Note: What I’m about to share comes from my time as a trainer in Malaysia. If you're from a country where the fitness industry is more tightly regulated, some of this might not hit as hard—but it's still worth knowing.

As of writing this, I don’t have an active gym membership.

Honestly, I’ve seen too much behind the scenes to want to support most commercial gyms anymore.

That might change someday, but the truth is, what I’ve witnessed in this industry has left a really shitty taste in my mouth.

Even though I’m not taking on new clients anymore (my schedule is full with legacy clients), I feel like I’d be doing a disservice if I didn’t put this out there.

I’m assuming you’re either thinking about joining a commercial gym or you’ve already signed up, so this post is for you.

Trainers might hate me for this, but my goal is simple: to expose the unserious, scummy, and downright dangerous trainers who tarnish the fitness industry.

This isn’t hypothetical—these are based on actual colleagues I’ve had the misfortune of working alongside.

I’ll also include some tips you can use to protect yourself from the dangers I’m about to reveal in each section.

To start off, I’ll let you in on the first secret.

Secret #1:

A Lot of Trainers Are Just Fitness Bros with a Weekend Certification

The fitness industry is a male-dominated one.

Because it’s an unregulated market, the guys with the biggest biceps often get the job, regardless of good they actually are.

Fitness is also very simple.

Assuming you have a generally decent-functioning body, you can get into decent shape just by following basic “gym-bro” principles: train hard, eat healthy, and stay consistent.

When you compound those efforts over time, you might never need a trainer.

Problems happen when fitness-bros assume that knowing those simple principles are what make personal training seem like an easy field to get into, when it absolutely shouldn’t be.

Personal training certifications are the baseline for most gym trainers, but they are also REMARKABLY EASY TO GET.

The cheapest and easiest certifications are ones that can be conducted for a few hundred bucks over a weekend.

Examinations and testing for these are often unregulated with little to no standards.

What’s worse is that many of these easy certifications are offered by commercial gyms themselves in order to make more money and to train their new trainers.

If you paid for a weekend certification, you’ll get a weekend certification. All you have to do is sit through the lessons.

Look, a weekend fitness training certification is better than nothing.

But the fact that it’s often considered the floor of this industry is pretty appalling.

There are many scientific elements to fitness that should be mandatory for any trainer to understand, and too many don't because these can’t be covered on a weekend!!!

I won’t even go into the cutting-edge stuff from new studies (that’s a whole other blog post), but the bottom line is this:

Most trainers you encounter will be “weekend-certified fitness bros.”

And guess what? Their weekend certifications are probably outdated too.

As promised, here’s how to not get your money ripped off by a weekend-certification-fitness-bro:

1) Ask your trainer if they have an active certification.

I’m not in the business of telling you how to spend your money, but would you really hire a trainer who does not have an active certification, or worse, no certification at all?

Reputable international certifications, like ACE and NASM, require renewals every two years.

Not having an active certification isn’t a dealbreaker, but ask why they haven’t renewed it and make a call on whether to hire them or not.

A lot of personal training sales pitches will push you to make on the spot decisions (which I cover more in Secret #2) so I definitely recommend you at least give yourself A DAY factoring in all your trainer’s credentials before hiring them.

2) If you’re completely new to fitness, start by educating yourself on the basics.

I know many people glorify the “benefits” of saving time by hiring a trainer to coach you the basics.

Honestly, free knowledge is everywhere online.

So stop being lazy and make it a point to educate yourself at least A LITTLE before hiring a trainer

Doing your own research is a good way to protect yourself from bad advice and sketchy trainers.

I’m emphasising this point pretty hard because of

Secret #2:

Trainers Are Trained Hard To Sell On Fear, Emotion And Urgency

In commercial gyms, most of the “training” trainers go through is just sales training.

Sure, SOME gyms will take their trainers through some sort of fitness orientation, but the primary goal of the trainer when they come to work is to sell you more training packages.

Look, if you come across a good trainer who ethically sells to you without being a sleazy hard-ass, AND has the right qualifications for it—hire them.

But trainers like that are usually the exception and are hard to come by.

The stereotypical commercial gym trainer is conditioned hard to sell you training by:

• Taking advantage of your lack of fitness knowledge and drowning you with jargon in order to create a top-down relationship (them as the ‘expert’, you as the ‘idiot’)
• Using fear and emotion to trick you into thinking you need to hire them. (“Train with me or you’ll stay fat forever”)
• Make you feel guilty when you turn them down. These trainers HATE it when their scummy tactics don’t work and instead of ever reflecting on themselves, they project their anger on YOU.

How can I have the balls to reveal this when I have sold thousands and thousands of dollars worth of personal training myself?

