You spend a lot of time in the gym or playing sports, and you want to turn your passion for fitness into a career. For most people in this position, the only natural pathway seems to be personal training. You see everyone embark on personal training courses to become qualified and then either work in a local gym or set up independently. While this has the potential to be a great fitness-related career, it comes with a significant problem: saturation.
There are too many personal trainers out there, all vying for the same audience, so you really have to try and stand out. Instead, what if you learned there was a different type of PT job that’s equally beneficial for fitness enthusiasts? Physical therapy may just deal with some of the core issues that personal training careers bring, and they add many benefits of their own. If you’re passionate about fitness and health, here’s why physical therapy could be the dream path to go down.
Provides An In-Demand Service
Most people want to target a few things in life. They want to build muscle mass as they get older and remain in good physical shape. You assume that these goals revolve around going to the gym and staying fit, but physical therapy plays a massive role, too. As a physical therapist, you provide an in-demand service for all types of people. Your job involves helping people treat, recover from, and prevent all sorts of injuries.
It’s the type of work that never dries up.
You’ll have huge bodybuilders who complain of shoulder issues and need your help so they can keep training. You’ll see professional athletes who rely on physical therapy as a recovery method after training sessions or events. You also have an average person in their thirties who complains of poor posture from office work and wants to stop it from becoming a serious health problem.
Unlike personal training – or many other fitness-themed jobs – physical therapy is a service that will never go out of demand. It’s also one of the few jobs that caters to such a diverse audience, enabling you to find a lot of work. Oh, and as another benefit, it’s not something you can replace with AI; anyone can use ChatGPT to create workout plans nowadays, but people need physical therapists to help with massages, mobility work, and so much more.
Can Still Find Work In Gyms
You’re drawn to the idea of personal training because you love fitness. You spend a lot of time in the gym, and it becomes your happy place. Therefore, it’s only natural to want your happy place to become a place of work. It feels like the ultimate work-life balance hack – but you can still do this with a physical therapy career.
As explained above, the role of a physical therapist involves working with so many different people. Traditionally, you may associate it with helping injured or elderly people recover from accidents. In reality, most gyms are eager to have a physical therapist on board because it lets them provide an extra service and draw in more members.
You’re literally catering to your target market, so this type of job can help you secure free gym memberships while drawing in a lot of customers from the typical fitness crowd.
Offers Amazing Salary Potential
Most jobs related to fitness don’t have the best salary potential, unless you’re highly experienced & skilled, so you can work directly with sports organizations. To give you some context, the current salary potential for personal trainers maxes out at around $61,000 when you look at the national average.
According to research from the Pioneer Healthcare blog, physical therapist salaries are trending upwards, offering a national average of just over $100,000. That’s staggeringly better than what you’d get if you became a personal trainer, which makes this type of fitness job seem so much more rewarding. It’s great when you can do something that aligns with your favorite interests in life – but it’s even better when you do that thing and earn good money.
Can Combine It With Personal Training Services
We’re comparing personal training with physical therapy because the former is always the “go-to” job for fitness enthusiasts. It’s seen as a way to do what you love while making money, but physical therapy also gives you this opportunity. What a lot of gym-goers and fitness-lovers don’t realize is that the two jobs crossover quite a bit.
Nothing stops you from becoming a qualified personal trainer and then earning your stripes as a physical therapist. Now, you can provide two incredible services bundled into one. Design proper workout plans for clients that include elements of physical therapy for better mobility, injury prevention, and so on. It helps you tap into a real gap in the personal training market – and then you can also just provide standard physical therapy services to any clients who need them.
Helps You Improve Your Own Fitness
Best of all, becoming a physical therapist lets you work while improving your own fitness. Your days will be filled with helping clients, but this involves coming up with corrective and strengthening exercises for them. You have to test these out before you give them to people, which means you’re your own guinea pig.
At the same time, you may carry out a lot of your work at a gym or at a clinic with a gym area. It gives you plenty of time to work out during free periods or at lunch, so your job enables you to continue with a fitness journey.
Personal training careers are still great, but physical therapy offers something a bit different – and, arguably, better. If you’re a fitness fanatic who’s always wanted a job that encourages you to stay fit while letting you spend time doing something fitness-related, then this could be the perfect career path for you. It’s the perfect combination of amazing salary potential and doing something that genuinely makes you happy every single day.
