Male Personal Trainers

 “What she doesn’t have is what she wants, and what she doesn’t want, but is something else her female counterpart could have, she doesn’t want her to have it.”

There are a few reasons why you see a considerable higher ratio of male personal trainers in the gym you attend in comparison to female personal trainers. 

One reason is, in simple terms, even in today’s world men represent a higher percentage of the overall working population.  This may seem obvious, but it needs pointing out.  Outside of the retail industry and occasional other trades, there will usually be more men than women in a working environment. 

Another reason is that, by and large, a man won’t believe he can gain physical results he desires by taking the advice of a woman who holds expertise in this field.  She could in some ways be more beneficial to him than her male counterpart, but a gym member of male gender will rarely see it this way.  When parting ways with hard earned, honest money, you will go by the perceived law of average. 

Similarly to the above, the average man will be wondering how the onlookers view him being trained by a woman.  Not good for his street cred, he may think.  Flip the coin and it is highly unlikely a woman in her gym kit will feel this way in being trained by a man.  Many women will actually think the male gym instructor will give her a better end product.

Less sought after (hence less physically attractive) women may like a bit of male company which they cannot acquire in other living environments.  In this case, thirty minutes of attention from an in-shape man can give her a little reassurance and ego boost that she needs to get through a depressing week.  Flip the coin once more, and I doubt any half decent man feels the same way in need of female company.  If he is that desperate, he’d be better off saving the thirty quid or so and using it to pay a hooker. 

Nevertheless, make no mistake that the main reason, especially if you base it on a decent percentage of women who attend the gym being >6/10 in the looks bracket, is due to the pre-selection emotion that goes through a woman’s emotional brain when seeing a man with other women.  In simple language, when a woman sees a man with another woman - on regular occasions, with different women, and in flirty contact - she becomes more attracted to him irrespective to his physical allure or other positive (or negative) character or provisioning ability offerings.

It’s an easy, lazy and naive assumption to think that the reason male personal trainers attain a lot of female admirers is because they all belong to the top (let’s say top 5%) of physically gifted men in overall physical attractiveness.  They work out for a living, so they’re naturally in shape over and above the average man ploughing away in an office.  Fair point, but again it is a lazy view.  If you analyze it a little more closely, yes, some are in the top bracket, but some are not. 

In essence, when a woman walks into the gym and sees a male personal trainer flirting with an attractive woman, and in turn his delegate is smiling with puppy eyes and giggling back, she becomes jealous that it is not her.  She wants to be the one receiving the attention with a hundred plus people watching on.  But when a woman becomes jealous of another woman being with a man, this can only favour the man in question.  When a woman is emotionally jealous, she is never more attracted onto a man.  When a woman is totally indifferent towards a man when seeing him with another woman, he may as well be invisible such is her none attraction onto him. 

And how does she counteract this irritable jealous feeling that niggles inside?  You guessed it - she signs him up to give her personal training.  Another woman does the same, as does another, and the manufacturing chain goes on.  Supply and demand is part and parcel of any industry well-being, and ultimately a personal trainer is selling his product.  This is why male personal trainers are more prevalent than female personal trainers.  They are simply more in demand.

Side story 

There is one particular male personal trainer in the gym I attend who backs up my explanation the most.  He is in his late 20’s/early 30’s, about 5ft 9” tall, naturally in good profiled shape, and facially top 3% even if not absolutely striking.  I’ll give him 7.5/10 in overall physical attractiveness.  You could say he holds that overall optimum striking shot in being at the top end of above average looking men, whilst not quite bordering into unattainability in female eyes. 

As others have come and gone, this guy has stayed at this gym for many years, and naturally this has allowed women to see him in the company of inundated female members during this timeframe.  You will often see him giving half an hour of his time to women (usually women >6.5/10), and I’d hedge a fair bet that many have seen him with women they feel they can compete with in beauty terms.  I’ve never seen him with a hot delegate (granted, there aren’t that many hot women in there), and I think there is a story in this alone.

However, his ex-fiancé is also a personal instructor at the same gym.  She is hot, with a pretty much faultless body and very pretty face.  They split up a couple of years ago, and he is now in a relationship (did I see an engagement ring on her finger today?) with another attractive woman (albeit not quite on his ex’s level) who is a regular attendee at the same gym.  When you see the two of them in close proximity, for a guy like me who is naturally observant in this field it is quite some amusement.  I doubt many others have picked up on this frosty atmosphere between the two women. 

I don’t think the ex-fiancé has ever quite got over him, and seeing him rub it in with the new girl probably only humiliates (and makes her more attracted to him simultaneously) even more.  My guess is she has never met anyone on his overall objective level since they parted ways, and ultimately that is the only way a person truly gets over an ex.  One-night stands, short term flings and social media exploitation help in the immediate term, but they only paper over the cracks of a broken heart.    

Q-Tip:

Any honest person, woman or man, will confess that when they have been in a relationship with someone they genuinely loved, nobody can replace them until they meet someone who is at least on the same level.  They could go on dozens of dates and still feel this way.  However, when they do meet that new person who is on equivalence or higher, the ex-lover takes up barely a moment of their reminiscent mind. 

Side note

At the risk of talking about myself, I do play some part in all this tri-factor.  Even when the ex-fiancé was dating the male personal trainer, I also sensed some attraction from her onto me.  Don’t get me wrong, I very much doubt she would have even come close to taking things on with me in replace of him had I (done the wrong thing) and asked her out, but it did come across as the natural female inclination to be interested in man who is objectively more impressive than her male partner – better looking, taller, at least equal body impressiveness, more masculine voice, better body language, better personality and, such was the evidence of dress style and car, wealthier.  She may have even told her ex in the past that, if they weren’t together, I’d be her type.  Maybe not, but we can but not speculate. 

The current girlfriend has also given me more than a few glances and smiles, making sure the personal trainer is not nearby.  Again, women aren’t stupid, and they can work out male value pretty quickly.  Both the ex and current see me occasionally working on my laptop after a gym session in the week prior to any client meetings, and a man dressed in a suit will, for those few seconds, negate the social status attributes that are blessed to male personal trainers. 

It made me chuckle this morning, as all three of them were in.  I caught the current girlfriend catching me checking out the ex-fiancé, and the ex-fiancé didn’t seem to make any kind of excuse to walk past me on a couple of occasions.  The girlfriend, to me, seemed to have that amalgamated rollercoaster feeling going through her mind in positive/negative terms.  Part of her had that ego satisfaction of getting one over the ex, knowing she is the chosen one who is now dating the man her foe was once engaged to.  On the other hand, concurrent to me checking her rival out was a likely negating irritable emotion.  At that moment I bet she had visions of the two of us (the ex and I) one day being a couple.  In conclusion, a woman only likes another woman being with a man who is not objectively more impressive than the man she is with.