at great, high-end gyms, but no time to use the memberships. I had plenty of clients and students, but no time to focus on them individually. But most of all, I had a schedule full of things I loved, but no time for myself. I realized that I was burned out and needed to restructure what I was doing and how I did it. I made some significant changes and dove into self-care to nurture my own well-being and decide what I really wanted out of life.
I recommend doing a simple activity once a month to check in with yourself and see how you can better care for your body and mind. Get out a piece of paper and imagine that you are one of your clients. Answer the following questions in the third person, not judging or embellishing the answers. You value straight answers from your client, and you owe yourself the same respect.
How would you rate your physical health on a scale of 1-10 (including exercise, rest, sleep, and nutrition)? Describe your physical health in a sentence or two.
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- How would you rate your mental & emotional health on a scale of 1-10 (including motivation, resilience, happiness, relationships, and social interactions)? Describe your mental & emotional health in a sentence or two.
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- How do you feel your overall health is on a scale of 1-10? Describe your current life in a few sentences, including recent successes and challenges.
Once you have the answers to these questions, feel free to write down any other thoughts that come to mind. Then step back and look at the big picture. Remember that you’re looking at a client, one who has come to you for help and trusts that you will treat them with kindness and respect. What patterns or trends do you notice? What do you think could help improve this person’s health? Start brainstorming ideas of your own and find help in the following ideas.
9 Powerful Self-Care Ideas Every Trainer Should Try
PHYSICAL HEALTH
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- Prioritize your own health first. Set goals of your own, ones that aren’t swayed by others in the gym. Make an appointment with yourself and keep it, just like you would with any other client.
Pro Tip: If possible, exercise somewhere besides where you work. When you work out where you work, people will inevitably seek you out and want to talk, taking away from your focus and your session.
When I was a new personal trainer, I did all my workouts at the gym where I trained. It was a great way to talk to prospective clients, but it took away from my personal time. To combat this, I started working out at a gym where no one knew who I was. I kept my head down, headphones on, and focused on myself. It has been one of the greatest kindnesses I’ve given myself as a trainer. Reclaiming your gym time will help you remember your “why” and find your love for fitness again.
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- Rest and recover – for real! Schedule a massage or a yoga class; foam roll or commit to an actual stretch session. Choose a rest day and really show up for it. A fun way to enjoy a rest day is to write a list of favorite recovery activities and commit to only doing the things on that list. Take recovery seriously, remembering that the phrase “If you don’t make time for your wellness, you will be forced to make time for your illness” applies to rest too (Sunada, 2019).
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- Enjoy activities outside of fitness. Many of us entered the fitness industry because we enjoy exercise. Even when play becomes work, and our work is to play, we still need other activities to create a well-rounded life. Look for social interactions and other activities outside of your typical training routine. Try a new activity like rock climbing or roller skating or an entirely new hobby such as pottery or learning an instrument. Adding variety to your day can help break up the seemingly endless stream of training and programming.
MENTAL HEALTH
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- Set boundaries with clients. In the age of technology, social media, and digital coaching, boundaries seem almost non-existent. We’ve all seen advertisements for trainers offering 24/7 support to their clients, which isn’t healthy for either party. If we are always on-call for clients, it makes them feel dependent on us. It becomes easier for them to ask us for a solution rather than solving it on their own. Limiting your communication to set times encourages rest for you and independence for your clients.
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- Practice mindfulness and stress management techniques. These are skills you can develop and practice during work hours, since most of us may not be able to step away from our jobs and take a sabbatical to recover from burnout. Learn breathing techniques, meditation, and grounding methods to help you stay focused in the present moment and manage stress more effectively.
Bonus: These are great skills to teach your clients too!
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- Stop being codependent on your clients. This recommendation comes from IDEA Personal Trainer Institute 2022 presenter Tasha Edwards. She discusses how we can become dependent on our clients – financially and emotionally. When we are facing financial difficulty, we may (even unknowingly) push clients for more sessions or packages to boost our income.
When we’re stressed, it is easier to feel that our job is threatened when clients make significant progress. We might catch ourselves encouraging their dependence on us, rather than teaching them the skills to be independent. Choose instead to help clients learn and grow so that they invite others to work with you as well. Create multiple income sources so that you are not entirely dependent on client work.
