There is a phrase that has been repeated for years in our fitness world: "it's hard to find good personal trainers." And for a long time, we all assumed the problem was numerical: few professionals, high demand, tight market.
A recent ISSA (International Sports Sciences Association) study, which combines data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics with a survey of industry operators and the conclusions of the ISSA Global Summit 2026, challenges that idea. Honestly, it's a read that anyone involved with gyms (managers, trainers, or those like us at BOOMFIT who live on both sides) should pay close attention to.
The problem isn’t quantity. It’s preparation.
The employment figures are, at first glance, positive: the sector is expected to grow well above the average of other professions over the next decade, with thousands of new opportunities per year just in the U.S. If we looked only at this, the obvious conclusion would be "we need to train more people."
But this ISSA study points out something else: many candidates enter the market with a good technical foundation (they know anatomy, physiology, plan proper training) yet still are not prepared for what the job truly demands today. This phenomenon is called the "readiness gap": the distance between what education teaches and what the profession, in practice, requires.
And this changes everything. The challenge shifts from "finding more trainers" to "finding trainers who arrive ready."
Certification alone is no longer enough
While it remains the foundation (and always will), the truth is certification is no longer sufficient to differentiate a candidate.
Today, a client enters a gym already informed, already with an app on their phone that generates workouts, already wearing a watch that tells them how they slept and recovered. Technical knowledge, which for years was the main asset of a trainer, is increasingly accessible to anyone, free or nearly so.
This means what a PT knows about sets and reps is no longer what sets them apart. What distinguishes them is what they do with that knowledge: how they communicate, how they build trust from the very first contact, how they keep someone motivated on a day when that person has no desire to train.
AI will not replace the Personal Trainer, it will make them more necessary
The more technology can do what only a trainer used to do (design plans, analyze biometric data, suggest loads), the more the trainer’s value shifts to what no technology can replace: understanding why someone quit three times this year; recognizing that the "I can't today" hides something else; or being there when motivation fails.
Put another way: technology can propose the workout. But it’s the personal trainer who gets the person to actually do it and come back next week, and the week after, and a year from now.
This should relieve many PTs who see AI as a threat. It is not. It’s the opposite: the more AI there is in the market, the more valuable what only a human can do becomes.
And in Europe? It’s not quite the same story
It’s worth pausing here, because it would be easy to read this study and assume it applies exactly the same here. It doesn’t, at least not in the same way.
The ISSA report talks about giant chains, like Anytime Fitness or Snap Fitness, with hundreds of trainer vacancies at once. It’s a recruitment problem on an industrial scale. Here in Europe, and Portugal in particular, the reality of the sector is different: it’s mainly a market of small businesses and independent trainers, many working freelance or in small studio teams, without a "corporate" career structure behind them.
This changes how the "readiness gap" appears. It’s not so much "the gym can’t find people to hire," but rather: "the freelance PT never learned the business side of their own career": acquiring clients; retaining clients; communicating their value or setting the right price for their work. These are skills that no technical certification teaches and weigh even more here, because often the personal trainer is simultaneously their own manager, marketer, and salesperson.
Put another way: the fundamental problem is the same on both sides of the Atlantic! Technical training is no longer enough. But here, that gap is felt especially by those working alone, without an HR department or marketing team to support them. And that is exactly why we believe this conversation needs to be brought into our sector, with our examples and our reality, not just repeated from an American report.
What this means in practice for those training people every day
Looks good on paper, but what does this change day-to-day for those on the gym floor? We share here some practical ideas:
👉 Treat the first conversation as the most important moment in the relationship. It’s not the physical assessment that decides if a client stays or leaves: it’s whether they felt, in the first five minutes, that they were heard.
👉 Learn to read demotivation before it appears. A client missing a session isn’t (just) a scheduling problem. Ask, with genuine curiosity, what changed.
Don’t hide what technology gives you—use it to your advantage. If a client arrives with data from their watch or an app, use that as a conversation starter, not as competition.
👉 Invest in communication as much as you invested in anatomy. A course in communication, active listening, or simply asking your clients for feedback is, today, as valuable as an extra technical certification.
👉 Think of yourself as someone who helps change habits, not just prescribe exercise. It’s a small professional identity shift in words, but big in practice.
👉 If you work freelance, treat the "business" as part of your job, not an extra. Understanding how to communicate your value, retain a client, and fairly charge for your work is as much part of the profession today as knowing how to build a training plan.
BOOMFIT’s vision
We believe the future of personal training won’t be decided by who knows more about sets and reps, but by who knows how to stand by someone on days they have no desire to show up.
Technology will continue to become more capable: and that’s fine. Our job, as a brand, is to ensure that this technical evolution goes hand in hand with the human evolution of the profession.
There is no shortage of personal trainers. There is a shortage of PTs prepared for the job the profession is today—not what it was ten years ago. And that is a conversation we will continue to have here.