Well, first off, I treated personal training like a craft. I didn’t take just a weekend certification. I took the complete ACE (American Council on Exercise) certification, along with its three hour, 150 question test before I stepped into a gym asking for a job. I respected the profession just like how I respect doctors who go through medical school. I never took getting better as a trainer for granted, and I spent thousands more when I was actively training to get my certifications renewed along with taking other complementary certifications that would help me get better at my job.

I wasn’t a sleazy hardseller—there were many times where I told my clients to take a day or two to think about whether to commit to a training package. I always sold on the relationships I built, and not through the pressure of a one-hour consultation.

Even when I did sell on the spot after an one-hour consult, it was because I could build that relationship which got my client to know, like and trust me within that hour. I was that good because I respected my clients and because I respected the efforts I put into my work.

I always positioned myself as an “accomplice” or “partner” to my clients, even and especially when I was selling. I never made anyone feel lesser of themselves whether they chose to hire me or not.

Many trainers do none of that.

And just as many commercial gyms TEACH their trainers to be the complete opposite.

Which absolutely disgusts me knowing the fitness industry could be a much less sleazy, and much more respected profession for trainers, while ALSO offering to help more people in need of achieving their fitness goals.

If you don’t want to get ripped off or hard-sold by a sleazy trainer, I suggest you start with digging deep.

Find out why you want to start your fitness journey.

Seriously—why?

Not just some superficial goal like “I want to look good.”

Everybody WANTS to look good.

Dig deeper.

Why do you want to look good?

Do you want to get more attention? More love? More sex?

These are basic human desires that drive a lot of us to want to look better.

When you know why you started your fitness journey and can be sure of that, you’re less likely to be put off by a sleazy trainer who can’t work around their sales script.

You’re also more likely to find an honest, sincere and dedicated trainer who CAN help you reach your fitness goals.

I’ll say that the latter are hard to come by, and most of them won’t be working in commercial gyms anyway because they see beyond this bullshit that’s destroying the fitness industry and will happily work on their own terms outside of commercial gyms.

Ooh, now that’s a convenient side-track because now I can talk about…

Secret #3:

Many Trainers Working In Commercial Gyms Are In A “Phase” Of Their Lives

The fitness industry is still relatively young.

This means most trainers (or ex-trainers like me) are either still actively practising or have left the field entirely.

This is different from more established fields, like medicine, where there are plenty of retired doctors.

Most trainers start young, and for good reason—when you’re young, you have more time, fewer commitments, and you’re usually at your physical peak.

But here’s the downside: for a lot of people who love fitness, personal training is usually just a phase.

A lot of them make respectable attempts to turn their passion for fitness into a professional career, but for many, this enthusiasm dies out pretty fast.

Full disclaimer: I started training at 19. I was in my own phase of loving workouts and thought I could turn that passion into a profitable career too.

For the first 3 and half years I started completely involved with training clients, and ONLY training clients. I focused on my craft and getting good, which led me to have a fully booked client schedule.

When I was maxed out, I decided to explore different opportunities to make money within the fitness industry. I worked under my mentor at that time to develop training programmes for new trainers and also for membership sales consultants. I also set up my own online training business where I coached clients online since I did not have as much in-person time anymore.

I personally have not met any other trainers who have gone down this path. The most common thing to do for trainers once they have a fully booked schedule is to increase their rates and go freelancing to work on their own.

My point: to maximise your full investment from hiring a trainer, it’s worth getting to know your trainer as a person too.

During initial training sessions (which are usually provided as complementary sessions from commercial gyms), trainers will try to sell you quickly on the spot. As long as you follow everything I laid out on how to navigate this in Secret #2, you’ll be alright.

Ramp up the intensity by ‘interviewing’ your trainer too. Some ice-breaking questions to help with this include:

• Why are you working as a trainer?
• What did you do before this?
• What are some training philosophies you have which you teach to your clients?
• How long have they been in the industry? (Longevity doesn’t always mean competency, but it does represent some level of commitment.)

I LOVED it when my clients asked me questions like this. It showed their interest and commitment to the process and really strengthened our relationship together, even when our training packages were completed.

So don’t be afraid to be inquisitive about your trainer, it’ll always be worth getting to know the person you might potentially pay a lot of money to.

Honestly, if a trainer can’t give you good answers to these questions, they won’t be worth your time hiring, might be a scummy trainer, and have bad training philosophies anyway.

One of the worst training philosophies I’ve heard go around is in…

Secret #4:

Targeted Fat Loss: One Of Those Most Devious Ways Of Selling Personal Training

This secret is so horribly mis-used that it should be splattered everywhere.

And every trainer who promises targeted fat loss, or in other words, ‘spot reduction’, should be crucified and banned from ever having clients again.

Training philosophies can differ, yes.

And I know trainers from different camps who will fight to the death defending what they think is ‘right’.

But, if there's one thing that holds true:

There is no such thing as targeted fat loss

Fat loss (and fat gain) happens all over your body, based on whether you’re consuming more calories than you burn or the vice versa.

