Pros
- The facilities are kept very clean. This keeps member complaints to a minimum, and you can work out there yourself, too. Don't have to worry about nasty locker rooms. - Although it is mandatory, the trainer education is decent and you actually get paid to attend classes! Even though it is only $8/hr, no other fitness company pays you to learn about your craft. - There is some opportunity for advancement within the training program, although it is very limited.
Cons
- The pay is very low relative to what your clients pay. It's hard to motivate yourself to provide a $100 per hour level service, when you only receive $33 guaranteed. An earlier review said you can earn well in excess of $50 per session, which is true, but you have to work about 80 hours per week to do so. If I'm working 80 hours per week in a skilled job, I better be making at least 150k a year IN SALARY, not a measly $50 per session that you only earn for the billable hours. More below. - Connected to the above, you only get paid for the hour you're with your client. Although this is standard industry practice, Equinox expects more and pays less. You have to have multiple monthly meetings with managers, unpaid, and you also must have a program for every client. This is a GOOD thing to make mandatory, but Equinox doesn't pay you for it. So if you train every client twice per week = about 8 times per month, you spend another 2 hours porgramming that you don't get paid for. So you don't get paid for 20% of the work you do. So your $33 guaranteed per hour x 8 = 264, is really for 10 hours of work = just over $26 per hour. Think about that. If you want to do enough sessions to make $50 per session, you need to do about 45 sessions per week, meaning 45hrs of 1-on-1 work, another 10 hours program design, plus another 20-25 hours waiting in between sessions (because no one can possibly book back to back for the whole day). So that's your 80 hours per week. So while $50 per session is true, so 45 sessions x $50 = $2250 per week, doesn't sound bad for a trainer, right? Well, that $2250 spread over 80 hours is $28 bucks an hour. Doesn't seem so great anymore, does it? - No guarantees. All of the above is theoretical, assuming none of your clients ever miss a session. Guess what though - they do! Vacations, life obligations, family stuff, sickness, job conflicts, etc... It takes most trainers over a year to achieve 15 solid clients, but even then, once you do, you still don't make any guaranteed money. If you have people sick or on vacation, your paycheck shrinks drastically. Many businesses are seasonal, sure, but the idea is you make enough during the strong season to save for when it's slow. If your top rate is about $28/hour when IT'S GOOD, you can't make enough to save for the inevitable slow times. And trust me, they will come, no matter how good you are. - You can lose your health insurance, if you have just one bad quarter. Even if you've been perfect for many years. - Management turnover is high, leading to disjointed and inconsistent application of company standards. - This is an example that shows the problem: you have to get a special certification to use questionable tools like a power plate or Vipr, but a trainer on day 1 can use barbells with their clients with no experience or need for certification. Yup, because that makes sense?!? I could go on, but you get the idea. It's like most before me have said: the pay is mediocre at best, the workload is huge, and the company standards are weak, when they're applied at all. To the person who said that the people writing the reviews must not have made it very far before quitting, I sense the opposite from the reviewers: these are people who labored for the company for at least a couple years, if not longer, long enough to see the reality for what it is. That reviewer is a current manager, which means he or she is a card carrying kool aid drinker. You'll get wise one of these days, too.