You, Too, Can Be Tired and Broke for a Lifetime!
If you love nothing better than taking all kinds of fitness classes seven days a week, the thought may have crossed your mind that you should try to make a living as an instructor. Before you take this line of thought any further, I’m going to step in with an intervention, because I love you.
Turn around. Walk away. Fuhgettaboutit! Your chances of being struck by lightning while playing centre for the Maple Leafs are considerably better than your odds of making a comfortable, Ramen-free living as a fitness instructor.
I’ve run the calculations a million times. “If I teach 15 classes a week; eat beans and rice for breakfast, lunch, and dinner; and sell just a fraction of my liver, I’ll only be short $200 a month on my living expenses.” Not the perfect scenario. “But wait!” my more persistent, wide-eyed optimist self always interjected. “What if I teach 20 classes a week, skip breakfast, live in my neighbour’s garden shed, and sell a whole kidney?” Could I teach 20 classes a week with only one kidney? I checked into it once, and it is possible. “Now we’re getting somewhere!” I thought. I forged ahead, loading up my schedule with every class I could wrangle.
There were just a few things I forgot to factor in.
First, teaching multiple classes a day makes you tired. Really, really tired. The kind of tired where you fall asleep in your sweaty workout clothes and wake up in a stinky, dismal, over-trained funk to discover that you have exactly 23 minutes to shower, dress, and bolt out the door to a day’s activity that would leave you even more tired than you already were, if that was possible.
I forgot that, unless you’re one of those magical unicorns known as a “successful studio owner,” teaching three or four classes a day means you’ll be spending a lot of time and beans and rice money to get to and from the various locations of these classes.
I didn’t realize that it would take massive amounts of water, laundry detergent, and electricity to wash all the reeking workout wear I was generating because each class format has its own type of dress. As comfy as the bike shorts were for spinning, they wouldn’t cut it in Zumba. I needed five different pairs of shoes, an infinite music library, hours of time every week to plan for each class, and a miraculous memory to recall the right plan for the right class. The certifications, licenses, and continuing education credits required to teach all those classes were the final nail in my “fitness as a career” coffin. Broke, exhausted, and more than a little frazzled, I welcomed the chance to trade my pro fitness instructor title for a job that actually allowed me to sit down for more than 30 seconds each day.
So, if after reading my sad tale, you still want to be a full-time fitness instructor, promise me one thing — that you’ll diligently practice your hockey moves, just as a backup.
What's Your Reaction?
