Are you looking to channel your love of health and fitness into a profitable career that will bring you joy? There are many careers involving fitness and nutrition to choose from, which allows you the opportunity to find the perfect fit for your personal interests. The sheer volume of potential career paths can also sometimes be intimidating and make you feel unsure of what options to explore further as potential fitness career options. The first step to narrowing down the potential career options in the fitness industry is researching some of the available careers and winnowing the list to the most viable options for your skillset and goals. Are you looking to become a certified personal trainer? Do you have a fitness business idea that you want to pursue? There really are endless opportunities when it comes to careers in fitness! To help kickstart your search below is an introduction to a handful of health and fitness career paths.
An Introduction to Health and Physical Fitness Career Paths
Many people find that by exploring their interests and focusing their passion into a career path they care about, they can build successful careers. If you love all things health and fitness, it is a natural conclusion to pursue careers in fitness and wellness. There are many different career paths to choose from, which can be both exhilarating and overwhelming. By gaining an introductory knowledge base about some of the career paths available, you can begin to hone your career goals and dedicate additional time to researching more information about the career options that you feel will best serve your goals and fit into your lifestyle. Below is a list of careers in the fitness industry to help you start exploring the different opportunities in order to harness your passion for health and fitness into a profitable career.
Being a Personal Fitness Trainer
One of the most well-known career options in the health and fitness industry is personal training. There is a reason personal training is an ideal fitness career for many people. Becoming a personal fitness trainer allows you to train individuals in one-on-one, group, and/or online settings and to help others achieve their health and fitness goals with your insights, guidance, and motivation. Personal training can be modified and customized in many different ways to target specific clients, provide specialized training, and create a lifestyle that works best for you.
Do you want to reach the maximum amount of individuals possible? Online personal training opens the geographic area of clients you can reach from the areas immediately around where you live to the entire world. Do you thrive off interaction with clients in a small group setting? Offering small group personal training sessions will allow you to reduce the rate for your clients and help more people reach their health and fitness goals at one time. Do you want to provide specialized training focused on achieving certain outcomes? One-on-one training will allow you to place intensive focus and effort into helping individuals achieve those outcomes. Do you want to do all of the above and more? By becoming a trainer, you can! 1
Whether you want to work as a certified personal trainer at your own gym franchise, fitness studio, or freelance, personal training has significant flexibility and customization potential that will allow you to create the health and fitness career that complements your lifestyle and goals. To be a personal trainer, you will need to complete a National Commission for Certifying Agencies (NCCA) accredited certification program. This trainer certification is necessary for all personal trainers who want to do individual, online, or group fitness classes. Depending on the type of personal training that interests you most, you may also pursue additional certifications or courses 2 .
Working in a Gym or Fitness Studio
A career option that many people utilize to get started in the health and fitness industry is working in a gym or fitness studio. This allows you to explore whether or not you enjoy the atmosphere of a gym or fitness studio as a workplace and determine which job in the gym or fitness studio appeals to you most. Depending on the type of gym or fitness studio, there can be many different employment opportunities available to choose from. For example, one gym may be focused on providing seniors with training to help strengthen their joints and prevent injury, while a boutique fitness studio may provide clients with a high-intensity workout designed to make burning calories a fun source of exercise. Be sure to do your research on different types of gyms and fitness studios available and target those that most align with your personality, the types of fitness activities you enjoy most, your qualifications, and the atmosphere you are looking for in an ideal work environment 3 .
Being a Sports Coach
Do you have a passion for fitness and love the competition of sports? Being a sports coach could be the perfect career in fitness for you. Depending on what sports you have participated in, your skill set, level of education, and interest, coaching sports could range from a hobby or side hustle to a profitable career. As a coach, you could help to organize and teach athletes the skills and traits they will need to be successful in their selected sport. What you will focus on as a coach will depend on the type of coaching you have selected and whether you will be coaching athletes individually or as a team.
Coaching will often be a mixture of teaching the skills needed to be successful as an athlete, both personally and physically, as well as proper strength and conditioning to maintain optimal functionality and performance. If you think you may enjoy coaching sports, it may be helpful to speak with the coach of a team you are interested in and see if you can sit in on a practice to observe. If you are interested in being a coach at a school, such as a high school or college, you will need to validate that you meet the experience and educational qualifications designated by the specific school, which can vary 4 .
Being a Franchise Owner of a Fitness Facility
If you are business-oriented and want a physical space of your own to draw in clients and help them reach their health and fitness goals, opening your own fitness franchise can offer you the opportunity to transform that desire into a viable career. If you aren’t familiar with what a fitness franchise is, don’t be deterred from this career path. With a fitness franchise, rather than having to come up with a business model from scratch and grow a loyal customer base that recognizes your brand, you can partner with a company who has already done that hard work. Because of this, there are many benefits to opening a fitness franchise vs. starting your own business. By working with a company as a franchisee, you can use their brand, but you will be the one responsible for generating the financing for your fitness franchise and running it yourself. By being a fitness franchise owner, you can have a business of your own, without the stumbling blocks of having to create and grow a brand from nothing.
In recent years, fitness franchises have grown significantly in popularity. The market research firm IBISWorld anticipates that the fitness market will grow 1.5 percent between now and 2022, and that franchise brands will grow almost twice as fast as that. Fitness franchises allow individuals that want to start their own business to do so without having to worry about all of the initial steps needed to become profitable. Instead, you can utilize the hard work of a company and its brand to immediately have name recognition and a successful business model for your location. If you love fitness, being a franchise owner of a fitness facility allows you to combine your love of health and fitness with business acumen to create a profitable, viable career. If you are interested in opening a fitness franchise, it’s important to do research and choose a fitness franchise whose business model you believe in and would like to operate under at your location 5 .
Franchising with Rush Cycle
One of the most popular types of boutique fitness studios are cycling studios. If you want to be a franchise owner and are looking to enter a sector of the fitness industry that is thriving, cycling studios are a great option to consider since they allow for quick growth that will help you achieve profitability at a faster rate. At Rush Cycle, we are always looking for individuals that love health, fitness and motivating others to become franchisees. While opening a full-size gym can require $500,000 to several million dollars, the entry point to open a franchise with Rush Cycle is much more affordable at about $426,000 to $550,000. This affordable entry point allows you to make your dreams of owning your fitness studio a reality. Rush Cycle is positioned for continued growth over the next several years and is rapidly expanding across the country. We want to help make you successful in the boutique fitness industry. If you are interested in franchising with Rush Cycle, reach out to us today to discuss this opportunity further 6 .
Sources
https://wellpreneuronline.com/health-and-wellness-business-ideas/
https://smallbiztrends.com/2016/06/fitness-business-ideas.html
https://www.glofox.com/blog/14-health-and-fitness-business-ideas/
https://www.thebalancecareers.com/athletic-coach-524874