The fitness industry is incredibly competitive, but one of the best ways to stand out from the crowd is to find your personal trainer niche. You’ll not only sail past your competitors, but you’ll be training the clients you want to work with.
In this post, we’ll cover everything you need to know about the ins and outs of finding your personal trainer niche.
Table Of Contents:
- What is a Personal Trainer Niche?
- 4 Steps To Find Your Personal Trainer Niche
- Types Of Personal Trainer Niche To Consider
- Next Steps to Consider
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Before You Go!
What Is A Personal Training Niche?
A personal trainer niche is a section of the market you’ve tailored your services and personal training skills towards.
For instance, some personal trainers choose to work exclusively with athletes or those who are at the peak of physical fitness, whereas others tailor their services towards those looking to lose weight.
Most of choosing a personal training niche comes down to what you’re interested in, what you’re passionate about, and what you feel you can make an impact by doing. Let’s break down each step along the way and show how you can turn the areas of fitness you’re passionate about into a lucrative career.
4 Steps To Find Your Personal Trainer Niche
Step 1: Discover Your Passion
Going into fitness, you’ll likely have an idea of the kind of training you enjoy. You can then use this as motivation to create the service you want to provide for your clients.
To begin, you should ask yourself:
- Which areas of fitness do I particularly enjoy?
- What relevant experience do I have?
- What services can I provide that a client would want?
Ultimately, you have to give clients a reason to choose you, and following your passion can help you achieve that.
If you are struggling with this, or are unable to use experience as a tool, get in the field and try new things. The only way to find what you enjoy the most is by dipping your toe into a little bit of everything and seeing what suits you, your lifestyle and the people who you like to work with most.
Step 2: Communicate Your Niche
Once you’ve identified the area of fitness you’re most passionate about, you need to find a way to showcase this to potential clients. If you present lots of ideas without a clearly defined direction, your potential clients won’t have a reason to choose you over others.
If you’re struggling to write a clear summary of your niche to show potential clients, try to make clear the following:
- What you’re good at? This can include the things you’re passionate about, as well as any additional certifications you possess. For instance, you could’ve completed training to become a running coach or have a qualification in sports nutrition.
- Your experience. Any relevant experience in a fitness environment should be something you mention, especially if you’ve worked in multiple different areas or you’re experienced with personal training. You could even make your time in the role a focal point. “10+ years in the fitness industry” or “Worked as a 1-to-1 personal trainer for 5 years” are great examples of this.
- Why you? Mention a selling point about yourself. It’s vital to remember that clients are paying not only for your services but also for your time and your company. If you’ve adopted a specific style of training (like military-style sessions or a more holistic approach), this is a key piece of information that clients will want to know.
Check out this example of a personal trainer whose niche perfectly aligns with all the criteria we’ve mentioned above.
In a few short paragraphs, they’ve explained their background, the clients they’re aiming to work with, their level of experience in the industry, and touched on how they plan to provide the results these clients are working towards.
Step 3: Do Some Market Research
Market research helps you ensure that the audience for your niche actually exists. This is particularly important if you live in an area that is saturated with personal trainers, and even more so if you are choosing a niche that is popular such as weight loss.
For example, say you live and work in Liverpool and this is where you are setting up your business. Finding out your top competition in your niche can be as easy as a Google search.
As you can see, a Google search brings up the top competitors in your area within your niche. We’ve used postnatal personal training as our example, but this applies to any fitness niche you choose.
You should research your key competitors and ensure you are going further than their efforts to make yours stand out. Visit their websites, check out what they offer, and learn more about how their services meet the requirements of the clients they’re targeting.
Moreover, investigate if there are gaps in their service that you can fill with your niche. Your research should highlight what you can provide that others nearby don’t, and how you can build on what they offer to provide a more comprehensive service.
For instance, if the top result in your chosen fitness niche doesn’t offer a key service (like nutrition or sports massage), you could outrank them by providing a more comprehensive package for potential clients.
Step 4: Identify Your Ideal Client
Finding your target market for personal training clients means looking for a particular profile of the client that you want to train.
To identify your ideal client, you should ask yourself:
- What is their gender?
- What is their age?
- What is their occupation?
- What exercise experience do they have?
- Do they have any health issues that could be improved by exercise?
All of these are things you would find out during the PT consultation process and are standard across any target market.
Next, you need to determine why they want a personal trainer. This is when your blurry image of a target audience starts to become clearer and a profile comes together. Let’s create an example:
- Gender: Female
- Age: 35 – 45
- Occupation: High level occupations e.g. business manager
- Exercise experience: Basic level / beginner
- Health: No serious implications but wants to become healthier and lose some weight
With this information, you can start to create a profile by specifying a population of these women who would need or want your help.
