When you imagined becoming a personal trainer, chances are you didn’t picture yourself working with someone like your grandma. But offering personal training for seniors can be a great way to grow your fitness business with an audience that is eager to learn, motivated to work, and ready to spend the money.
In this article, we’ll take a look at the benefits personal training has to offer for seniors, the benefits training seniors can offer you as a fitness professional, and the different resources you can use to become a senior fitness specialist.
4 Benefits of Personal Training for Older Adults
1. Improve mobility.
Mobility issues are common among seniors and often contribute to injuries and falls. Research shows that approximately 35% of people aged 70 experience mobility issues, while the majority of people over 85 years of age experience them as well.
Regular exercise enhances strength, flexibility, coordination, and balance, which can all help with mobility. When seniors work with a personal trainer to exercise, they can target these skills specifically for even more benefit.
2. Increase independence.
When older adults become limited in their mobility, they’re often unable to continue living alone. Many end up needing to move into a senior facility, hire daily help, or depend on relatives. The better seniors can move on their own, the better they can function on a day-to-day basis—that’s where personal training comes in.
Fitness training for seniors helps improve their functional abilities. As they improve their endurance, mobility, aerobic health, and strength, they can more safely navigate their environment. Also, as they become more fit and mobile, older adults become more confident, offering them even more independence in other aspects of life.
3. Prevent disease.
Physical activity prevents an estimated 3.9 million early deaths around the world each year. How? By decreasing the risk of diseases that increase the risk of mortality. Here are some of the conditions regular physical activity can help prevent in adults and seniors:
- Heart disease
- Stroke
- Hypertension
- Type 2 diabetes
- Dementia
- Certain cancers (bladder, breast, colon, endometrial, esophageal, kidney, lung, and stomach)
- Dementia
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Falls
- Fall-related injuries
4. Reach fitness goals safely.
While joining a regular gym is certainly an option for seniors looking to be more active, they often need help using equipment and modifying exercises for their limitations. The results are a higher risk of injury, slower progress, or a lack of results at all, which can be discouraging and cause older adults to give up exercising altogether.
Working with a personal trainer offers seniors the one-on-one attention they need to optimize their workouts. Trainers can give older adults personalized recommendations for exercises to work on the skills they want to focus on, as well as guide them through those exercises to ensure they’re completing them safely and effectively.
4 Benefits of Adding Personal Training for Seniors to Your Offerings
1. Open yourself up to new clientele.
Offering fitness training, strength training, functional training, and other services for seniors is a great way to differentiate yourself as a personal trainer. You’ll show potential clients of all ages that you’re flexible and can work with a variety of types of clients.
Diversifying your client base helps you stand out against your competition and drive profits. Plus, seniors spend a lot of time talking to their friends, which means a greater potential for referrals to your business.
2. Get back to the basics of fitness.
Younger fitness demographics tend to prefer training programs that push intense cardio and strength training for faster results. It’s easy to get wrapped up in these trends if you’re only working with younger generations. Working with older adults can help you bring your focus back to basic movements and functional abilities like balance, mobility, flexibility, and so on.
Constantly refreshing your knowledge of foundational training techniques and how each movement affects the body will help you create more effective programs for clients from all demographics. Specializing in these areas can also open you up to other new types of clients, such as someone who is injured or with a medical condition who wants to be physically active.
3. Physical fitness is a growing trend among seniors.
Ever since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, there has been an increased focus on mental and physical health, especially for “at-risk” populations. Since seniors fall into the at-risk category, the demographic has become more interested in fitness training. According to IHRSA’s 2021 Media Report, 69% of baby boomers (adults born between 1946 and 1964) want to be more active.
Although the pandemic certainly boosted interest in fitness training for seniors, it was already a growing trend before 2020. The same IHRSA report also notes that the number of fitness club members who were over the age of 65 increased by a little over 34% from 2010 to 2019. Hopping on this trend will open your personal training business up to a whole new pool of potential clients.
4. Seniors have money to spend.
Not only are older adults becoming more interested in fitness, but they also have more money to spend on it than most younger clients. The Federal Reserve reports that baby boomers hold just over 50% of generational wealth. And they’re willing to spend that wealth too—boomers spend, on average, over $63,000 per year.
As a result, seniors are less likely to be concerned with cost when it comes to hiring a personal trainer. This could be a great opportunity for you to upsell, get referrals, and grow your business.
Resources for Adding Personal Training Services for Seniors
Like with any specialty, it’s important that you ensure you’re qualified to offer personal training for seniors before you start advertising them or training anyone. Fortunately, there are a lot of senior fitness training certifications and continuing education resources available. Here are some of the top recommended ones:
- AFPA Senior Fitness Specialist Certification
- ISSA Senior Fitness Certification
- NASM Senior Fitness Specialization
How My PT Hub Can Support Personal Trainers Expand Their Offerings to Seniors
Creating safe and effective workouts for seniors can be just as easy as creating training programs for any other client when you use My PT Hub’s Workouts Feature.
Use our pre-made workout templates or database of over 7,500 HD video exercises to choose the moves you want your senior clients to do. Then, edit and customize each exercise and workout to their needs and abilities. You can even upload your own exercise videos or instructions and use them to create workouts for your seniors.
Get started with a free 30-day trial of My PT Hub today!