PT business field guide
The part of personal training nobody qualifies you for.
Pricing, capacity, cancellation policies, screening, onboarding and record-keeping. Six things that decide whether a coaching business is sustainable, none of which appear on a Level 3 syllabus.
01 · Pricing
Price the week, not the hour
The hourly rate that looks fine in isolation is usually the one that quietly makes a full diary unprofitable.
A coaching hour is never an hour. Programme writing, check-ins, messages, admin and travel attach themselves to every client you take on, and none of them are billed separately. Work out what a client costs you in total time per week, not what a session costs them.
Then work backwards from the income you need rather than forwards from what the gym down the road charges. Take your target annual income, add your real costs — insurance, rent or gym fees, software, equipment, qualifications, holiday and the weeks you will be ill — then divide by the number of coaching hours you can genuinely sustain. That number is your floor. Anything you charge below it, you are subsidising.
Packages beat single sessions, if the terms are clear
Session packs are better for both sides: the client commits to a block long enough to see a change, and you stop selling every session twice. They only work when the terms are unambiguous — what the pack includes, when it expires, what a late cancellation consumes and what happens if somebody stops. Vague terms do not avoid the conversation; they postpone it to the point where it damages the relationship.
Publish the price. A price given only on enquiry filters out the people who would have said yes, and the trainers who quote confidently are rarely the cheapest ones.
02 · Capacity
You are not short of clients. You are short of good hours.
Demand is rarely spread across the day. Utilisation is what tells you whether to raise prices, add a coach or stop taking on 2pm clients.
Count the hours you can actually coach — not the hours in the week. Remove the ones nobody wants, the ones you need for programming and admin, and the ones you have promised your family. What is left is your real capacity, and it is usually a third smaller than the number in your head.
Then compare it with what is booked. Utilisation above roughly 85% of your sustainable hours is a pricing signal, not a success: you have run out of room to grow, and the next new client can only come from somebody leaving or from your evenings. Utilisation below 60% is a sales and retention problem, and adding another trainer will make it worse rather than better.
The calculator below does this arithmetic properly, including the difference between the diary you have and the diary you could sell.
PT capacity and revenue calculator
Enter your available hours, session length, what is currently booked and your price. It works out utilisation, spare capacity and what both are worth per month. Nothing is sent anywhere and no email is required.
Open the calculator03 · Cancellation
A cancellation policy is a business decision, not a personality test
Trainers lose more income to unenforced policies than to clients who leave.
Decide three things and write them down: the notice period, what happens inside it, and what happens to a no-show. Twenty-four hours is the common standard; whatever you choose, the client has to have agreed to it before the first session rather than discovered it after the first missed one.
Be equally clear about your own side. What happens when you cancel, when you are ill, or when you go on holiday mid-block, is part of the same policy, and stating it makes the client-facing half far easier to enforce.
Consumer terms have to be fair and clearly presented to be relied on. A policy buried in a message thread, or introduced after somebody has paid, is both unenforceable in practice and corrosive to the relationship. The point of writing it down is that you never have to make the decision while somebody is standing in front of you apologising.
Enforcement is easier when it is not personal: if the balance moves automatically under a rule the client agreed to, and they can see the reason for the change in their own app, the conversation is about the rule rather than about you.
04 · Screening
Health screening protects the client first
It also protects you — by evidencing what you asked, what was disclosed and what you did about it. That is not the same as removing liability, and anyone telling you otherwise is wrong.
Screen before the first session, every time, and treat it as a conversation rather than a form-filling exercise. A PAR-Q style questionnaire tells you what to ask about; the value is in what you do with the answers — the referral you make, the movement you modify, the session you decline.
Three things worth being strict about:
- Re-screen. Health changes. An annual re-screen and a check after any injury, illness, surgery or pregnancy keeps the record current rather than historical.
- Record the decision, not just the answer. “Disclosed lower-back pain, deadlift replaced with hip thrust, advised GP review” is worth ten times a ticked box.
- Store it as health data. Screening answers, injuries and clinical notes are special-category data under UK GDPR. They need a lawful basis, a retention period and access control — not a shared drive and a group chat.
What consent does and does not do
Documented informed consent shows the client understood the activity and its risks, and that you gave appropriate instruction. It strengthens your position considerably if something is ever disputed. What it cannot do is exclude liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence — no signature, waiver or tick-box achieves that in the UK. Insurance, competence and good practice are what protect you; the paperwork evidences them.
General guidance for running a coaching business, not legal advice. Have your own agreements, consent wording and privacy notice reviewed by a solicitor who knows the sector.
05 · Onboarding
The first fortnight decides the first year
Most clients who leave inside three months had already disengaged in week two, usually because nothing was clear.
Make the first week identical for everybody: agreement signed, screening completed, goals written down in the client’s own words, a baseline captured, and the next three sessions booked before they leave the consultation. Booked sessions are the single strongest predictor of somebody still training with you in three months.
Set expectations you can meet rather than the ones that sound best. When you reply to messages, what happens between sessions, how progress will be measured and when you will review it. A client who knows you review at week six does not quietly conclude in week four that nothing is happening.
Then capture a baseline you can show them later. Photographs with consent, measurements, a movement screen, a strength benchmark. Progress that is felt but not recorded gets forgotten precisely when motivation dips.
06 · Records
Keep the kind of records you would be happy to show
To a client questioning a balance, to an insurer, or to a solicitor. It is the same record either way.
Three categories are worth genuine discipline. Commercial: what was sold, what was paid, what remains, and the reason behind every change to a balance. Clinical and screening: what was asked, what was disclosed, what you did about it, dated. Consent and agreements: which version of which document was signed, by whom, and when.
The version matters more than trainers expect. “They signed the terms” is weak; “they signed version 3 of the terms on 14 March, and here is what version 3 said” is not. Keep the rendered document alongside the signature rather than only a reference to a template that has since been edited.
Keep marketing permission separate from coaching permission. Somebody consenting to progress photographs for coaching has not consented to them appearing on Instagram, and bundling the two makes both consents unreliable. Ask separately, record separately, and make withdrawal easy.
Records like these are exactly what GymRally is built to keep: dated balance changes with reasons, signed documents stored with the version that was signed, and health information held apart from everyday admin with every read logged.
How GymRally handles sensitive records“A template you have not had reviewed is a liability with a nice font.”
A library of UK agreements, screening forms and consent wording is planned, and it will be published when a solicitor experienced in consumer contracts and the fitness sector has reviewed it — not before. Until then this guide tells you what each document has to cover and why, which is the part a template cannot do for you.
See the guidance turned into a system
Session-pack rules that enforce themselves, screening held as health data, signed documents kept with their version, and a balance history you can show a client without flinching.