Personal Trainers that Come to Your Home: The Good, the Bad, and the Convenience.
More and more people are ditching the gym for in-home fitness options, so the notion of hiring an in-home personal trainer is one that has become more and more popular as well.
Hiring a personal trainer that comes to your home sounds great, for so many reasons. With an in-home personal trainer, you get the ultimate in convenient fitness. Also, the accountability is better than ever, because you can’t exactly tell a trainer that shows up at your door you don’t feel like working out. Not to mention comfort. The comfort level is significantly higher, lowering a lot of the barriers we have between us and a fun and productive fitness journey.
To so many of us, going to the gym is just plain awful. Hiring a personal trainer that comes to your home avoids all the pitfalls of going to the gym: the traffic, the locker rooms, sharing equipment, awkward social encounters, even more awkward stares from strangers, crowded exercise areas, the list goes on and on.
So, now I have to ask myself, what is holding me back from hiring a personal trainer to come to my home? Well, if you’re like me, there were a few questions on my mind. I’ll go ahead and list them here along with the answers I found through a little research.
1) How much will a personal trainer that comes to your home cost?
In-Home personal training will range between $70-$120 per hour session, which includes travel fees. Price depends on the quality of the trainer, the cost of living in your area, and the quantity of sessions you purchase.
2) Will a personal trainer that comes to your home be able to get results?
Yes, an in-home personal trainer can deliver great results for a variety of goals, which include: weight loss, strength gain, flexibility, muscle gain, and more. In-Home personal training is not good for powerlifting, since powerlifting requires heavy and bulky that can’t be transported to your house.
3) How do I find a good personal trainer that comes to your house?
Look for a personal trainer with a lot of quality reviews. Keep in mind that trainers form good relationships with their clients, by nature of the job, so a trainer with a 4.7 rating or below is actually on the lower end of customer satisfaction.
Should I hire an Individual In-Home Personal Trainer or a Company?
On this note, I think it is a good time to discuss the option of choosing a personal training company vs an individual (i.e. independent) personal trainer. There are important tradeoffs to consider in each case, and the quality of your individual experience may be heavily influenced by these key differences.
Individual Trainers
Pros:
1) Price: individual trainers are typically less expensive than companies. Some trainers may even price in-home training as low as $60/hour, but be careful. You may luck out in finding a quality trainer who is just getting started, but often times a trainer selling at these low prices is doing so because he/she cannot find/keep clients do to their skill and service quality. Typically, a trainer with a nearly full schedule will charge a premium for any new clients.
2) Number of Options: There are thousands of independent trainers to choose from. If you have a bad experience with a trainer, there are many more out there accepting new clients.
Cons:
1) Number of Options: There are thousands of independent personal trainers to choose from. Trying to find a high-quality personal trainer can feel like finding a needle in a hay stack. Hiring a personal trainer that doesn’t work out can be very discouraging and demotivating for many of us.
2) Reliability: Independent trainers work for themselves, which means they need to be disciplined enough to be consistently available and timely for your sessions.
3) Accountability: There is no customer service or anyone to speak with if your training sessions are not living up to the quality you had hoped for.
Companies
Pros:
1) Trainer Quality: hiring a personal trainer from a personal training company means that personal trainer had to successfully navigate that company’s hiring process. In other words, the personal trainers at a company are much more likely to be knowledgeable and provide a quality customer experience.
2) Lower Risk: A company will carry insurance, and all trainers will have undergone a background check, offering greater peace of mind.
3) Reliability: Your personal trainer will have a boss. Let’s face it, most of us do a better job if someone is holding us accountable. So, you can expect they will show up on time and give their best effort.
4) Customer Service: If you are unhappy with your training/trainer at any level, you have other people you can speak with at the company offering customer support.
5) Better Results: As opposed to individual trainers, personal trainers at a company do not need to recruit their own clients, so they can focus all their attention on helping their clients achieve the results they’re seeking.
Cons:
1) Price: Companies have additional layers of personnel and costs, so they will naturally have higher prices.
2) Number of Options: There aren’t many companies out there offering in-home personal training. So, if you don’t like the one in your area, there may not be another option.
Ultimately, if your budget allows for you to spend more than $70/session on personal training, I highly recommend hiring a company rather than an independent trainer.
In-Home Personal Training Companies to Consider
So, if you are interested in hiring a home personal training company, I can offer a few options to consider.
In-Home Personal Training Company With Multiple Locations
Mobile Trainers
There is only one company on this list. Mobile Trainers has been doing bringing personal trainers to clients’ homes since 2020. They are privately owned and cofounded by Chad Smith and Justin Townsend. Their mission is to bring the top 1% of personal trainers in every US city out of the gym and deliver them directly to their client’s homes. Presently, they have locations in: Phoenix, Dallas, Austin, Miami, Denver, and Seattle.
Mobile Trainers isn’t a franchise, so they don’t operate under individual franchise owners, which ultimately means they can maintain a consistent level of quality across all their locations. These guys are actually managing each of their branches themselves, ensuring high quality service.
In addition to in-home personal training, Mobile Trainers offers nutrition consulting, 3D body scanning, and corporate personal training services.
Franchises
GymGuyz
All other in-home personal training companies are franchises, with GymGuyz being the largest. GymGuyz was founded in 2008 has a whopping 38 locations. The lion’s share of these locations are in the northeast, but they are continuing to expand via franchising. Each GymGuyz location will operate a little (or a lot) differently than the others, since each is independently run by the local franchise owner. However, they have the backing of corporate, which provides layers of customer support for clients. Also, all trainers that work for GymGuyz will have been successfully interviewed and hired by the local GymGuyz staff, making their trainer team a vetted one.
Other In-Home Personal Training Franchises:
The Home Fit
The Home Fit has 14 locations across Tennessee and Alabama. These guys have an app that their clients can use, and unlike their competition, their services are offered as a monthly subscription rather than individual sessions.
Elite In-Home Personal training
Currently located in Massachusetts only, Elite-In Home Training is looking to franchise and grow its in-home personal training operation, which also includes nutrition and massage services.
Marketing platforms
The last group of options I’ll mention is what I would call the personal training marketing platforms. These companies specialize in online advertising and handle payment processing. However, the trainers themselves are freelancers that aren’t actually hired by the company. There is still corporate customer support offered, in most cases, if any issues arise. So, while this is close to hiring an independent trainer on your own, there is still a little bit of added value.
Many people who utilize these services think of it as a way to search for independent trainers. Some of these search services also provide reviews for the independent personal trainers that advertise their services on these platforms.
- Bark.com
- Thumbtack
- Svetness
- FindYourTrainer
- FitnessTrainer
Conclusion
If the gym doesn’t represent your best or most enjoyable fitness journey, I highly recommend considering hiring an in-home personal trainer for your home-based fitness routine. They can help you follow a safe, successful and enjoyable path to your goals.
Also, in my experience, the best option for hiring a personal trainer that comes to your home would be to go with a company. If the price tag isn’t too big a hurdle, there are many pros to tapping a well-established company to provide your in-home personal trainer. Companies like Mobile Trainers have tremendous reviews for good reason.
