fitness manager

personal trainer

assistant manager

manager

cluster manager

Pure Gym

I started with PureGym as a PT, then went on to be an assistant manager then promoted to manager.
Overall the company isn’t the worst to work for. As an AGM or GM the salary isn’t too bad, and as long as your club has a full team things run smoothly, making your job as a manager pleasant and giving you a good work/life balance.

However, sadly their PT/FC model makes it near impossible for clubs to get staff. The model only really allows PTs who have no financial commitments such as rent/bills to apply due to the time it takes to build up a client base so they actually have an income coming in. So if your someone who has rent, mortgage, family etc and need an income straight away, the model does not work. All my PT/FCs luckily still lived at home and had parents to help them financially, but the moment one of them wanted to move out of home the reality of the rent commitment to Pure made it nearly impossible for them to do so.
Because of this model my gym and many many others were extremely short staffed. I should have had  6x PT/FCs but we had to scrape by with 2-3, meaning as managers you we’re having to cover the FCs daily jobs as well as your own, leading to long and stressful days. You were always expected to keep up the high number of classes that you’d be running with 6 FCs with just the 2-3 you actually had, meaning you were burning yourself out physically & mentally doing so many classes a day. They also love to do an overkill amount of tick box exercises each day, you were often glued to a tablet ticking off tasks which did not need doing daily, which in turn kept you off the gym floor helping members. 

PureGym need to actually employ just gym instructors to assist the management teams with the day to day running. 
They also need to set their PT rent to an appropriate amount on a club by club basis. Charging the same rent for a small box gym with minimal equipment and sub 2k members/potential PT clients as they do for a large box gym with masses of equipment and 8k plus members/potential PT clients is just not right.

The issue with being short staffed also made it difficult for your work/life balance, your shifts would need to change regularly and at short notice, you’d often have to cancel holiday because you couldn’t get any cover, or if you could the cover would not be able to do your full workload which negatively impacted the members in the club through class cancellations. Instead of working 5days a week you’d end up doing 6-7days a week regularly because you we’re having to cover for a lack of FCs, you wouldn’t get paid for the overtime, you’d have to take the time back at a later date, but when you had so few FCs you rarely got to take it back.
They would still expect you to travel hours away from club to attend management meetings even though you physically couldn’t leave the club due to lack of staff to cover the hours, FCs would often in this case feel under pressure to do overtime so that you could go to these meetings, and attend these meetings would mean more classes being cancelled to the detriment of members. As a manager you’d be sat at these meetings thinking to yourself “this could have been done on a zoom call, and my team are stressed trying to cover for me, and my members are missing out on classes they pay for, all because on PureGym LinkedIn it looks good that they have all their managers together” 
More focus needed to be put on letting the managers bring their individual clubs up to a good standard and a smooth day to day run, and keeping the members within that club happy, than doing outside events just to look good on social media 

I'll be as honest and kind as possible. PureGym is not for you as a PT, its for the COMPANY. You have to work 3 4 hour shifts throughout the week where all you do is clean the gym and do classes. In reality, you don't get much time promoting your PT business, you just have to do what PureGym want you to do in order to make them look good. Yes you get nice members, yes the gym is free, but in all honesty that is all I can think of in terms of benefits.
You don't have the freedom they promote, you work for whatever cover they need. They choose the classes you do, even if you state the ones you are uncomfortable with, they just put you on it without your consent. Most times you find out just by going onto the app to see your class has changed. In addition, they can put you in classes where you have ZERO experience in and will just tell you, "you can do it, its easy". You also have to use their music app to teach the classes so don't think you can even do classes in a way you would like it. It has to be a way THEY like it. Their music, their structure, not yours.

Management are there just to make the company look good. Thats it. They say there is support for your business, but in reality, its just 'advice' (which are mainly things you SHOULD know if you are a PT). Furthermore, they have endless promises. Just expect those promises not to be made, 

PureGym benefit from having you as a personal trainer, you don't really benefit from being a personal trainer yourself. They say that you will be rolling with so many clients, when thats not the reality. Its a system that puts you at a £100 deficit (without tax), meaning the only way for you to make any money is by having 1 client. What if you don't? You work 12 hours a week to PAY them. It's a joke. Honestly, its not worth it. PureGym aren't worth it. 

I have been lucky enough to have nice staff. But honestly, it's not worth it. If you want to do this job, just make sure you have a lot of money saved or you'll be in poverty. 

There are many different paths to being  PT that doesn't involve PureGym.

