Personal Fitness Trainer Singapore: 5 Tips On How to Save When Engaging One

Half of 2024 has just zoomed by, hasn’t it? If at this point you’ve abandoned all of your fitness-related New Year resolutions, maybe you’re thinking of upping the ante by signing up for a personal fitness trainer.

Yes, doing so might certainly cure your lack of discipline, since you will have someone to look up and be accountable to. But the price might stop your heart before their exercise routine does.

In this article, we see how the poor and portly can keep up.

How much does a personal trainer cost in Singapore?

In Singapore, most fitness trainers cost $60 – $150 per session according to FIT Asia. Personal training fees are seldom included in your gym fees.

There are also personal fitness coaches who will go to your condominium gym without charging extra for transport, but you have to check with your management committee to see if this is allowed. Some management committees are wary of overcrowding the gym and disallow this.

There are ways to make the overall expense of hiring a personal trainer lower. Let’s take a look at 5 such ways:

1. Ask about their sales quota

Usually, local chain gyms hire trainers who also double up as salespeople. And when salespeople are trying to reach their targets, they can bend the rules.

So to get a good price, you ask trainers about their quotas and deadlines when small talking with them. Buying your training package as they are just about the close off the week, the quarter or the financial year would allow you to negotiate better.

One of the trainers who prefers to stay anonymous told us, “I’ve seen trainers go as low as $40 an hour just to meet quota.”

Generally, trainers who are close to hitting their target will push a little more and give you a good price. If they’re super far from their quotas, they probably have given up and won’t try to court you as much.

 

2. Don’t pay for simple exercises

How do you get taught to jog? Beyond “walk forward, but do it faster,” what else do you expect? And yet people keep paying trainers to stare at them jog, do push-ups, and other Primary School PE (Physical Education) things.

When you hire a personal fitness trainer, don’t feel like you need to do everything they ask you to do like a submissive student. Before signing, you can check with them the types of exercises that they will instruct you to do.

Communicate that you would like to do things like circuit training and running on the treadmill on your own, and you’d rather keep the time spent during the sessions on technical exercises, like Pilates, or how to use free weights.

 

3. Find one who does similar sports as you

Yes, I know you’re not looking for a sports coach. But even then, it helps to find a fitness trainer who’s into the same sport as you. They will know the right muscles to train.

Aside from the obvious physical benefits, usually fitness trainers also have sidelines working as sports coaches. If you are on good terms with your fitness trainer, you could get little bonus tips like how to get budget equipment, book courts, or get discounts into sports clubs.

So ask about your trainer’s hobbies. Try to find the ones who play the right sports; especially the ones who double as coaches. And stay loyal to them, not to the gym! If they move to a place with cheaper fees, they’ll give you a heads-up.

 

4. Check the expiry date of your personal fitness package

Some training packages are sold in number of sessions. In this case, find out what the time limit is on those sessions.

50 sessions doesn’t always mean you can show up 50 times, whenever you want. You may be obliged to use all the sessions within a set number of months. Most gyms are not contractually obliged to refund or conduct unused sessions past the expiry date.

This means that before you buy sessions, you must carve out time in your schedule intentionally. Just buying sessions doesn’t magically make you fitter. If you keep postponing sessions because of work or laziness, your package will expire before you can finish them, and you’ll forfeit the lot.

 

5. Set a stop point to your personal trainer sessions

Exercise is a lifelong thing. Trainer fees shouldn’t be. When you start your package, set a stop point for yourself; one that isn’t time based, or weight based for that matter.

Those things are relatively out of your control, since many factors need to come into play: diet, lifestyle, your stress levels, your body type, and so on.

But unless you have a memory of a goldfish, usually after a number of sessions, you will learn enough techniques to not need a personal trainer.

After each session, you can write down your own notes about routines and how to use equipment. An example of a goal you can set for yourself is to stop once you learn basic weight training.

If you want to hire a personal trainer to spoon-feed you and tell you “what’s next” all the time, you can still get fit, of course, but you will need to pay non-stop. But if you are willing to use some brain cells, it’s likely that you can build some momentum and learn techniques with a personal trainer for a finite number of sessions, and then you are good to DIY at home or at a cheap gym.

 

Do you use fitness trainers? Share with us your exercise journey below. Is the experience worth the money?