Age limits for new trainers?

[mindseye44]

I would like some input on what age is too old to start in this business? Is 35,40,50 too old to start a new career in fitness?

Is it just a young persons game?

How about working/training with young athletes?

I personally believe passion and knowledge is more important than age. As long as you have those and the energy to covey it.

What are your thoughts?

[Charles Staley]

Before I read your actual post, I assumed you were referring to a minimum age (which might be a good idea). Baby boomers are the largest segment of the population, and they all need lots of help, so get out there and help them!

[gtanak]

In my opinion, you're only as old as you think you are. It's never too late to begin a career you feel passionate about. I started training when i was 29 (I'm 33 now). I was able to pick up on things more quickly because i was more mature and serious about this field than say some of the 21 yr olds that started with me at this large commercial gym. I've known trainers who are in their 40's and 50's who have a full schedule. There's enough potential clients for everyone, imo, you just gotta find your niche.
I agree with Charles, it might be a good idea to have an age minimum, or, I think it's Alwyn who has his new trainers shadow more experienced trainers for a period of time before they're allowed to write programs. Hope that helps!

[mindseye44]

Great input guys.

Thanks!!!

[JoshDunn]

Don't think age really matters however as with beginning any new career you'd have to be prepared to start from scratch and earn bugger all at the start. Since training doesn't pay that much, I haven't seen many old trainers starting out.

[riverbender]

The majority of the trainers I see at my gym are 35+. Though, I don't know how early they started. I know one has been competing since at least as early as '83. She's also appears to be in the better shape than any of the other trainers. There's actually only one under 30 trainer who is in top physical condition.

Personally, I trust age and experience more than I do beauty, youth and boundless energy - in most everything in life except for maybe, "How do I send a text message without it taking me 20 minutes to type 10 words?" Then again, I'm nearing senility.

If I were to hire a trainer it would certainly be someone nearer my age who I feel could relate to me on a personal level. In my experience, fitness has required lifestyle changes. In order for you to help me you're going to be able to "connect" with me in areas of life beyond the gym. For me personally, that rarely happens with the under 30 crowd. That's just me though. I'm sure there are other old people who think old = no clue about fitness or maybe they think youth is contagious. If only.

FWIW, from the small sample I've observed it seems the young trainers seem to have a younger client base. Vice versa for the old folks.

[OldGuy]

Article on NYTimes.com today.

Fitness
The Fonda Factor

By ABBY ELLIN
Published: November 15, 2007
IF Debbie Hollingshead hadn’t fallen in love with Cathe Friedrich’s hairdo — a soft, feathered pixie cut evocative of Dorothy Hamill — her life would not be what it is today.

After stumbling across a photograph of Ms. Friedrich in a fitness magazine in 1999, Ms. Hollingshead showed the picture to her stylist and asked him to replicate it. Later, she logged on to Ms. Friedrich’s Web site, Cathe.com, to see the woman behind the hair: a hard-bodied mother of two, who has been a video fitness star for more than two decades. Ms. Hollingshead bought a DVD, and that was the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

“I get a better workout with Cathe than I’ve gotten anyplace else,” said Ms. Hollingshead, 54, an aerobics teacher in Uniontown, Ohio. “She’s incredible.”

Incredible. Awesome. Amazing. These are just some of the adjectives grown women use to describe the fitness instructors who motivate them while they exercise at home. Despite the easy availability of group fitness classes and online workouts, many women over 35 prefer to exercise in private, with an instructor who can guide them past the burn of a deep lunge. Their fearless leaders are not perky 22-year-olds with dewy faces, but women in their 40s. In this world, the real stars are less pretty young thing and more yummy mummy.

Among them is Ms. Friedrich, 43, the aerobics boot-camp-and-kickboxing queen who has released more than 80 videos and DVDs since 1989 and has taught on FitTV, part of the Discovery network, three hours a day for the last four years. And Jari Love, 42, whose abs look as if they could deflect an oncoming bus and whose weight-training videos inspire an international following.

And, of course, the peppy “Walking Woman,” Leslie Sansone, 45, whose devoted power-walkers have even taken to following her around the supermarket. Her “Walk Away Your Waistline” was No. 6 in sales earlier this month at Collage Video, a fitness video clearinghouse in Minneapolis whose rankings have become an industry yardstick. (Ms. Love’s “Get Ripped and Chiseled” is No. 1, and Ms. Friedrich’s “4-Day Split” is No. 2).
“Leslie had a way of touching me through her video that was incredible,” said Kathy Halderman, 39, an administrative assistant and waitress in Liberty Township, Ohio, who credits Ms. Sansone with the 250 pounds she lost over four years. “I began to cry during the first workout not just because it hurt physically, but she was touching my soul and making me feel like I had a purpose and everything she was doing I could do.”

The video fitness world has evolved since a soufflé-haired Jane Fonda in leg warmers released her first VHS in 1982. It is no longer enough to merely look good in spandex (though that’s clearly a requirement), so today’s video fitness stars are selling the idea that their bodies look buff despite their having given birth multiple times. That age has not withered them. That exercise — not plastic surgery or Botox — has given them that youthful glow. (Ms. Love, Ms. Sansone and Ms. Friedrich all insist that they have had no plastic surgery on their faces or bodies). And that their workout plan is the key.

Many of their acolytes are busy women who not only find it more efficient to exercise at home, but more comfortable. Lorrayne Schaeffer, 41, a computer engineer in San Diego, exercises only at home, and only with Ms. Friedrich. “I feel intimidated at a gym,” she said. “At home I can do it on my own time not have to compete for the equipment — just me and Cathe and the crew.”

