Introverts In Personal Training: 5 Strategies To Help Introverted Personal Trainers Succeed

Okay, now I know what you're thinking, everyone has issues in social situations; humans are hard and human behavior can be anything but logical. Just being human can be exhausting! Although, for at least a third of the population, there comes a time when inert genetic traits may become too hard to work around or just push through.

I, for the longest time, felt as if I was a broken extravert. Fumbling along for years thinking that something was inherently wrong with me in a culture where extroversion isn’t just encouraged - it’s expected. Check out “Quiet” by Susan Cain for a deep dive. Why was I so exhausted after such a small amount of interaction, all my other coworkers can go for hours! I felt, and still feel, incredibly different in a world where so many people seemed to all be on the same page. And that feeling slowly, insidiously, started wearing down on my self esteem. This was a turning point for me, I asked myself at what point do you stop focusing on your weaknesses and instead start nurturing your introverted strengths.

In order to understand why we feel this way, we need to have a couple of concrete definitions of the topic at hand. Especially considering the lofty misunderstanding some people can have on introversion. If one more person makes the comparison between introversion and autism.... But I digress.

Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at Wharton and host of the great podcast “Work Life” , defines introversion well.

“It’s your sensitivity to stimulation. If you’re an introvert, you’re more prone to being overstimulated by intense or prolonged social interaction—and at that point, reflecting on your thoughts and feelings can help you recharge. But introversion-extroversion is about more than just social interaction. Introverts are more likely to retreat to a quiet place, but they’re very happy to bring someone else with them.”

As Adam pointed out, introverts don’t dislike social situations. We do not dislike the company of others either. After all, social interaction is the foundation for our species. The trouble here is not even a people issue, more-so an issue with stimulus. We tend to take in a lot more stimulus than our extrovert or ambivert counterparts. This leads us to feel exhausted and overwhelmed after too much interaction with others. A four-hour training block can feel very similar to getting hit by a ton of bricks for me. It’s not uncommon for me to pass out asleep for 2-4 hours after putting myself in a situation like that.

This is not by choice; the underpinnings of this trait are due to biology. We would love to continue to hang out at that party, but we may be too exhausted to talk after too many hours. We'd love to interact more with you and your friends but may feel too overwhelmed. This is the point where we may excuse ourselves or decline an invitation and cop a bad reputation for being anti-social.

If this resonates with you, you're not alone. 1/3 of the population exhibits introverted personality traits. In any given room you’re in, there’s at least a couple of people who feel exactly like you.

Now, what if you find your introverted self in the personal training profession? You may feel like an odd duck given the job characteristics, but this shouldn’t be your weakness. Introversion can be your most marketable strength.

As an introvert, you let your clients take the reins on their program with no reservations. There’s no screaming, no cheerleading, no motivational diatribes. You are the antithesis of your stereotypical trainer. Your introversion naturally let’s you give your clients the gift of intrinsic motivation, autonomy, self efficacy, and control.

An introverted trainer will empower their clients to become intrinsically motivated. Knowing that outcomes and adherence will be better than extrinsic-based motivation, micromanaging, and over burdened feedback.

You do this because you believe your client is capable of achieving their goals on their own just like you. You trust your clients. You give them control and freedom. You are the quiet leader. Giving input only when necessary as to not steal their autonomy. You know that in order to understand, you must listen first and speak later. This is a unique experience you offer to your clients. When 97% of trainers are giving the typical personal trainer experience by over-talking and verbally exhausting their clients. You are a scarce resource in a dense field. So leverage your traits for your benefit. While this is crude, the old adage ‘Riches in niches’ rings true in business.

Even while leveraging your introverted strengths, there's the potential for your career choice to be an uphill battle.

As a trainer, you work with people. One on one, in group settings, via email; all day every day. Doing some heavily extroverted emotional lifting like sales, supervising, coaching, customer service, and managing large amounts of people. So while your passion to help others may be huge, personal training may be at odds with your biological aversion to prolonged sociable situations.

Our biology recommends that under most circumstances we need solitude and quiet environments for recharge. This may cause challenges in your ability to work a full 30-40 hour week and, without the right boundaries, chances are high you will end up in the 80% that drop out at the 2-year mark.

While these issues are daunting, they are not overcomable. Personal training can be an amazing profession! So here are 5 strategies that will allow you to succeed in an extrovert’s profession:

#1 Become an Expert then Charge What You're Worth

The amount of time you can work is going to be a limiting factor for your gross revenue. A 30-40 hour a week training workload will probably not be sustainable for an introvert. Heck, I’ve seen the most voracious extroverts having a hard time with 25 hours, this is why most gyms bonus at 20 hours a week. Instead of burning yourself out via client overload, become very good at what you do, charge what you're worth, then decrease client working hours to a sustainable level.

Use your recovery and alone time to dive deep on researching topics to gain expertise. This should be easy if you’re familiar with the topic and know how to engage in deep work. Any topic related to fitness is fair game. Research, read, then put those skills into practice. Like Malcolm Gladwell outlined in “David and Goliath” become a big fish in a small pond.

#2 Create Systems for Clients to Follow for Efficiency

You may think you’re not doing your due diligence by creating linear systems for your clients. Not true, the foundations of programming, communications, and nutrition follow basic physiological principles.

By creating systems, you allow yourself to work faster and be more efficient. Reducing the chances of unsuspecting surprises. Unsuspected surprises are energy vampires, time wasters, and profit destroyers. Every time you spend your valuable time working through an inefficient system or surprise, your pay gets cut and your margins go down. Remember, we charge what we’re worth.