For example, some reasons they might want or need your help is:
- They lead a busy life looking after kids and their business
- They’re a single mum and struggle to find time or motivation to exercise while having a successful career
- They want to become fitter so that they can do more activities with their children
With this level of information, you can do more research and create a profile that would apply to a wide audience while still being niche enough for you to hone in on one area of fitness and narrow down your search for a particular clientele.
Types Of Personal Trainer Niche To Consider
Senior Personal Training
Senior or elderly personal training involves training individuals who are classed as elderly, usually 65 and older.
This is a great market to sell to as you will have a substantial audience to cater to and, with the correct education behind you, they can expect great results.
When training the older generation, you’ll need to completely adapt your training style, incorporating lower impact workouts, as well as designing routines to better accommodate any limitations.
You could utilise gentle, low-impact exercises (like aerobics or different types of yoga), and build routines that allow for repeated movements that strengthen and reinforce joints and muscles.
Example – Motivate PT
MotivatePT offers packages and sessions that combine stretching and movement exercises with strength and flexibility training, specifically designed for the elderly to keep moving.
Qualifications
If you’ve chosen to make senior personal training your fitness niche, we’d strongly advise qualifying in Level 3 Exercise Referral, as well as Level 4 in Lower Back Pain Management.
The exercise referral process provides you with an insight into how exercise can be a functional way for those with limited mobility to get back on their feet. Meanwhile, a Level 4 in Lower Back Pain Management means you’ll also be able to help protect against any aches and pains that your clients may experience during more intensive sessions.
You’ll also gain a much clearer picture of how exercise can affect the joints and skeletal system, as well as exercise you can incorporate into sessions to aid recovery and pain management.
Related Niches
Personal training for the elderly is one of the broader personal trainer niche markets, so within this, we’ve outlined a few suggestions on specific demographics you could target as you focus your niche:
- Menopausal women
- Older athletes and sportspeople
- Those with age-related conditions, like osteoporosis or arthritis
- Over a certain age range (such as 65+, 70+, etc.)
Overall, personal training for seniors is a popular bracket to place yourself in. Though it still sounds quite broad, you can always narrow it down further to create a personal training target market that is even more niche.
Personal Training For Disabled People
Another option when searching for a fitness niche to target is to cater to disabled people or those with motor difficulties that can limit their range of movement.
Providing this service can be incredibly rewarding. Everyone deserves to benefit from a healthy lifestyle regardless of the challenges they face, yet specialist trainers in this area aren’t as common as they should be.
Depending on the severity of the disability, people who are unable to conduct particular movements should be treated with extra care, and their specific disability needs to be taken into consideration.
This specific skillset often comes with experience, but it’s one that a personal trainer in that niche can utilise to provide clients with the best possible service, both for rehabilitation and for building confidence.
Example – RMR Rehabilitation
Tony from RMR Rehabilitation is a great example of a personal trainer focused on supporting disabled people.
Immediately, we understand that his personal trainer niche is to work on adaptive programmes, providing support and rehabilitative work, as well as a comprehensive understanding of the clients he works with.
Qualifications
Should you opt for this personal trainer niche, we’d strongly advise augmenting your skills with a Level 3 in Exercise Referral. This allows you to better provide for those clients who have limited mobility and understand the best ways to accommodate their needs.
Related Niches
With approximately 11 million disabled people in Britain, it’s likely that many of those with a disability struggle with finding a personal trainer that is willing to go above and beyond. But if you’re a personal trainer who specialises in training the disabled, you are creating the inclusivity that is needed.
Of course, not all disabilities require the same approach. This is where you’ll need to fully pinpoint the service you want to provide within your fitness niche. You could choose to specialise in rehabilitation and rebuilding muscle after accidents, or aiding those in a wheelchair to build their upper body strength.
Prenatal and Postnatal Personal Training
Treating women both during and after pregnancy is a huge personal trainer niche, and one that has already had significant interest and success. However, despite its popularity, it’s an ideal fitness niche for a few reasons.
Everyone experiences pregnancy and maternal care differently and it can take a huge toll on the body. The majority of those who choose to specialise in the health and fitness niche will have some experience of being pregnant, and therefore have an insider view of the difficulties that their clients could be experiencing.
If you’re part of that demographic, then you’ll likely already have some idea of what training would be beneficial, as well as any additional specialisms that could aid in recovery and enhance the sessions you deliver.
Qualifications
If you’re looking to provide tailored support to pre- and postnatal clients, our advice would be to complete a qualification in Level 4 Back Pain Management. This is an area of the body that is undoubtedly going to feel a huge amount of strain during and after pregnancy, and expertise in this area can offer significant benefit to your clients.