WORK-LIFE BALANCE
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- Plan and prioritize your work. One key to good self-care is to work smarter, not harder. As trainers, we believe in hard work, but smart work will often yield better results. We often burn out when processes aren’t streamlined and take up unnecessary mental effort. If you have control over your programming, craft an exercise library from which you can create programs. I did this during my first few years of training, and still use it today. I have basic exercises, programs, and skills that I use as a jumping-off point for my clients. Based on their goals and health status, I can pull out a program, then add, subtract, and customize it for the client.
Remember that you do not have to recreate the wheel with every program. Create basic programs for several types of clients, then modify each according to the individual’s needs. A second important part of self-care through better planning is to eliminate unnecessary or non-money-making activities. Prioritize your time and focus on the things that will build your business or clientele and let go of the small, unneeded things causing you stress.
Catering to people’s schedules has become an industry-wide problem, as we have all said yes to that one weekend training session or that single workout outside of regular hours. Those one-time occasions then take over our schedule and our lives are morphed into fragmented days. If a client isn’t willing to make changes to their schedule, they’re also likely not ready to make changes to their lives. Choose high-quality clients who respect you and your schedule.
Have a prepared answer for clients you can’t or don’t want to work with. Practice your scripted answer so it becomes as easy to answer no as it is to say yes. If you can, direct them to another fitness professional who has availability or is a better fit. Politely decline by saying something like the following: “Thank you for reaching out regarding training. Unfortunately, I am not taking on any new clients at this time. However, I can recommend you to (insert name), who is a great trainer with the specialty you’re looking for.” If the potential client is simply not a good fit, let them know why. Often, when people are rejected by a trainer, they assume it is because they are unfixable or not worthwhile. Kindly redirect them by telling them “I think your goal of (insert goal here) is great. I want to see you succeed in that goal. While I think we could find success in working together, I would like to recommend you to (insert name here). I believe their skills and training style will be a better fit to help you achieve your goals.”
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- Invest in continuing education. Care for your body and mind by continuing to learn – for your benefit and your clients’. Gaining new skills can improve your training and add variety to your workouts and programs. This removes some of the monotony that can come from training the same clients day after day. Take courses that you are interested in personally and professionally and look for new niches to explore. See our blog on top personal trainer certifications for more information.
Learn more: For a great continuing education course, listen to Tasha Edwards’ presentation on Self-Care for Personal Trainers, available through IDEA Health & Fitness Association.
Conclusion
When it comes to self-care for personal trainers, each of us will be unique in our needs. Some may need to focus more on their own training. Others might need to scale back and focus more on rest and recovery. We can learn to set boundaries, invest in ourselves, and have more self-compassion. Good self-care will not eliminate hard days, but it will enhance your ability to meet stress, clients, and life in a positive and energized manner.
Another great way to care for yourself is by having personal trainer insurance, like coverage from Insure Fitness Group. It gives you peace of mind, knowing you’re protected, so you can focus fully on your clients and your own well-being without the extra worry.
If I could leave you with one final tip for personal trainer self-care, it would be to simply treat yourself as your favorite client. Show up for yourself, listen without judgment, and do what you know is best, because this is one client you know better than anyone. Take a deep breath, and commit to starting your self-care program today!
Guest blog written by Sara Jackson.
Sara Jackson loves helping others live and move in a way that empowers and uplifts them. She encourages people to connect to their bodies and the world around them through fitness, nutrition, and mind-body work. She provides workshops, content, and consulting to individuals and businesses to foster growth and improve well-being. Sara is a lifelong student whose education includes a B.S. in Exercise Science, 200-Hour CYT, Certified Life Coach, and Certified Personal Trainer, among many others. She has worked on the corporate level of an international fitness group, trained other fitness professionals across the U.S., and worked with numerous fitness start-ups and wellness businesses around the globe to promote whole person wellness. When she’s not in the gym teaching, she’s probably outside somewhere finding her soul up in the mountains or out in the desert. Connect with her on her website at www.theriseandflow.com.
References:
Snarr, R. L., & Beasley, V. L. (2021). Personal, Work-, and Client-Related Burnout Within Strength and Conditioning Coaches and Personal Trainers. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, Publish Ahead of Print. https://doi.org/10.1519/jsc.0000000000003956
Sunada, J. (2019). The Ripple Effect of Teacher Wellness: Taking Time Out for Your Wellbeing – Thompson Educational Publishing, Inc. Thompson Educational Publishing, Inc. http://thompsonbooks.com/kto12/h/huddle/ripple-effect/
