personal trainer

specialist

membership sales

massage therapist

fitness instructor

UFC GYM

Pay: Compensation is OK. There is great opportunity to make good money. However, there are a lot of mandatory meetings, which is fine. All Staff meetings once a month for several hours in the middle of a Saturday. Another staff meeting once a week, too. 

As a coach, you get paid minimum wage for teaching fitness classes. This was very frustrating. Coaches were expected to teach at least one class. 

For personal training sessions its broken down into tiers:
New Membership Package = $15/hour
Level 1 = $20/hour
Level 2 = $30/hour
Level 3 = $30/hour
Level 4 = $40/hour
Level 5 = $75/hour
The increase in cost per session made it more difficult to close on a deal. If you could secure a few 4's and 5's it was quite nice, but difficult to have a reoccurring client at those prices. Often times, the sales team would sell a TON of New Membership Packages to one client (up to 20 or more sessions quite often). These were a pain to work through.

Music was often too loud. During primetime, 4 or 5 songs could be playing at the same time. Makes it hard to talk to the class or client you are with. Corporate wants the music loud for some reason. 

You can make good commission, but they kept moving the bar to tougher and tougher marks. Started at $2000 for PT and $200 for supplements. Eventually it got up to $4000 for PT and $400 for supplements. I was able to hit it often, but I was working l6 days a week. Often it would be a split shift to target more high traffic hours. This made it difficult to have a life outside of work without being completely exhausted.

The coworkers were the best part, along with many of the members. The community is quite strong there. Sometimes it felt like corporate took advantage of that. For example, there was a heavily enforce uniform policy for the JiuJitsu program. Students were not allowed to wear any gi outside the brand. This is a pretty uncommon practice within the community. 

There are plenty of opportunities to learn. Sometimes the trainer's meetings are dedicated to teaching others. It could be a range of exercise techniques, sales, or even programming. There are many types of trainers you will get to interact with. Boxing, kick boxing, Muy Thai, Jiujitsu, MMA, body building, chiropracters, etc. The list goes on. I miss a lot of the people that had come and gone this place of business.

A typical day is never the same. You will be tasked with several different things that are vital to basic business operations. I learned that it is very important to have a larger team for an operation like this to be successful. The business will depend a lot upon how the owners run their business, as a manager you can make recommendations all day, but in the end it is them that make that decision. Co-workers are close to you because you work hard together and experience the ups and downs together. Learn to trust one another and do not fight over commission. Instead, create a uniform system that will determine who receives commission- it will prevent animosity and tension. 
The hardest part about this job is experiencing the slow months and the high pressure environment. Both are inevitable in the sales industry, but what can significantly help sooth that pain is the connection with ownership, membership base (referrals) and effort in prospecting (team motivation and constant positive outlook). 
The most enjoyable part of this job is knowing you make a difference in someone's life. UFC Gym delivers an excellent product and if used consistently, the member will receive several health benefits. As a sales person, you should view yourself as a Buyer Assistant. Helping people make the decisions in their best interests. If you lie or sell from the standpoint of greed you will lose more than just the sale, I promise. Properly show them the product with enthusiasm, relate to them and their fitness goals, demonstrate how the product can seriously make a positive impact in their life, and let them decide. At the end of the day, the sale will be made if they trust you and see the value in the product. Learn how to accomplish both and you too will be successful.

The nature of the Trainer/Coach industry is a highly rewarding very competitive business. It is always YOU VS YOU 1st however. The UFC really does have a good model of business, far from perfect but I feel its a place where they are actively promoting progress in the business. .
Bottom line is the split between Coaches payout and corporate share per clients isn't a fair one in the long run in my personal opinion. I've been in the corporate training/coaching area for 2 half years now and it is wonderful at times but the problem still lies in pricing and splitting between coach and gym.

PRO - Flexible - different Price sheet to choose from (to Charge Clients coaches desecration) -culture- team environment -  pay per client - freedom to create your own program - open door polices - clean gym - friendly.

CON - Commissions are less then 15%. -  60/40 split gym and coach - too many coaches vs development per coach
 

Yes we can make a good living as a coach/trainer. However retention is KEY in  any business especially a service one. Too constantly rebuild or prospect it makes it impossible to grow with less effort for years to come, thus the nature of the coach/trainer filed would be a dead end. WITH this being said the dead end outcome can be avoided with proper planning and execution. Learn consistently and study trends. Truly becoming the owner of your business no matter how big or small. I still am learning myself. God bless all, you can do it.

I worked at the UFC Gym in Marlboro, and quite frankly it was the worst boss I've ever worked for.  The owner (Bob Stein) is a crook who basically abandoned the business for 2 months, and always did shady and unethical business practices.  During my time working there I found several times that he hid money from corporate so he wouldn't have to pay franchise royalties, would set up people to auto-renew after their contract was up without their knowledge, and would charge an extremely high cancelation fee for anyone who wanted to cancel.  

The facility itself was in need of upgrades.  Bags were always breaking and several times members were told they would have to share bags.  There is only about 25 bags in the facility and many of them broke and weren't repaired.  At one point all 3 AC units in the facility shut down and staff was told to simply open the doors and let breeze in, despite the inside temperature getting up to 85 degrees.

The gym had a hard time maintaining staff, which should be a giant red flag for any potential employee.  As a result, many classes had to be canceled and taken off the schedule.  The advanced training program which costs almost $150 a month, is limited to only 3 classes a week.  I honestly would not recommend anyone working for this company (based solely on the fact what UFC Gym corporate allows to go on in this one facility) or even joining this gym.  There are many gyms in the area which do the same format classes.... Find one!

