The coaches went home – Newspaper Kommersant No. 48 (7493) dated 03/22/2023

The transition of fitness trainers to online classes that began at the height of the pandemic has led to a shortage of professional instructors in offline clubs. 2.5 times fewer applicants apply for such vacancies than the average for other areas. Clubs are forced to move to a model of self-training staff, which slows down the opening of new venues. As a result, some fitness industry companies are beginning to offer employees more favorable working conditions, although their average income remains low.

In the fitness services market, the shortage of personnel has increased, according to a study by FitnessData. In January-February 2023, the number of vacancies exceeded the previous year by 14%, the number of resumes decreased by 3%. At the same time, for the whole of 2022, the number of job seekers in the market decreased by 30%, and vacancies increased by 19%. According to HeadHunter, there are fewer than two resumes per job opening in the fitness industry, compared to an average of 4.4 for other sectors. The company estimates that there are now 903 gym instructor positions nationwide, up 49% year-on-year. Fitness clubs in Moscow require 334 trainers, up 29% year-on-year.

The head of FitnessData, Maxim Borovikov, considers the emigration of some specialists and the gradual transfer of trainers to online as key factors in the shortage of personnel: when they start working on their own, they attract customers through direct channels and lose motivation to cooperate with clubs. According to his calculations, 27% of instructors already work on the Internet, another 47% would like to earn money online. Georgy Hakobyan, director of the Avito Services vertical, says that the number of ads from trainers on the platform has increased by 46% over the year. According to FitnessData, there are 39,000 fitness bloggers in Russia, each with an average of about 2,500 subscribers.

Now, according to FitnessData estimates, there are 350,000 fitness trainers working in the country, over the years their number has decreased by 10-15 thousand people. According to Mr. Borovikov, more than 500 facilities are opened annually in the country, which require a total of 6-8 thousand trainers. “For a club with an area of ​​2.5-3 thousand square meters. m, we need 12-15 instructors and 10 more group program specialists,” explains Olga Kiseleva, president of the Association of Fitness Industry Operators.

According to her, the shortage of personnel reduces the pace of recovery of the industry after the pandemic. “Clubs are now forced to train people on their own, this is additional time and costs,” she notes. Irina Tumanova, CEO of the XFIT network, says that her network is developing a training system: new coaches go through an internal program, and the XFIT Academy project has been launched. Then the staff is retained in the company through a reward system.

They are trying to compensate for the lack of personnel in the network through automated studios that function without instructors: they have a virtual trainer service available when the training program is video-recorded, Ms. Tumanova says. But the prevalence of this format is still limited.

Fitness clubs are also trying to retain trainers by giving them more personal training opportunities. Income from such training, according to Olga Kiseleva, can range from 10-15% to 50% of the club’s total income, depending on its price positioning.

Despite the shortage of staff, the income of instructors remains low. According to FitnessData, on average, trainers working in clubs receive 50% of the cost of a workout. Analysts estimate their average monthly income (salary along with profit from training, income from individual entrepreneurs minus rent, income under a GPC agreement) at an average of 73 thousand rubles for the country. per month, in Moscow – 84.1 thousand rubles. According to Rosstat, the average nominal salary for the past year in Russia was 64.1 thousand rubles. per month, in Moscow – 122.7 thousand rubles.

HeadHunter points out that in the first three months of 2023, the median estimated salary of coaches in Russia decreased by 11% year-on-year, to RUB 80,000. per month, in Moscow, on the contrary, increased by 8%, to 120 thousand rubles. per month. Maxim Borovikov says that clubs are already forced to offer effective coaches more favorable conditions for cooperation: to increase the share of payments from the cost of personal training and offer more freedom in scheduling.

Alexandra Mertsalova, Anatoly Kostyrev