Personal Training For Professional Athletes
If you have a passion for competitive sport or have been an athlete yourself, you may want to consider personal training for professional athletes. This requires constructing an intense training programme, as well as comprehensive knowledge on human anatomy.
A personal trainer for athletes is not to be confused with an athletic trainer with a sports medicine background, however. An athletic trainer is focused on the athlete’s injuries or strains, whereas you as the personal trainer will coach your client in a gym setting with the aim of improving their health and fitness in line with their goals.
This could include their technique in lifting, their cardiovascular endurance, or their balance and coordination. The components of fitness you utilise in the training you provide will depend on what their sport requires.
Qualifications
The qualifications you need will depend on the specific type of athletes you focus on. For instance, someone who opts for bodybuilding as their specific fitness-related niche could also consider Level 4 Nutrition Courses as well as a way to differentiate themselves from competitors.
Building a better understanding of the role food plays in effectively fuelling the body, as well as how best to provide for those looking to build significant muscle, are both key areas of expertise.
Related Niches
Many different disciplines will utilise personal training to reach their peak performance, but here’s a few suggestions on personal trainer niches you could explore:
- Bodybuilding
- Athletics Training
- Powerlifting and Strongman Training
- Marathon Running
- Training ahead of major competitions (like CrossFit meets or track and field events)
Personal Training For Diabetic Clients
We’ve already touched on how you could choose to work predominantly with those who have a disability or lack mobility in key muscle groups.
You could also choose to work alongside those who might struggle to find a personal trainer due to specific medical conditions or chronic illnesses that inhibit their ability to fully engage with more typical personal training sessions.
Perhaps one of the most notable of these is diabetes.
Characterised by high blood sugar levels that can cause serious complications, both Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes are common across the UK, with statistics estimating that almost 5 million people in the UK alone suffer with the condition.
It’s for this reason that one of the most important (not to mention most profitable) personal trainer niches is working with diabetic clients and understanding their specific needs when it comes to fitness.
Qualifications
With this niche, additional qualifications are an absolute necessity. The Level 4 in Diabetes Control provides a wealth of knowledge and expertise that can allow you to adapt dietary ideas and exercises to accommodate diabetic clients.
We’d also strongly advise building a firm knowledge of nutrition by completing a Level 4 Sports Nutrition course. Understanding macros is a key component of creating diet plans for your diabetic clientele, as well as allowing you to work around any foods that could potentially be harmful.
Personal Training For Weight Loss
Weight loss is usually one of the key reasons a client hires a personal trainer and it presents perhaps one of the most popular niche fitness markets.
Although this may not seem like a niche due to the fact it has such a high demand, becoming a personal trainer who solely puts their time and effort into training clients with this goal will make you an expert over time.
Prospective clients who have weight loss as their main goal will appreciate the fact that you have extensive knowledge and experience in weight management before signing up with you.
This is particularly important when it comes to clients with conditions that make it difficult to lose weight, like PCOS or Type 2 diabetes. Realistically, they’re going to hire an experienced trainer over someone who doesn’t have this background.
Qualifications
Alongside your core PT qualifications, we’d advise opting for a Level 4 in Sports Nutrition, as this will allow you to dispense more formal advice to your clients. It will also equip you with a comprehensive understanding of how to effectively fuel the body.
Check out our complete guide on whether personal trainers can give nutrition advice if you’re looking for further information on how this qualification can revolutionise your approach to training clients in your fitness niche.
You could also opt to focus on those who are more significantly overweight, or that haven’t yet ventured into fitness, by qualifying with a Level 4 in Obesity and Weight Management. You’ll not only learn the reasoning behind clients that struggle to lose weight and target these problems specifically, but you’ll be able to confidently work with those within this demographic.
Related Niches
With a personal trainer niche that’s as broad as weight loss, you’ll need to find a specific area to focus on. This could be:
- Those with medical conditions that inhibit their weight loss ability (like PCOS)
- Obese or overweight clients
- Clients looking for quick results
- Clients looking for longer-term, sustained weight loss
With each approach, you’ll need to ensure that the services you offer are applicable to each client’s individual goals and needs.
Personal Training For Boot Camp Members
Boot camp workouts are popular, hugely intensive fitness programs, and most people who are interested in fitness are aware of what a session consists of.
This intensity attracts a specific crowd of people, and each class often has a core of members who enjoy these high impact workouts. This popularity means that you can effectively find a personal trainer niche by combining this intensity with your 1-to-1 sessions.
With this, you’ll be able to narrow down not only your passion but your clients too, especially if you’re already passionate about intensive sessions like cross training or HIIT.
Boot camp training requires more than your average personal training session. The intensity means that your motivation and encouragement must be effective, as well as your enthusiasm for what you’re doing.