A typical day included basic office duties- general customer service, client relations, computer operations and more. As far as management I performed many duties revolving around self starting sales through lead generation by networking, marketing, running promotional events, demonstrations, and much more. Setting appointments on a daily basis, giving tours to new members as well as educating them with what we had to offer so I may to continue on with the sales process to link the customer with a membership right for their own goals. I over saw a staff of 4 or more at a time, delegating tasks amongst our employees. Making sure to not only reach my monthly goal and or quota but that our team as a whole were doing so as well. Through the few years as the AGM I had the opportunity to attend a few training conferences where I learned tings that range from boosting employee moral, to better marketing techniques, time management, training and the hiring process. The hardest part, for me, I would say was the transition from telemarketing over the phones for the past four years, and moving on to face to face sales. That, however, lead into the most enjoyable part of my job. At club fitness I learned how important it was for me to help others in my life, therefore, I had found a job that paid me to be happy...I think that is most important when considering a new line of work.

Honestly? Not that great. Coworkers are okay, but they also call off frequently and management expects you to take their shift even if they don't have a good excuse. You have to be firm and say no. I'm a full time college student  who was originally supposed to be working 20 hours a week and I'm nearly working double that. On top of that pay is not great either unless you really work for it. But if you're a student like me, then you probably don't care much about moving up unless you are a business or marketing major.
On top of this a lot of promises we're made at the start with no follow through. Better pay was promised, but not received. As well as the potential to work at the front desk and not just as a kids attendant was talked about but again, no followup. Working as the kids zone attendant gets very boring so if you can try to work front desk then go for it. Better pay, and you are given more tasks to do. Otherwise, they don't care about you that much and you're expected to come in when management asks you to. I should've known from the start this would be sketchy since I literally filled out no paperwork on my first day. But you live and you learn.

 They changed the pay structure multiple times without any warning or explanation. When I started the manager guaranteed a minimum starting pay that was never received. On a personal level it was fun to be around the other employees but on a work level it did not offer much. The work hours are random and not optimized. You might teach and class and have to wait two hours to teach another, or teach one class early in the day and have to come back at night to teach one more. They pay minimum wage to highly trained martial artists and athletes. Sales compensation is very low and they changed it to lower after I was hired. All coaches work at other gyms of necessity. It is technically not allowed, the gym knows coaches are at other gyms but they will use it as an excuse to fire you if and when they want to. People have been fired for taking hour at other UFC gym locations as "conflict of interest." This would be a decent side job if all you wanted was a free gym membership and to teach a few classes for fun, but it's not a longtime career.

I truly loved working here. I started as a patron and one day decided I’d love to be part of this gym I loved so much. I decided to work here and I don’t regret it. I had a lot of fun working with the kids club department. The children brought me joy and as a single mom it came naturally rather than it being a job. 
The downside is the hourly pay is not great.
Upside is that your gym membership is comped which - if you’re a gym fanatic like me - that was a huge perk. 
This gym was very flexible with our schedules . As long as we found a coworker to cover our shift, they didn’t make a big deal if we needed a day off. 
They offered opportunity for advancement if you wanted to become a trainer. 
You were able to pick up as many shifts that were open and cover for your co workers. 
I was sad when the Richland Hills location closed. 
If I could change one thing about working kids club- maybe have 2 kids club attendants working on busy days as I would have up to 20 kids at one point alone. 
Other than that if you see a UFC and fitness is your passion - go apply! 


The front desk at UFC is like a second family to me. We all get along great and even have silly sibling rivalries. Communication is key for the gym and front desk including myself all speak up when we need to. We have monthly meetings that I personally think could be more productive and effective, however one step at a time is better than not taking any steps at all. There is also a ton of opportunities to earn extra money as long as you apply yourself and push yourself during every shift. When everyone comes together and works as a team, that's when you really feel like a family. There are multiple departments in the gym such as front desk, sales, personal training, group fitness instructors, directors and management; sometimes it is hard to keep track of who/where certain people are. Similar to any job, some do their job way better than others and the few that slack really do effect the gym as a whole in a negative way and it is very obvious in a gym setting to see who does and doesn't do their job.

Days were very long.  Weeks sometimes demanded 70+ hours with no days off due to VERY limited staffing at our location.  

Budget for marketing was virtually non-existent.  95% of leads were generated by YOU and your team.  

Our gym had zero budget for quality staffing, so we were limited to $10/hr employees while demanding quite a bit.  They typically did not last longer than 3 months.  

Good news, there is no commission cap.  If you are in a premium location along a major thoroughfare, you have the potential to do very well if you are decent at sales.

Ownership was in turmoil (half looking to sell their portion) for 10 months/18 months I was employed as GM

Hardest part of this job was zero established paid vacation, minimal days off, zero regard for work life balance.  Was given all assurances of job security by ownership just days before being let go.

The most enjoyable part was certainly the members.  I had known these people since 2010 from being a trainer for so long at both locations.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Personal trainer 25 salaries reported	$31.52 per hour
Specialist 8 salaries reported	$13.19 per hour
Membership sales 4 salaries reported	$14.41 per hour
Massage therapist 7 salaries reported	$41.43 per hour
Fitness instructor 11 salaries reported	$24.77 per hour

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