Now, I know that’s a gross oversimplification—there are many other factors which affect fat loss and fat again.

So, it’s not just calories in versus calories out, but for the sake of brevity, we’ll stick to that basic understanding here.

To my science-savvy fitness friends, don’t lay out the crucifix for me just yet.

Fat in your body is stored as triglycerides in adipocytes (fat cells).

During exercise, these triglycerides are broken down into free fatty acids and glycerol, which then enter the bloodstream that you can use for energy.

This process does not allow muscles to selectively access fat from specific areas being exercised; instead, fat can be mobilised from anywhere in the body to be used as energy.

Marketing gimmicks, irresponsible trainers, and fitness influencers often say the opposite to encourage you to buy whatever they’re selling.

Whatever junk they sell is probably a fake quick fix (fat loss supplements), or training programmes in order to take your money.

You’re not going to like hearing this, but the most consistent (and boring) way you can achieve respectable fat loss is with being consistent with your exercise frequency, and by eating healthy most of the time.

Don’t hire a trainer who claims they can help you achieve targeted fat loss.

This is a big red flag!

Remember, how your body gains, stores and loses fat is different from everyone due to factors like sex, genetics, and hormones.

An oversimplified way to think about it is “first in, last out”—the areas where you first store fat are usually the last to shed it.

A good trainer who invests time in their craft should be able to help you understand how your body works and give you reasonable expectations on the results you can achieve.

Which is why I have harped so much in this post about ‘interviewing’ your trainer.

Don’t be afraid of putting your trainer on the spot!

It’s the least you can do because commercial gyms charge fees for training that aren’t cheap anyway, so make the most out of your buck.

Because if you don’t, you might end up conned by the kind of trainer so irresponsible, I had to put them in their own untold ‘secret’:

Secret #5:

Some Trainers Don’t Do Any Form Of Programming For You At All

You might be surprised to learn that many trainers just assign cookie-cutter workouts to their clients.

Since there’s no regulation on how training programs should be developed, some default to the laziest method possible: ZERO programming.

I’ve seen ex-colleagues show up late for sessions and throw together random workouts on the spot just to fill the hour.

It’s shocking, but it happens.

If this doesn’t alarm you, just imagine if your doctor gave you the same cocktail of medications they would give to everyone else.

Obviously, this wouldn’t work because wrong medications can kill, so there are strict prescriptive protocols which doctors have to adhere to.

But for trainers, these protocols don’t exist.

And clients also won’t be able to tell if they’re being given a templated programme vs an actual one for their goals because exercises can look and feel the same universally.

Lazy trainers take advantage of this—if they gave the same workouts to all their clients, no one is going to be able to tell the difference unless they had a camera on them.

Clients won’t be able to notice this too because exercises are exercises, they can all feel hard for a beginner.

This is an especially hard thing to navigate because where do we draw the line between irresponsible training vs what can universally work for two different client groups.

For example, a young man looking to build his upper body can use the same exercises as a young woman looking to ‘tone her arms’. Both of them have somewhat overlapping goals, and their exercise selection is also going to look relatively similar.

Would a trainer be at fault here if they were to give the same exercises to both people above?

To be honest, I don’t know. The grey area we’re entering is huge and trainers can again fight all they want to defend their philosophies.

As a (potential) paying client, here are a few things I recommend you do when hiring a trainer:

1) Ask to see the training plan or notes your trainer has prepped for you

If you’re paying for their services, you have every right to see what they’ve planned. They may not have it ready on the spot, so give them 1-2 sessions to pull it together.

Don’t be a Karen—approach this with curiosity and with an intention of being on the same page with your trainer.

If they never bring up a plan or are always avoiding the topic whenever you try to bring it up…

Red flag, red flag.

Do not rehire them, or better yet, don’t hire them if you haven’t already

2) Start with small personal training packages.

You don’t want to commit to a few months only to realise later that your trainer’s idea of programming is to “wing it” every time you show up.

Training packages are usually marketed to be cheaper the more you buy in one lump sum, but don’t go for those bigger packages unless you’re completely confident in your trainer’s ability and integrity.

Buy training packages or training sessions as close to a la carte as possible when you’re starting off. It’s better to be sure of your trainer’s and gym’s philosophy without putting down a huge chunk of money upfront.

We’ve covered a lot about trainers, so now I want to wrap up with:

Secret #6:

Gyms Are Incentivised To Lock You In, And They Make It Extremely Difficult For You To Get Out

Why am I telling you this when I actually co-own a gym in the heart of KL?

Because I believe you should have the best possible choice when choosing between different commercial gyms.

The dirty thing about these scummy gym consultants is that they always key information from you because they’re incentivised to sell you the biggest and longest gym memberships to maximise their commissions.

Most commercial gyms need about 400-500 active members just to break even.