You should also work on your personal training communication skills – this rigorous niche in fitness training will require you to communicate effectively, quickly and with confidence.
Next Steps to Consider
Now that you’ve discovered the fitness niche that’s right for you, the last thing you want is to waste resources and time. This is often what sinks personal trainer niche ideas before they can start.
Our advice is to be organised with your time and dedicate it to discovering your target audience and directing your advertising to them. You want to reach those who are a part of your personal trainer niche, so to do this you can:
- Join online communities. Finding groups online that allow you to post about your personal training niche can be an excellent way to start getting your name out there while still retaining the central focus you established when conducting your market research.
- Find people in your gym. This can be done by visiting classes that relate to your chosen fitness niche, walking the gym floor, or generally networking with others in the gym to find out how best to target the clients you want to reach.
- Offer free consultations. Providing free consultations or initial meetings is a great way to entice clients in your niche to try out your services.
- Paid advertising on social media. Social media advertising is often highly targeted, and appears to those who’ve already shown interest in your personal trainer niche and (crucially) the kind of services you’re offering.
Each of these steps play a pivotal role in starting your fitness business, and offer simple yet effective ways to secure those first few clients. For a more in-depth look at how to start marketing your personal training services, take a look at our complete guide to personal trainer marketing.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Are The Characteristics Of A Successful Fitness Niche?
A successful niche isn’t just measured by how much money you make, but also if the correct audience is coming in and if they’re receiving the service they need.
Though you’re undoubtedly looking to make a stable living, picking a personal trainer niche is a way to carry something that you care about into your career while still making it profitable.
So, while success could be measured by your income, it shouldn’t be the primary focus if you’ve opted for a specific fitness niche. Instead, you can measure your success through:
- The amount of clients you have. Ultimately, this should always be a measure of your success in a chosen fitness niche. It shows that you’re attracting the right kind of clients, as well as understanding your target audience.
- Your experience in the area. Another way to determine just how successful you are in your personal trainer niche is your level of experience in that area. More clients and more business equals more experience, as well as a greater level of expertise with which to plan your sessions.
- Contacts and leads within the niche. When you opt for a personal trainer niche, you’re not just opting to work with a specific client demographic. You’ll also be working alongside other professionals who can provide insider information and helpful advice to ensure you succeed.
- Your professional development. You could also quantify your success by the knowledge and skills you’ve acquired as a professional, as well as how you’ve utilised that understanding to further the services you offer your clients.
While your personal trainer salary will inevitably be a factor that motivates you, it’s vital to recognise that it shouldn’t be the only thing you strive for. Having the right client base that you provide the best possible service for is far more important.
Is Having A Fitness Niche Profitable?
The answer to this question is a resounding yes.
There is no reason for a fitness niche not to be profitable, especially one that’s underrepresented in your local community or an area you’ve got significant experience in. With the correct research behind you, as well as the relevant qualifications and some determination, you’ll be able to earn a significant amount of money while still retaining the quality service associated with your fitness niche.
But just how much can you make?
Our research discovered that the average salary for a personal trainer (outside of London) is around £27,000, and that increases to £32,500 in the capital. As a niche personal trainer, you can expect to earn a similar amount.
However, as you diversify your services, and earn additional qualifications that truly set you apart, then you’re able to start charging more per session, and in turn provide additional value for your clients.
How Do I Know If A Fitness Niche Is Saturated?
The simple answer here is to effectively and thoroughly research the fitness niche you’re planning on entering and find the trainers and services in your area that are part of that niche.
There are a few tips and tricks you can use to help discover your competitors, and understand just how many trainers are offering the particular services you plan to offer.
While this may seem like a simple tip, Google Maps is actually a powerful tool that can help you determine the competitors in your local area. Simply searching for “personal trainers near me” shows you the local map, as well as where they’re based.
Here’s an example we took from the city of Bradford.
Immediately, you’re able to find areas where there’s less competition, as well as inner city areas that may be more congested.
Exploring Facebook groups and communities dedicated to your specific personal trainer niche can also provide you with an insight into what’s around you, and whether the market exists for what you’re aiming to specialise in.
You might also choose to check local registers of personal trainers (using services such as Bark), as these can often provide an insight into those closest to you, as well as key information that could set you apart, like their working hours and the qualifications they have.
Before You Go!
The aim of this article was to help you understand if finding a fitness niche is for you and exactly how to approach setting yours up for success. Getting your business set up and finding a niche that suits you should now be a little less daunting with our step by step guide.
Keep in mind, the most impactful way you can establish and succeed in your fitness niche is through specialist Level 4 Fitness Courses. Check out our accredited online nutrition courses to learn how you can help clients at a deeper level and provide the best possible service!
Download our free prospectus here to learn more about what we offer!