Essentially, the gym chain is run by people with no personal training experience, so there is a lack of understanding between higher up management and the trench workers (PTs, FCs, Gym Managers)

If you visit gyms where the principle owners are PTs or health professionals themselves, you'll see an entirely different ethos.

Of course with any self-employed business it all depends on your location, the richer/more well-off people are in your area the larger the chance people will go for PT.

Its a great place if you are a new personal trainer, but consider that your shifts will be spend working your butt off doing a minimum of 2 classes and arduous cleaning in-between. The gym's themselves don't have any day cleaners for some reason.

The gym's can get overcrowded, making it hard to deliver quality sessions and scaring away potential customers. 

They go for quantity over quality, more concerned about opening new gyms to make more revenue than improve the facilities in their already-opened gyms.

They don't enforce rules on their members, so people leave weights everywhere and don't clean up after themselves.

Once again, the gym management themselves are not to blame, their hands are tied by THE HIGHER UPS.

Positives:
They paid us during the lockdowns, which was a nice touch. But it was obvious it would come at a cost later:

They are raising the rent, so their staff do classes+cleaning+look after the gym 12hr/week but for some reason still have to pay £100-200+ rent at the end?

we have to pay for our own uniform?
£240 annual 'license fee'?

They've introduced their own academy - so some gyms are understaffed because they're unable to hire people because they're waiting on academy graduates. It also becomes easier for people to become trainers which makes it harder for those who are serious. 


Very hard to get clients at pure gym as the culture is so individual. No personality either and the management will do bare minimum to help you succeed. 

My gym always has PTs leaving because it’s a shockingly small and under equipped with high costs. I work 12 hours and STILL need to pay £97 a month to them.

Classes drain the life out of you and they will give you a 6am shift one day then a 10pm finish the next day. 

SLEEP pattern f’d (so much for health)

Management do hardly anything and don’t listen to my problems. Despite being one of the longest standing PT’s

On shift you spend most of your time picking up peoples dirty covid rags instead of actually helping members because they’re so un-used to staff interaction they just walk right past you without even looking.

£615 rent as well. And the best equipment we have recently had upgraded was a couple new weight plates (wow. Barely anything cool)

Just horrific. I only survive because I’m on universal credit.. and I can’t afford a car either. So when members see me I feel like a total underling. Worthless. Horrific place. 

Not allowed to put posters up for advertising, are so bad at social media & don’t even let you use the computers in building.

WiFi disconnects everytime I walk up the stairs & as soon as you go on rent they stop all communications & remove you from the group chat. So you’re left in the dark.

Also you cannot put on any custom classes onto their timetable. & no inductions if you’re a rent PT.

The best and busiest PT in our gym is still worrying about bills.

And the managers hardly even train too, unfit, unworthy, absorbing a salary, just collecting members and nothing more.


Bradford is a low income area so it's very hard to sell packages. 

There are conceivably enough people there to sell packages to, but so many of them make excuses for not not buying into what is objectively an extremely high value of service that could change their lives. My boss is always telling me to price up, but I simply can't.

All the focus on lead generation and marketing means that you don't actually have time to focus on being a fitness professional. 

I spent 2 years studying exercise science, nutrition, myofascials and meridians, exercise injuries, memorising names of muscles, the psychology of fitness, different types of periodisation, gamification of fitness...and now I spend most of my time cleaning toilets, putting equipment away, teaching these campy dancercise classes (lets go ladies! and squat!) and doing lead generation. It's demeaning. 

I wish I could just focus on personal training. That is the most rewarding part and I'm extremely good at it.

The management is excellent but it's just not worth it imo unless you are built for this environment. 

The ideal skillset would be 25% sport science, 25% marketing skills, 25% business skills and 25% enthusiasm for teaching classes. 

Whereas I am 90% sport science and about 10% with everything else.

PureGym can be a really cool place to work if you're willing to put in the effort. But it also comes down to the people you work with and the managers you work under. Typically on a shift, you would teach maybe 2-3 classes, clean some of the equipment, tour some potential members/clients and generally just walk the gym floor interacting with members. During my time at PureGym, I learned a lot not only about myself but ways to interact with people and I improved on my sales pitching. I also learned some very hard lessons about life. I worked under two management teams both working at the gym for about a year each, the managers who I worked under during my first year I absolutely loved and they taught me and supported me a lot in and out of the workplace, in my second year I worked under a completely different team of managers and my overall enjoyment of the job dipped drastically, not only were they less interactive and supportive they were very business only. They were very guidelines, very rulebook which made my experience less than enjoyable. The hardest part of working at a PureGym is the sales, you have to be a very well spoken and adaptable person, you have to be a very good salesman to be able to make any sort of headway. The most enjoyable part of the job for me was teaching classes and being able to talk and interact the thousands of different members we had.

