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10 Jobs in the Fitness Industry: Which Fitness Career Is Right for You?
Love fitness but not quite sure what you could actually do with it as a career?
When people think about jobs in the fitness industry, Personal Trainer is usually the first role that springs to mind.
But the fitness industry is much bigger than personal training.
You could work on a gym floor, coach athletes, run group classes, support people with health conditions, manage a fitness facility, build an online coaching business or even teach the next generation of fitness professionals.
And you don’t necessarily need to quit your current job tomorrow, buy 27 pairs of leggings and start shouting motivational quotes at strangers.
Many fitness careers can be started gradually, alongside your existing job, while you gain qualifications, experience and confidence.
So, if you’ve ever thought, “I’d love to work in fitness, but I don’t really know what my options are,” here are 10 careers worth exploring.
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1. Gym Instructor
A Gym Instructor is often the entry point into the fitness industry.
You might work in a commercial gym, leisure centre, hotel, health club or independent fitness facility.
Typical responsibilities can include:
- Welcoming and inducting new members
- Showing people how to use gym equipment safely
- Helping members with basic exercise programmes
- Keeping the gym floor safe and organised
- Talking to members and building relationships
- Supporting classes and other activities within the facility
It is a particularly good role if you enjoy being around people and want to gain experience before progressing further.
For many people, becoming a Gym Instructor is also the first step towards becoming a Personal Trainer.
2. Personal Trainer
Personal Training gives you much greater responsibility for helping individual clients achieve specific health and fitness goals.
Rather than simply showing somebody how to use the gym, you might:
- Conduct consultations and fitness assessments
- Set goals with clients
- Design individual training programmes
- Coach exercise technique
- Support behaviour change
- Monitor progress
- Provide appropriate nutritional guidance
- Adapt programmes as the client’s needs change
A Level 3 Personal Training qualification is designed to develop the knowledge, skills and competence required to work unsupervised as a Personal Trainer. Learners need the appropriate Level 2 underpinning knowledge before progressing to Level 3.
Personal Trainers can also work in lots of different environments, including gyms, private studios, clients’ homes and outdoor settings.
If that sounds appealing, you can explore our Level 3 Personal Training course.
3. Group Exercise Instructor
Prefer coaching a room full of people rather than working one-to-one?
Group exercise could be a brilliant option.
Depending on your qualifications and interests, you could deliver things such as:
- Circuits
- Indoor cycling
- Boot camps
- Strength classes
- Functional fitness
- Studio-based exercise
- Small-group training
You need good communication skills, confidence and the ability to manage several people at once.
You don’t need to be the loudest person in the room either.
Some of the best instructors create brilliant classes because they are approachable, encouraging and good at making people feel comfortable.
4. Strength and Conditioning Coach
If you’re fascinated by strength, power, speed and sports performance, strength and conditioning could be the direction for you.
An S&C coach might work with:
- Individual athletes
- Sports clubs
- Teams
- Academies
- Schools and colleges
- Recreational athletes
The role goes beyond simply making athletes stronger.
Strength and conditioning involves analysing the demands of a sport and developing qualities such as strength, power, speed, agility and physical robustness.
The Level 4 Strength and Conditioning qualification we deliver is specifically aimed at people who are already Level 3 qualified and want to progress into this specialised field. It covers areas including needs analysis, testing, periodisation, speed and agility, sprint mechanics, plyometrics and strength and power development.
This is also why we include Level 4 Strength and Conditioning within our Elite Personal Trainer pathway for people who want to develop beyond the standard PT qualification and stand out from other trainers.
5. Exercise Referral Instructor
Not everyone who wants help with exercise is a healthy 25-year-old who wants bigger biceps.
There is a huge population of people who could benefit from becoming more physically active while also managing health conditions.
Exercise Referral qualifications allow fitness professionals to develop their knowledge of working with people who have medically controlled conditions and other health considerations.
That can open opportunities within:
- Exercise referral schemes
- Community health programmes
- Leisure centres
- Specialist fitness programmes
- Private Personal Training
Storm’s Level 3 Exercise Referral course, for example, includes areas such as medical conditions, professional practice and planning and delivering exercise referral programmes.
For somebody particularly interested in health, wellbeing and helping people who may feel excluded from mainstream fitness, this can be a very rewarding direction.
6. Sports Coach
If you love a particular sport, you might decide to combine fitness knowledge with sports coaching.
That could mean coaching:
- Football
- Rugby
- Athletics
- Boxing
- Tennis
- Swimming
- Strength sports
- Hyrox or functional fitness
- Youth sport
The qualifications you’ll need depend on the sport and organisation you want to work with, so you should always check the requirements of the relevant governing body or employer.
Fitness qualifications can complement your sports coaching knowledge particularly well, especially if you want to understand areas such as strength, conditioning, movement, programming and physical preparation.
7. Online Fitness Coach
Not every fitness professional spends their working day standing on a gym floor.
Online coaching has created another way of working with clients.
An online coach might provide:
- Training programmes
- Video consultations
- Exercise demonstrations
- Progress reviews
- Accountability
- Nutrition and lifestyle support within their scope of practice
- Online communities
- Hybrid online and face-to-face coaching
The big advantage is flexibility.
You are no longer limited to working with people who live within 20 minutes of your gym.
