23 Productivity Hacks For Personal Trainers

For personal trainers, time is undoubtedly your most valuable resource. There are only 24 hours in a day, so if you want to grow your business and deliver a great service to your clients you need to increase your productivity to make the most of the time you have.

If you’re looking to ditch the distractions and put your procrastination to bed once and for all, these productivity hacks will help you optimize your time and get more work done than ever before!

#1. Stop Checking Your Phone

You lose so much time checking social media notifications and replying to messages, which are always a gateway into aimless online browsing. Decide on two or three times throughout the day to check your phone and, if necessary, reply to emails and messages.

#2. Request Payment Upfront, By Direct Debit

Having to ask for money can be awkward, especially if someone is late with their payment. When clients pay monthly, or even in blocks of 5 or 10 sessions, you don’t lose time chasing invoices. As an added bonus, it’s an incentive for clients to stick around and work harder because they’ve already paid!

#3. Give Clients Regular Time Slots

If you can, scheduling clients in a regular time slot will provide some consistency and stability to your working week. It will also allow you to plan other sessions around your regulars, which is especially helpful when planning locations and travel routes.

#4. Have Email Templates Ready

Once you’ve established yourself as a quality personal trainer, you’ll start to get a steady stream of personal training enquiries through referrals, social media, and perhaps through online search. Whenever someone gets in touch, you can reply with your pre-written email and tweak it to match their specific enquiry requirements. This works for everything from personal training to corporate training and even nutritional basics – you name it!

#5. Book 50 Minute Sessions

Conventional wisdom would say to book hour long sessions, however when you’ve got back to back clients your time can occasionally overlap. By booking and planning 50-minute sessions, you allow time for your clients to be a few minutes late or have a few minutes spare at the end to chat and review the session.

#6. Never Be Late

Clients can sometimes be late – personal trainers cannot. Not only does being late make you seem unprofessional, it has repercussions that impact your entire schedule. You can’t cut one session short to get to the next one on time, so always be punctual. If it’s something you struggle with, use the route planning features on your phone – they can predict and work around traffic in real time!

#7. Use Alarms

A great tip I was told first hand from a seasoned personal training veteran was to set an alarm for approximately 5 minutes before a session was due to end. That way, you can make a point of winding the session down or cutting a conversation short so you’re able to move onto your next task or client whilst keeping to your schedule.

#8. Clear Your Inbox Every Night

‘Inbox Zero’ is a famous productivity strategy which aims to keep the clutter in your inbox to an absolute minimum. If your inbox is clear it means you’re keeping on top of things and you only have to deal with a given days emails, not last months.

#9. Make The Most Of Dead Time

As a self-employed personal trainer, you’ll spend a lot of time driving. Fortunately, you can still be productive with this otherwise dead time. By using a hands-free device or putting your phone on speaker, you can make and return calls while on route to your next session!

#10. Get Ready The Night Before

One of the last things you do before you completely shut off for the night is to check what you’re doing the following day. If you’ve fully booked and can’t make it to the supermarket for lunch, prepare a few meals. Or if you’ve got a lot of home-based clients, make sure you’ve got all the equipment you need.

#11. Get Rid Of Problem Clients

Sometimes, despite the best of intentions, clients can develop into serious problems. Arriving late or even not arriving at all can completely interrupt the flow of your day. Whilst always remaining professional, it can sometimes be in your best interests to part ways with a problem client so you can make your day less stressful and more productive.

#12. Use Technology

Syncing your calendar between your smartphone and your laptop can prove invaluable, as can using dedicated software to plan out your sessions with clients weeks and even months in advance. If you’re active on social media, there are products that can help you schedule updates so you can keep your audience informed of your latest promotions and availability.

#13. Use The 2-Minute Rule

Another well-known productivity tip – whenever you are presented with a task that can be done in two minutes or less, do it straight away. By following this rule, it stops smaller things adding up into a bigger problem which will distract you from your primary objectives and ultimately cost you more time in the long run.

#14. Learn To Say "No"

Your job as a personal trainer is to help your clients to become fitter and healthier. Sometimes you’ll be asked by your clients or your peers to do something which will take you a lot of time and energy to complete that you simply can’t spare. Don’t be afraid to say "No."

#15. Make Time To Exercise

Even when you’re working as hard as possible, it’s important to find time so you can hit the gym. If you’ve got a session planned to end at 3 and another one to start at 4, you can fit in a 20 minute HIIT workout and still have time left over to work on other tasks!

#16. Make Time For ‘Busy Work’

There are some tasks which you just can’t fit in to a spare 15 minutes. Set aside one morning or afternoon each week that you dedicate to tasks that require more focus and attention, like paying bills, planning marketing campaigns or ordering in new materials and equipment.

#17. Wake Up Earlier

How much you can earn is in part limited by how many hours you can work in a day. Simply put, if you want to be more productive and fit in more clients – wake up earlier! This doesn’t mean you have to get up at 4am, but if you can wake up 30 minutes earlier when you know you have a lot planned for the day ahead it can make all the difference.

#18. Have A To-Do List

It can be easy for things to slip your mind, only to be remembered at the last minute or when it’s already too late. Having a visual reminder for all the tasks you need to complete will help you stay on track and will help you remain conscious of not wasting any time unnecessarily.

#19. Choose 3 Tasks

Once you’ve got your to-do list, pick 3 tasks each day that are attainable and make sure you complete them. This will help you stay positive and keep you motivated as you continue chipping away at your larger objective, which can be difficult to achieve when trying to fit everything else in!

#20. Plan Your Week On Sunday Night

Set aside 15 minutes on a Sunday night to mentally prepare for the week ahead so that you can start your week with purpose. Think about clients, their needs and what you’ll need to prepare in advance. Consider the tasks you want to achieve and plan out when would be best to complete them.

#21. Set Up A Strategic Voicemail

As a personal trainer you’ll be spending most of your day with clients – when the phone rings you can’t just pause your session for a quick chat. Set up a voicemail message telling people a better time to call you as well as a contact email address they can use. This is especially useful for personal training enquiries.

#22. Keep Things Clean

Your workspace needs to be a place you can concentrate, so if it’s full of clutter the risk of distraction is much higher. This applies to your computer desktop, your office and even your car! They are all tools you use as a personal trainer and should all be kept clean and well organised.

#23. Switch Off

Keeping up such a heavy workload can be a drain both physically and mentally. Switching off your phone and computer for an evening or weekend can help you relax, unwind and enjoy time away from work. That way, when the next week starts you’re fully recharged and ready to go!

Hopefully you’ll be able to use these hacks to take your productivity to the next level, meaning you aren’t just working harder – you’re working smarter.

Do you have any tips or tricks that personal trainers would find useful? Let us know in the comments section below!