And by “active,” I don’t mean they’re actually working out—I mean their cards got charged and payments went through.

Cash flow is everything in the gym business, and that’s why gyms are obsessed with locking you into long-term contracts.

I get that gyms are a business at the end of the day, I just despise the way they take money from you in an almost-predatory fashion.

When you enter a commercial gym to ask about prices, you’ll most likely be dealing with sales consultants who are also in phases of their lives earning a commission.

Trust me, these guys (and girls) are grilled hard every day to close deals on the spot with many devious tactics (fake sales, untrue price anchoring, and other tricks to get you to sign up on the spot).

Again, how you spend your money is up to you, but seeing that there is getting less and less transparency on how gym memberships are sold, I’ll lay it all out for you here as a list of tips you can follow when shopping for your next gym membership

1) Figure out how ‘safe’ the gym is business-wise.

Like I said, most gyms need about 400-500 active members to break even. Ask this from the sales consultant you speak to. Ask their manager if they don’t know it. Get them to show their gym membership dashboard at their front desk to show you.

You need to understand how safe a gym’s business is, because the last thing you want is to sign up for a 12-month membership that auto-debits your card but closes a month in to the contract, shutters its doors, and you have no way of cancelling that membership beyond going through a tedious legal process.

And that sales consultant who signed you up? Look, their job is done the moment you make the first payment at the front desk, don’t expect anything from them beyond that, which is why you need to protect yourself throughout the process.

Two other questions you can ask to get an idea of how well a gym is doing:

• How long have you been open?
• What’s your cancellation rate?

2) Choose shorter commitment packages wherever possible, even if it costs you more.

It’s tempting to take on a longer commitment package that gives you a better prices, but I really believe that you should try to make going to a gym you’re paying for a worthwhile enough habit that warrants committing to a long term contract.

If you honestly can’t commit to a long term contract because you don’t have the consistency yet, then that’s on you, and you’re making yourself more vulnerable to scummy consultants who take advantage of your naivety.

So before you pay for anything, would you be able to commit to exercising for free to begin with?

And if you can, commit to a shorter package to start off.

3) Don’t let commercial gyms auto-debit your credit card

This is your right as a customer. Always opt to make manual payments which you can do by scheduling a reminder, or by coming to the counter to pay by cash.

Many consultants will BS you into telling you can’t do that, in which you should your ground and reiterate that you’ll just choose another gym that can.

It is never a legal requirement to let a gym you’re signing up for auto-debit your card, that is your right.

4) Take your time and shop around before committing to a gym membership

Gym sales consultants are well-trained to target emotional, impulsive customers—they’re their easiest targets for making membership sales.

They’re looking for those moments when you feel a surge of hope about how a gym membership might transform you into a better version of yourself. But that optimism can lead to a big blind spot if you jump in too quickly.

To not fall into this trap, make a point to shop around. Visit different gyms and assess them for yourself.

Test out the equipment, feel out the vibe, and talk to staff members. Compare membership options, class schedules, and amenities. You might be surprised how much your preferences evolve once you’ve had the chance to explore.

Almost every gym has free one-day trial passes which you should take advantage of.

When you take the time to evaluate a few options, you’ll get a much clearer idea of what you’re actually looking for—and what’s worth your investment.

The green flags of a good gym

Now that I’ve completely gotten on the wrong side of the fitness industry by exposing all of its scummy secrets, I’ll end this post with a list of green flags that usually show you’re about to sign up for a good gym.

A community focused gym/boutique gyms are usually good places to start. The places are usually more welcoming to beginners and usually do not hire scummy sales consultants looking to make a quick buck. I personally don’t like these kinds of gyms because they feel like a cult and that just gives me the icks. But if that’s your kinda thing, be my guest.

Transparent and flexible pricing is also another healthy sign of a non-scummy gym. If a gym can confidently display its prices for potential members to see, they usually aren’t desperate for you to ‘make an appointment for a special deal’ where a sales consultant will hardsell you into something you don’t need. This is another green flag.

Is the owner(s) of the gym actively involved in the business? Bonus points if they are and are manning the front desk themselves. Committed gym owners are one of my personal favourites because this means they care about their gym’s reputation. They’re not just throwing money in the background hoping their sales consultants can rake in as much as they can from you.

Lastly, trainers who treat their profession as their craft are the biggest green flags you’re going to find in a commercial gym. I don’t think many of them are in commercial gyms anymore because freelancing and boutique gyms offer these in-demand trainers better career growth. It’s not difficult to filter out the bad ones, and to summarise everything in this post, a good trainer is one who:

• Isn’t just a fitness bro with a weekend certification
• Won’t hard-sell you into personal training packages
• Is in a committed phase of their career as a trainer
• Definitely isn’t promising you targeted fat loss
• And can confidently show you the training programmes for you

Until next time,
Nicholas Ng