However, having an Instagram account and owning a tripod doesn’t automatically make someone a great online coach.
You still need the underlying coaching knowledge, communication skills and ability to programme appropriately for real people.
8. Fitness Manager
Perhaps you enjoy fitness but are also interested in leadership and business.
Fitness Managers and Gym Managers can be responsible for things such as:
- Managing staff
- Recruiting trainers
- Membership experience
- Health and safety
- Facility operations
- Class timetables
- Sales
- Staff development
- Customer retention
- Financial performance
Some people start as Gym Instructors, progress into Personal Training and eventually move into management as their experience develops.
For someone who enjoys both people and organisation, management can provide a completely different career path within the fitness industry.
9. Fitness Tutor or Educator
You can even build a career teaching other fitness professionals.
Tutors and assessors help aspiring coaches gain the knowledge, practical skills and confidence needed to enter the industry themselves.
This could involve:
- Teaching anatomy and physiology
- Delivering practical workshops
- Coaching exercise technique
- Assessing learners
- Supporting students through qualifications
- Creating educational resources
- Mentoring new trainers
It normally comes later in your career because you’ll need relevant occupational experience alongside appropriate teaching and assessing qualifications.
For experienced fitness professionals who love explaining things and helping other coaches improve, education can become an incredibly rewarding progression route.
10. Self-Employed Fitness Business Owner
Finally, you don’t necessarily have to apply for somebody else’s job.
Many fitness professionals eventually create something of their own.
That could be:
- A Personal Training business
- A small private studio
- Outdoor fitness classes
- Online coaching
- Small-group training
- Corporate wellbeing
- Sports performance coaching
- Specialist coaching for a particular population
- A combination of several of these
This is where fitness becomes particularly interesting as a career.
You don’t necessarily have to choose one job title for the next 30 years.
You might spend part of your week Personal Training, coach a sports team one evening, run a class at the weekend and build an online coaching service alongside it.
Your career can evolve as your interests, qualifications and experience develop.
How Do You Find Jobs in the Fitness Industry?
Once you’ve started thinking about the type of role you want, start looking at real job adverts.
You don’t even need to wait until you’re qualified.
Looking at vacancies now gives you a much better understanding of what employers actually want.
One useful place to start is Jooble UK.
Jooble is a job search aggregator that brings together vacancies from multiple public sources. Its UK search allows you to enter both a job title and location, and job results can then be narrowed using factors such as employment type, location, experience and salary.
Don’t Just Search for “Fitness Jobs”
Try several different search terms.
For example:
- Gym Instructor
- Fitness Instructor
- Personal Trainer
- Fitness Coach
- Strength and Conditioning Coach
- Exercise Referral
- Wellbeing Coach
- Sports Coach
- Fitness Manager
- Leisure Assistant
Then add your location.
If you’re based in Sussex, for example, you might try separate searches for Brighton, Hove, Worthing, Shoreham, Crawley and Sussex rather than relying on one search.
Also look at part-time positions.
If you’re changing careers, getting your first fitness job doesn’t necessarily mean immediately leaving your current employment.
A few gym shifts per week can give you valuable experience, contacts and confidence while you build towards something bigger.
Jooble also offers email job notifications, which means you can keep an eye on new opportunities without manually repeating the same search every day.
And don’t rely entirely on job boards.
Once you’ve identified gyms, leisure centres or fitness businesses you’d like to work for, check their own careers pages and speak to them directly too.
We Can Help You Find Opportunities Once You’re Qualified
One of the advantages of training with Storm Fitness Academy is that our involvement doesn’t have to end when you receive your certificate.
We’ve built relationships with local gyms and major fitness brands, which means we can help graduates identify opportunities and connect with potential employers.
Our current Personal Trainer pathways include guaranteed interviews with David Lloyd and Fitness First, for example.
That doesn’t mean we can guarantee that somebody will offer you a job, you still need to impress the employer.
What we can do is help you become appropriately qualified, build your confidence, understand the industry and help put you in front of employers looking for fitness professionals.
And if your goal is self-employment rather than working for a gym, we can support you with that route too.
Which Fitness Career Is Right for You?
You don’t need to have your entire career mapped out before you begin.
Start by asking yourself:
Who would I most enjoy helping?
Would I rather coach individuals, groups or athletes?
Do I want to be employed, self-employed or perhaps a mixture of both?
Do I enjoy general health and fitness, or am I drawn towards a particular specialism?
What would I actually enjoy doing every day?
You may discover that Personal Training is exactly what you’re looking for.
Or Personal Training might simply become the foundation that eventually leads you into strength and conditioning, exercise referral, online coaching, management, education or your own business.
That is one of the great things about building a career in fitness.
There isn’t just one route.
Ready to Explore a Career in Fitness?
If you love fitness but you’re not sure which qualification or career path would suit you, get in touch via the form below.
We’ll talk through where you are now, what you’d ultimately like to do and the most sensible route to get there.
You can also explore our Personal Training courses and fitness qualifications.
And if you’re serious about building a long-term career and want to develop beyond the basic PT qualification, take a look at our Elite Personal Trainer Package, which adds Level 4 Strength and Conditioning alongside your Personal Training pathway to help you develop greater expertise and stand out in the industry.
You don’t have to know exactly where your fitness career will end before you take the first step. You just need to start moving in the right direction.
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