Why Your Personal Trainer Is Not an Entrepreneur
The fitness industry in the United Kingdom has undergone a quiet transformation over the last decade. While the number of instructors has grown to nearly 145,000, the nature of their work has shifted away from traditional employment. Data from recent workforce reports shows that over 80% of personal trainers in the UK are now freelance or self-employed. This change raises a question about the modern economy: to what extent does the rise of self-employed personal trainers represent a new wave of entrepreneurship?
Understanding this change matters because it reveals how modern corporate structures respond to self-employed personal trainers. I argue that the personal training model is not a system of entrepreneurial freedom but is actually a form of “neo-serfdom” because personal trainers are often required to pay exorbitant monthly 'rent' to gyms regardless of their earnings, effectively turning their labour into a guaranteed revenue stream for the corporation rather than a profit-making venture for themselves.
The Feudal Model of Fitness
The term “neo-serfdom” describes a modern economic relationship that mirrors the medieval feudal system. In the Middle Ages, a serf was allowed to use a lord’s land to survive. In exchange, the serf performed unpaid work on the lord’s own fields. In the fitness world, the gym acts as the lord by owning the space and the client base. The personal trainer acts as the serf. They pay for access to this space through high monthly rents or by working for the gym without pay.
This system is inherently exploitative. Gyms now rely on self-employed trainers to do “shadow work” - cleaning equipment, staffing receptions, leading classes - without a salary. The trainer accepts this because they are desperate for "floor time" to find clients. This is not a partnership between two businesses. It is a one-sided extraction of value.
The Illusion of Freedom
One might counter-argue that trainers choose this path for the flexibility and high earning potential of being their own boss. From this perspective, the gym provides infrastructure that a trainer could never afford alone, making it a fair trade of resources for opportunity.
However, this ignores the lack of true entrepreneurship. A true entrepreneur controls their pricing, their brand, and their schedule. Most gym-based trainers must follow strict corporate dress codes and compete with dozens of others in the same room. They often work 50–60 hours per week just to cover their ‘rent’, which ranges from £700 to well over £1000 per month in London.
If you can’t choose your uniform, your hours, or your brand, are you an entrepreneur or are you just an outsourced service provider bearing 100% of the corporate risk?
The mental health toll is significant. Research from the journal Sociology shows that:
50% of self-employed personal trainers experience fatigue.
40% had sleeping problems and stress.
33% had irritability and anxiety.
They are not building a business. They are working a job with all the responsibilities of an employee, but none of the legal protections. The gym industry has successfully marketed a precarious existence as a dream of freedom. We must recognise this model for what it is. It is a corrosive system that exhausts the worker while enriching the landlord.
I believe we must challenge the assumption that self-employment always equals independence. In the fitness industry, it often equals a new form of serfdom. It is a bitter irony that while self-employed personal trainers spend their days helping others build strength, the system they inhabit is designed to systematically strip them of their own. The future of fitness isn't in high-rent extraction; it's in flexible, hourly-based partnerships that actually treat trainers as the value-drivers they are.
