Know Your Worth: How to Set Your Rates as a Strength and Performance Coach

Throughout my career as a strength and performance coach, I would often get asked for free fitness programs, advice or my opinion on a variety of fitness-related questions. A question such as, “What is a good core exercise?” is seemingly harmless. However, right under the surface, there is a much bigger issue at hand: the value of that advice.

When I first started out, I would answer fitness-related questions freely and often with enthusiasm. However, as my experience and credentials grew, I began to understand and appreciate my value. I learned to decline such questions and instead offer a paid consultation.

If you’re struggling with this same scenario, especially as a new strength and performance coach, here’s what you should ask yourself: 

What makes you any less professional than an individual in another field? And therefore, why should you give away your hard-earned knowledge for free?

In Many Ways, the Fitness Industry Is Unregulated

A common theme in personal training, or strength and performance coaching, is that the industry is often devalued. But why is this?

The coaching and fitness industry is the wild west. This is primarily because it lacks regulation. Do you need a degree to say you’re a coach? No. Do you need a license to coach? No. Does being a coach require specific certifications? No.

While I could spend hours discussing this topic, the key takeaway is this: Due to a lack of regulation, it seems strength coaching is often not considered a “professional” career. Since anyone can dispense coaching advice, people place a low value on that advice.

I believe this is an important topic to be aware of as professionals in the fitness industry. That’s because we are professionals! For many of us, this is our career. And if we don’t learn how to value ourselves, others won’t either. 

I once had a NYC-based personal training client, a partner at a top law firm, ask me to lower my rate. At this point in my career, I had over 20 years of experience, a degree in kinesiology, multiple certifications and had worked at the top commercial and corporate facilities in NYC. So, I declined his request. Further, I asked if he would ever lower his hourly billable rate. He replied that he would not because he was one of the best in his particular area of law practice. I responded, “So am I, and I would not lower my rate.” End of discussion. (For context, he billed $1100 per hour—10 times my rate!)

I’m guessing that if personal training were regulated, clients would be less inclined to ask for a discount or a lower rate. In any case, there are steps you can take to make sure you’re valuing yourself appropriately as a strength and performance coach and setting rates that reflect your professional knowledge, credentials and experience. 

What Do You Offer?

When determining your value, you must know what you offer to prospective athletes. Below are some variables:

• Coaching Experience
• Experience in the Industry and Sport
• Education and Credentials
• Services and Specialties Offered

Assessing the experience and education you have and the services you offer is the starting point to determining your rates. 

Read whether it’s better to have a niche as a strength and performance coach.

What Are Your Credentials Worth?

This is a difficult, if not impossible, question to answer. What is a strength and performance coaching certification worth? An extra $10 per session? Who knows. What are five years of coaching experience worth? Again, who knows. 

Quantifying specific metrics such as education and experience to a set dollar amount is not practical since the value of these things is subjective to each individual.

Moreover, just because you acquire a new certification or have another year of coaching under your belt does not necessarily mean that your coaching rate should increase. In fact, more than likely, it should not.

The point is that you should not view each piece of education acquired or each year of coaching gained as a reason to increase your rate. Staying on top of your education is not going above and beyond as a coach—it is expected. Rather, with respect to setting and/or increasing your rate, you should view your education and experience in totality and base your value from a macro point of view. 

What Does ‘Professional’ Mean?

It must be said that value isn’t just tied to experience, education and services provided. As noted above, it is also about being a professional. 

For a good part of my fitness career, I was a fitness manager and general manager of large fitness facilities in New York City. During that time, I sadly realized that what I considered “standard practice” in terms of professionalism was not standard at all. 

In fact, the reason most trainers were written up or terminated was failing to meet the fundamentals of any job: showing up on time, replying in a timely manner to communications, doing job-related tasks with a high level of quality, providing excellent customer service, etc.

If you are a true professional who provides excellent customer service and goes above and beyond for your athletes, it is part of your value.

Read more about the key skills for success as a strength and performance coach.

Get an Understanding of Market Value

If you are coaching in person, the local demographic will greatly influence your rate. Let’s say that you could clone yourself, and one of you is in San Francisco, and the other one of you is in Ashtabula, Ohio. Despite having the exact same knowledge and experience, you could likely charge two to four times more in San Francisco than you could in Ashtabula.

However, if you’re primarily coaching online, your coaching rate will be more influenced by what you perceive your value to be and what other online coaches charge.

The point here is that while it’s crucial to know your value, you also need to be sensitive to what the market will bear and scale your rate accordingly. Do your research to understand what other strength and performance coaches in your area are charging for their services or the rates of online coaches who have similar specializations and services you plan to offer. 

Don’t Devalue Yourself

In creating both AIHP’s Integrated Strength and Performance Coach Certification and the programs for my endurance coaching certification company UESCA, we seek out top experts in specific subjects to help produce our content. In doing so, I’ve found two things to be true:

1. Top individuals are in demand and hard to collaborate with due to their other obligations.
2. Their services don’t come cheap.

Regarding the second point, in a few cases, we were not able to collaborate with individuals due to their rate being too high. This is neither good nor bad—it’s just the way it is. I would never ask a potential contributor to lower their rate no matter how much I wanted to work with them. Perhaps this is due to my personal experience, but understanding that I was approaching the best of the best, I came into the discussions knowing that we might not be able to afford their rates, and that’s OK.

But here’s the key takeaway: Of the contributors that we could not afford to work with, not one of them offered to lower their rate, and good for them! They know their value, and potential partners can either pay their rate or not.

So, how do you know if you priced your rate in line with your value? 

In my personal experience, it’s when you’re able to tell someone your rate and be 100% comfortable with it and, if asked, able to explain to the potential athlete why your rate is what it is. You’ll find athletes who will understand your value and be able to pay your rate, and you’ll have others who won’t, and that’s OK. 

Don’t Compete on Price

There will always be coaches who charge next to nothing and coaches who charge exorbitant rates. Pricing tends to look like a bell curve. Underpricing your services for greater athlete acquisition is risky and a poor long-term strategy. Conversely, pricing your services extremely high to try to set yourself apart from others is equally risky and likely without merit.

As noted previously, you must factor in local demographics if coaching in person or the average rates of online coaches if coaching virtually. However, after taking those things into consideration, your pricing should reflect your value.

Final Thoughts 

Knowing your value as a professional strength and performance coach is critically important for success. But when starting out, it’s normal to feel confused or unsure when trying to determine your rates since you have no benchmark.

Do your research into what trainers charge locally and online, and take into account your experience, education, credentials and professionalism. Don’t undervalue yourself or try to compete on price. 

Once you’ve determined your rates, remember that it’s one thing to say your value is XYZ, and it’s another to actually believe it. You must believe in your value as a coach and, therefore, your associated rates!

Read More: What’s holding you back from starting a career as a strength and performance coach?

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