According to Jill Ross, director of product acquisition at Collage Video, 8.5 million fitness DVDs were sold in the United States from July 2006 through June 2007; the average home video user is about 45, and most instructors don’t hit their stride with viewers until around age 37. “You need a certain commanding presence,” she said. “If Oprah was 22, would she be fun to watch?” (Incidentally, Ms. Ross said, brunet video stars generally are more popular than blond ones, because they are perceived as more serious.)

Many of those making popular DVDs, like Kathy Smith, now 55, and Denise Austin, 50, witnessed the birth of the fitness industry. “Back then, the industry was so young, and so were the people in it,” said Carol Scott, the president of ECA World Fitness, an industry organization that offers training and workshops for fitness professionals. “What’s happened is that the same people are still doing it.” Exercise video producers are having difficulty finding new talent, she said: “In years prior, there weren’t a lot of big chains, there were exercise studios. They mentored the instructors. It doesn’t really exist on the same level anymore.”

Whatever their experience, older video stars appeal to consumers on a visceral level. “If you’re down in your basement every morning following someone,” said Denise Brodey, the editor in chief of Fitness magazine, “you like the idea that they look like you.”

Or how you’d like to look, anyway. Jari Love is a walking — and sculpturing and toning — billboard for what women covet and has found success despite her blindingly blond hair. (For the record, the color comes from a bottle.) A former model, actress and singer, and now the mother of two, Ms. Love entered the video arena at 38, after teaching strength training and aerobics for almost 20 years at a fitness club in Calgary, Alberta, that she is a partner in.

Since the release of the first weight-training DVD, “Get Ripped!” in 2005, she has developed a wide following. Jeffrey Fergason, president of Razor Digital Entertainment, which distributes Ms. Love’s videos, said the four titles have sold more than 250,000 copies. Ms. Love, who said she once weighed 165 pounds, has nary a centimeter of fat on her 5-foot-7, 122-pound body.

This inspires consumers. “Young girls already have that nice tight figure,” said Nash Cajee, 33, a yoga teacher in Vancouver, British Columbia, who owns Ms. Love’s “Get Ripped!” weight-training series. “They don’t have a lot of cellulite or saddlebags. But Jari’s 10 years older than me.” The fact that she’s 42, Ms. Cajee said, “and has a way better body than I do — a body that I would only dream of having — that’s incredible in itself.”

Thanks to the Internet, video fitness devotees have a place to congregate, on sites like Video Fitness: consumer guide to exercise videos, to extol the virtues of their favorite teachers. Some fans even meet in person. Ms. Friedrich, who said she has sold more than a million DVDs since releasing her first one 18 years ago, has held five gatherings since 1998 (she calls them “road trips”) in her Glassboro, N.J., studio, where women from as far away as Uganda congregate to exercise with her in the flesh. The most recent road trip, in August, sold out in three minutes, attracting 105 women.

“It’s a testament of what a super awesome person and instructor she is,” said Ms. Schaeffer, the computer engineer, who has attended most of the road trips.

Other women swear by Leslie Sansone. Since releasing her first video in 1980, Ms. Sansone, a mother of three in New Castle, Pa., has made over 90 titles. According to her site, lesliesansone.com, her business is worth $200 million.

She is often stopped by fans in airports and on the street, and sometimes sneaks around the supermarket so she isn’t followed. Her biggest selling point is her “real woman” status, she said. “I didn’t go into the industry by saying, ‘Feel my rock hard abs, feel my muscles,’” Ms. Sansone said. “I’m allowed to age. I don’t believe people expect me to be perfect.”

Catherine Saint Louis contributed reporting

Source

[Jean-Paul]

I think that my best years of training have been the last 5 years. That could be experience, but I feel like most of it LIFE experience. As I age, I gain more empathy for the aging. I relate to their aches and pains, I have children and a busy schedule and I relate to their daily lives, and being near-40, I automatically get a lot more credibility than I did when I was a 20-something trainer.

My preference has actually been to hire older trainers and older employees to fill my other positions in the gym. Fill your staff with your target clientele. In my case, I'm not catering to hot 19-y-o's with flat tummies, tans and no bodyfat. To my target client that is the enemy! They don't want them near their husbands or themselves.

All that being said, this is a tough industry, and if you need to move into something that makes good money quickly this may not be what you're looking for. At your age, you're dealing with house and car payments, kids in or close to being in college, etc. It takes a little while to build up a clientele and a reputation. Few people just jump right in and make a ton of money, and those that do didn't originally set out to make a ton of money in the first place. Only a few people legitimately make decent livings off of this.

Perhaps a better approach would be to open a full-scale gym. As a business owner, you will receive income from multiple streams (assuming you do it right), and you can supplement it with your training income, which will satisfy your desire to help people, but won't hold you back from making a real income.

There are many great franchises out there that I think are pretty good. Don't try to re-invent the wheel. If there is any one thing I would change if I could (looking back on my last 20 years in this career) it would be buying a system instead of doing things the hard way. If you need any info on this I can point you the right direction. PM me and we will chat about what you are hoping to do and what options are out there.

[Jean-Paul]

JP = the thread killer!

[Cynic]

Originally Posted by Jean-Paul

JP = the thread killer!

No. It was 12 days dead by the time you got here.

Someone just jostled the body to make it appear alive.

Michael Palin: There! It just moved.
John Cleese: No it didn't. You hit the cage!