Every client should have systems to follow for their exercises, interpersonal communication, and overall game-plan for the hour. Do you think an actor neglects to memorize their lines before shooting a movie? Take note, you should also follow a script and have a schemata set during your billable time.

This will also be a shift in which you start treating yourself as a business. The best businesses put efficient systems in place to increase productivity. The business mogul Marcus Lemonis says to always check your margins. You’d be wise to do the same and study how the best do it on a large scale.

#3 Be Wary of Working in a Crowded Gym

Nothing makes an introvert shudder more than a crowded gym. Bright lights, tons of noise, lots of people; too much stimulus - chaos. From trainers coming up and interrupting your sessions. To people working in on your equipment without permission. A crowded gym can be an introvert nightmare.

A crowded gym is where you'll have the most success building up your client base. So it may be wise to initially bare down and bite the bullet.

A) Sales in a Crowded Gym

Floor shifts with expected sales can be challenging, but not unmanageable. Instead of making sales off the floor, have your expertise sell your services for you. This isn’t always an option though.

If you find yourself in a position of needing to make sales, open-ended questions are your friends. After asking a question that starts with a “What” or “How”. Use your natural trait of quiet listening to find potential clients pain points. Nod and with a consistent “Yeah” and “Mhms” to show your potential client empathy. Make sure to have a Duchenne smile while talking. Use upward inflections in your voice and mirror the other person. As highlighted in, “Never Split the Difference” these all help create a more collaborative interaction.

After the initial conversation, assess the client to see if you have the right toolkit for them. Refer the clients that are a bad-fit to a trainer that has the right toolkit for them. Trust me, even if they decide to train with you, bad-fits won’t stick around long and may leave with a bad impression and review.

Special nuance goes out to trainers early in their careers’. It may be wise to take on these clients as a learning experience. Remember that word of mouth doesn’t work if your client doesn’t enjoy their time. So as you gain more clients become much more strict about who you let into your tribe.

B) Training Clients in a Crowded Gym

If you do find yourself in a busy and crowded gym, try working non-conventional hours. Oftentimes the floor is clear, organized, and quiet. If this is not possible, find yourself a quiet section of the floor and set up a perimeter. While it seems harsh, I go as far to turn my back on the whole floor to keep the level of stimulation down.

This perimeter is your zone to bring all the materials you need, and a place where most of the session will occur. In this space, interruptions will be minimal. Allowing you to direct all your energy towards your client.

If you find staff or patrons interrupting your session, smile and get back to your client. Make sure, after your session, you reach back out to them for a nice conversation in your preferred format: 1 on 1. Remember, this is your clients time with you.

Once you've built your client base, for me it’s taken well over a year, I’d recommend going independent to a small studio. This will better allow you to play towards your strengths.

#4 Split Shift's Can Be a Nightmare, but they Can Also Be Your Best Friend.

After three to four hours you may find yourself overstimulated and exhausted. A scheduled break in-between client blocks will allow you to recover. Whether this is a nice nap or a dive into your favorite hobby. Either will make training 8 hours a day more tolerable and sustainable in the long run. Although, whether you want to devote well over 12 hours of your day outside your house is up to you.

#5 Scale Your Business.

Us introverts may run into a choke point with the number of hours we can work, and we can only charge so much. Even the most staunch extrovert will be lucky to break 30 hours a week without potentially succumbing to burn out. So how do we go about scaling our business’ to make enough money to live?

Many think opening a gym is the next progression. While opening up a gym can be great, it can have a large amount of overhead in rent. Especially in places where it’s easier to charge what you're worth.

That space is hemorrhaging money during off hours, leaving you with a challenge to get a good ROI. You will also deal with large amounts of people, all day, every day, for the foreseeable future. It will take years to come to the point where your gym will scale without you actually being there. Which, as noted in “The E-Myth” should be the end goal of every entrepreneur.

Luckily a fitness entrepreneur doesn’t have to open a gym. We are entering a blossoming time for autonomous entrepreneurship. Never has it been easier to make money from the confines of your own home office. This can be an introvert’s ideal. As discussed above, if no one is in the gym; no one is making money. When closed, or when the floor is slow, your business is losing revenue. This is why a silicon valley entrepreneur may snicker at you for opening up a lifestyle business instead of a high growth venture.

This is the reason many Silicon Valley start-ups are product based, these are high growth businesses. You create a product, then sell the product, and go about your way. Unlike a gym, monetization of the product can happen while you sleep and with massive scale. With the added bonus of a smaller overhead and working from the comfort of where you’ve chosen to set up shop for the day. Online personal training comes to mind in particular.

Creating scalable businesses is a step in the right direction for introverts. Although to create successful new business ventures we need all the energy we can muster. This may be challenging after a full day of one-on-one training. So make sure to take the time you need to recover. Use that quiet time to put your ideas to work in creating a more introvert-friendly scalable business.

When it’s all said and done it’s up to you to choose how successful you are in this industry. This proposition can be liberating, or this can be your main source of stress. If it’s the latter, please take this article to heart. I lived it and was sick to death of the constant stress. It was killing me. So if I can help one personal trainer struggling, especially an introvert like myself, it's all worth it.

So, when things start to seem overwhelming remember:

Embrace and leverage your introversion. Become an expert. Create efficient systems. Put up boundaries for your time. Use your downtime to create a scalable business.

These steps will allow anyone, introverts included, to become a successful personal trainer.