I wouldn’t bother getting involved with this company. The recruitment company they use (love recruitment) give false information such as your working week will consist of 10 am -6pm shifts for managers. All turns out to be a lie when you actually start. They have you doing late shifts where you finish at 10pm (3/4 late shifts every 2 weeks). The gym managers have some sort of entitlement where they feel like they can treat you however they want and hope you’ll be a ‘yes’ man. When they realise you aren’t that person, they’ll label you difficult and unwilling to be a team player. Which isn’t the case. The managers also get you to do all the gym floor activities such as classes, cleaning, lead tours and etc whilst they sit on their behind, making themselves look busy. They’ll put you on unsociable shifts whilst they give themselves the early shifts. As an AGM, you’re basically a gym instructor with a fancier job title. 

Certain cluster managers need to realise there’s more to life than working. They take things way too serious and patronise you for the smallest things, yet claim to be ‘supportive’. 

It’s a shame because I was extremely excited about working with a growing company. They really need to look at who they employ as managers because a good manager can make or break a new starters experience. Unfortunately, I got the worst manager and cluster manager possible.

A typical day at work involves talking to a variety of members. All with their own goals and aspirations, I had to learn quickly to adapt to various personalities. I have grown to understand how to efficiently produce training programs and class sessions with ease and help multiple people succeed. 

The management at Pure Gym is good. There were some aspects of the management system that were un-organised, but that isn't rare nowadays. My co-workers were friendly, talkative people, but they were also very seclusive as we are all self-employed so the chatting was kept to a minimum. 

I think the hardest part of the job was seeing so many members with great potential, losing motivation and quitting. This is particularly frustrating for me as I know that with the right tools and guidance, anyone can achieve their goals.

The most enjoyable part was being able to help people achieve their goals. Being able to help someone unlock the door to their hidden confidence and watch it shine through with their new physique. Additionally, not only is helping them look good rewarding, its also extremely rewarding to know that I have helped make that person healthier and improve their way of living.

This is my 2nd stint at Puregym, and on a whole, it's been a mostly enjoyable experience. Love the guys I work with but it's almost impossible to move into the management side of the company.

Be prepared to work anti-social shifts - you'll work anywhere between 6am and 10pm and this applies to Xmas Eve, Boxing Day, New Year's Eve, and New Year's Day. This place doesn't close at all and only guarantee you a single day off - Xmas Day.

Holiday's are few and far between - being self-employed you don't get paid anyway, but trying to arrange shift cover is a stressful task as it means other PT's working extra shifts to cover you and vice-versa. I've had 6 days off all year as I couldn't find cover for a morning shift.

Career progression is pretty much a non-event - it seems to be who you know rather than what you know. As one of the more experienced PT's who knows the company inside out and have been successful at running two PT businesses, I've been declined on a number of occasions for AGM/GM positions that come up. However, I've seen less experienced colleagues been given these positions. Plus PureGym tend to recruit their managers from outwith the company.

I would say PureGym is a good company to begin your career at, but if you're more experienced, do not use them to "enhance" your career/business.

A typical day here involves teaching classes, tidying the gym, and cleaning. You work 12 hours per week and build your business around that. However, you are seen as a cash cow and unless you have a strong business, Puregym is the place where your business will die. These guys constantly take money off you - you actually pay them to work there. You will be charged a yearly licence fee (around £200) but, on top of this, they will also charge you gym rent (this varies in different areas, but we were £600 a month!) They do pay you for shifts, but its far less than gym rent (pay is at minimum wage), so each month you can start the month in a substantial deficit. On top of this, you don't have set shifts.. these change each month and sometimes each week which makes it incredibly difficult to gain and keep regular clients. The team I worked with were great to work with, and I stayed far longer than I normally would for them. There are better companies to work for.

Top Job Titles	Average salary
Fitness manager 239 salaries reported	£28,985 per year
Personal trainer 25 salaries reported	£29,840 per year
Assistant manager 4 salaries reported	£28,968 per year
Manager 3 salaries reported	£30,000 per year
Cluster manager 5 salaries reported	£36,669 per year

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