It has been five years since I handed in my notice to my full-time office job to start down this weird and wonderful road to where I am sitting now. Am I happy I made the change? Heck yeah. Being a fitness professional has done more for me than I ever thought it would, but there are still things that need to be figured out.
Back then my goal was to teach 10 classes/week. Within the first year I was teaching 13 or 14 classes/week, and last year I reached my highest when I was teaching an insane 19 classes/week.
It was killing me. So I tried to cut back.
Last fall I was teaching 17/week.
In January I managed to get it down to 15/week and swore I wouldn’t go any higher than that again – and I haven’t.
But you know what?
It’s still too much.
I went back to work last week after my vacation and was exhausted 24 hours into it. I’m tired of wandering around being exhausted all of the time. Certainly having fibromyalgia doesn’t help that, but neither does exercising 4 times/day. Exercise helps my condition, but it doesn’t make it go away. I still struggle daily with exhaustion, joint/muscle pain and other symptoms. If I didn’t workout daily those symptoms would be worse, but if I cut back to 2 or at the most 3 classes/day I’m pretty certain the symptoms I have would decrease even more.
It’s a delicate balance between being active and over training and right now I’m leaning towards the over training. When you teach two classes and then have to come home and sleep for 5 hours because you’re exhausted something is wrong.
It’s too much.
I need to cut back.
Here I am five years later trying to figure out how to get DOWN to 10 classes/week and still make enough income to cover all my business costs (rent, insurance, licenses, etc.) and my own personal expenses.
There are a few classes I can give up but haven’t. Those that I am emotionally attached to but take up a large portion of my time and don’t pay as much as my other classes.
The time has come to cut them.
I hate to do it, but I need to.
I need to think about myself.
Cutting these 3 classes will give me back nearly 7 hours/week when I factor in the time it takes me to travel and the time I am there teaching.
With those 7 hours I will have more time to focus on blogging as a second line of income instead of just an after thought. I will be able to blog more and (hopefully) become a better blogger in the process.
With those 7 hours I will be able to spend more time at home with J, that guy I married. Go figure, I still like him after all these years and want to spend time with him.
With those seven hours away from home I will be less fatigued and will be a better instructor for the classes that I am still teaching.
With those seven hours I may finally be able to strike the balance I’ve been looking for…
In my first few years of teaching, I overtaught as well, and had injuries, exhaustion and even bad skin! Luckily, nowadays, there are so many other ways to make an income with fitness that don’t mean more teaching hours. For example, I have a class or two at the university where I supervise the weight room and teach students how to use the machines. I myself don’t have to exercise. You could also consider fitness writing, e-books, lecturing, and so on. I work more than 40 hours in fitness, but luckily only 8 of those hours are actual in-class teaching. If you have questions, I am here for you! And good luck.
Thanks! I never intended to continue on at the rate I was, but it was during the first rush of Zumba in this area and I knew if I was going to make my name the forefront for Zumba around here I was going to have to work my a$$ off for the first year or so, and that’s what I did. I think at this point I’ve achieved that and can now step back and cool things off a bit. It is certainly my goal to have a full-time fitness career without having to teach 5 billion classes! 🙂
Great job on realizing your priorities!!! It’s hard to cut out things we love but sometimes it’s a must.
You go Girl!
Finding balance is hard, but you are taking the right steps. Do what you need to do for YOU!
That’s a lot of teaching!
I find that any more than 6 each week (along with my own training), is a recipe for disaster.
One of the reasons I became a personal trainer was to continue working in the profession, but not doing the workouts myself!
You might want to check out the post on my blog today; maybe they’ll be something there to help you?
No kidding! I can handle 10-12 pretty well (right now) as long as they are spaced out properly. But of course right now I rarely do any other training (which is bad news, I’ve lost a LOT of muscle mass over the past 2 years from being a cardio machine). Part of my goal in cutting back is to have more time and energy to strength train and cross train.
I plan to become a personal trainer in the next year or two, but I don’t know how much I would use the certification. I live in a rural area away from any gyms so would have to travel from client to client which would be an added cost and take more of my time.
You definitely have to take care of yourself first. Hopefully you’ll feel better once you cut a couple of the classes out. Which ones are you thinking you’ll get rid of?
None that you need to worry about 🙂
Have you thought about taking your personal training certification Suzi? Working one-on-one with a client for an hour helps conserve cognitive energy which is a contributor to chronic fatigue in any type of soft tissue disorder. I sleep for 2 hours after teaching 1 class. But my situation is a bit different than yours. After training a client? I’m fine. Teaching group fitness is not just physically demanding but cognitively demanding. Memory, coordination, multi-tasking, watching out for form, safety and reading your participants for their energy levels/fun etc., all come with a high cognitive price. I’m at 2-3 classes a week, 2-4 PT hours. MAX. And I still need to sleep and have pain etc. But it’s much less than using my brain constantly and sitting at a desk. You will figure it out. The other thing is being an affiliate and selling fitness oriented products which you could work into your blogging.
THe probem with personal training for me is I don’t live near a gym and would have to train out of client’s homes – meaning I’d need to travel more and I can’t get the $$ from a training session like I can from a big class (since I run them myself). It’s a catch 22 really. But I’m cutting classes that don’t make me as much money so hopefully in addition to keeping me from being so tired and giving me more free time, it should affect my income too much. Hopefully any lost income I can re-make through blogging, being an affiliate, etc.
Way to realize your priorities. It would be hard to work out that many times a day and not get tired or burnt out. Glad that you are taking care of yourself.