Working out with your clients in their homes is an option for any trainer, and by offering this option to your clients you can increase your potential client base by a dramatic number, and you may even decide to exclusively offer home personal training. In order to decide if this type of business model is for you, there are several points to consider, and they include time management, exercise modalities to be used, and business resources that are available.

Time Management

Managing your time and your schedule is a critical consideration when deciding whether or not to work with clients in their homes. Unlike working at a facility, amount of time that you need to dedicate to each client is increased, sometimes to point of even doubling time spent for each client session.

For example, let's use a standard one-hour training session as our business model for this discussion. Although many trainers are utilizing different training times with their clients these days, one hour is still a good time frame to use for your scheduling reference. You want to remember that as a home personal trainer, you can be on a tight deadline to get from one place to next, so you don't want to schedule your sessions back-to-back like you can when you are working at a fitness facility.

You must also factor in your travel time to get to your client's home, as well as to get to home of following client, client after that, and so on. If you live in an even reasonably populated area, you will have to allow at least 15 minutes of driving time to and from every client's home, and sometimes as much as 30 minutes per client, depending on size of geographic area that you train in. Using our one-hour training session as an example, just one training session can cost you as much as 2 hours of your time.

A standard 8-hour workday will now only allow you to train between 4 and 6 clients, depending on where they live in relation to your starting point, as well as in relation to each other. Your best bet whenever possible is to set up your clients in a roughly straight line, or possibly a circle that brings you back to your starting point at end of day. The last thing that you want to do is set up a client who lives 30 minutes north of your starting point followed immediately by a client who lives 30 minutes south of your starting point. Not only will you eat up massive amounts of time driving to and from your client's homes, but you will put serious mileage on both your car as well as your wallet at gas station! More on that in Business Resources section below.

Exercise Modalities

The next thing to consider is type of training that you will be doing with your clients in their homes. Unless they have a full fitness facility set up - which is rare - it is very likely that you will have to come up with ways to put them through a vigorous workout without massive amount of equipment that is available at a full-size fitness facility. In order to put together these home workouts, you need to address two different energy pathways that your clients will need to use during their workouts: aerobic and anaerobic.

Anaerobic Workouts

Although many trainers are used to massive resources available at a local gym, getting your clients a variety-filled and intense anaerobic workout in their home is actually easier than most would think. With nothing more than an exercise ball and a portable set of dumbbells, you can take your clients through full range of motion and exertion on almost same scale that is afforded those clients training at a gym.

If you are just starting out in industry, or are simply used to working your clients out at a fitness facility, you should do some research on Internet for dumbbell workouts, bodyweight workouts, functional training, and sport-specific training. Those 4 keyword combinations alone will net you hundreds of websites with free or low-cost resources that will teach you thousands of exercises that can be done with little or no equipment.

The key to getting your clients a good anaerobic workout at home is not type of equipment that is used, or actual amount of weight that is moved, but rather INTENSITY of workout. A bit of trial and error will teach you how to take a client through their paces in a safe but intense manner that will leave most people ready to call it quits in 30 minutes or less!

Aerobic Workouts

The answer: everything. Remember that your clients are people first, and their status as one of your clients comes second. Knowing how to tend to needs of your customers will literally make difference between a long and prosperous career in fitness industry, or a short-lived stint that leaves you wondering what career path you should try next!

In order to assist you in walking down success path, here are six methods that you can use to "WOW" your clients on a regular basis, keeping them happy, loyal to you, and engaging in long-term prosperous business relationships. In no particular order they are: contact, date and event recognition, listening, flexibility, forward thinking, and over-delivering.

Contact

When you get a new personal training client, many people will still second-guess their decision to hire you. After all, a personal trainer can be an expensive asset, and your clients need to believe that they made right decision. One of easiest ways for you to ease their mind in beginning as well as during course of their training program is by simply staying in contact with them.

Most clients will see you at most 3 times each week, and some clients even less than that. With at least 4 days in each week when your clients don't see you, you are influencing them less than 50% of time! Many clients hire a personal trainer because they need constant guidance and support, and less than 50% could hardly be considered constant.

An easy solution to this is to send your clients a few emails a week, or mail them an actual snail mail letter once in awhile. Clip an appropriate article from a magazine and make copies of it to mail to your clients, or email them URL of a great motivational story about weight loss that you found on Internet. Forward them funny anecdotes about health and fitness, or drop them a postcard congratulating them on their latest progress.

For that matter, pick up phone! Call Suzie Client on Saturday to let her know that you just got done updating her client record and had reason to again marvel at how great she is doing with her program. You just can't pay for type of customer feedback you will get from something like that!

Stay in contact with your clients in between training sessions, and increased attention will remind them on a regular basis that in beginning you committed to a one on one training program for them, not just to stand there 3 times a week while they exercise.

Date and Event Recognition

Recognizing special dates in your client's lives is another great way to show them that you are thinking about them in between training sessions.

-Send your clients a birthday card, or even a small but thoughtful gift. -Congratulate them on their wedding anniversary, or even send flowers or a card to their house. -Ask them how excited they are about upcoming graduation of their child from high school or college. -Have a special token of your appreciation sent to their home or office after a set amount of time that they have been training with you - maybe annually or semi-annually. -Give them a special award every time they lose 5 pounds, or drop a percentage of body fat. -Attend race or other fitness event that you have been training them for.

As you can see, possibilities are limitless. The lesson that you want to take away from this section is that you went above and beyond call of duty to recognize a date or an event that was important to your client. They won't forget that when it comes time to decide whether or not to keep working with you!

Listening

The fact that you should listen to your clients should go without saying. If your title is "Personal Trainer", please take a moment at this time to re-read first word! Too many trainers fall into familiar trap of just taking their clients through workouts. Your clients aren't paying you to workout with them. They are paying you to give them dedicated one on one service, and actual workout is only one part of that.

In addition to exercise programming, you must again think about fact that your clients are humans before they are clients. As humans, they have as many outside considerations as you do. If you are only seeing them 3 hours per week, that leaves 165 hours each week when you are not around, and lifestyle events that happen during that time will spill over into training sessions.