Reaching Your Goals: Insurance Tips for Gym Instructors

As you clap eyes on the many people who line up at your classes in eager anticipation of your instructions, you could swell with pride. Indeed, why wouldn’t you? Working as a gym instructor can feel hugely rewarding as you help many different people to transform their lives for the better.

Your work as a gym instructor will often see you thinking of goals. For your clients, you might often set both short- and long-term ones which they can proceed towards with your subsequent help, notes UCAS. Still, you mustn’t overlook your own goals, too – especially insurance-focused ones.

Even if insurance initially doesn’t seem essential – either legally or practically – in your particular case, we would urge you to take a closer look; you could soon notice that you are mistaken. However, where exactly would you look first? Here are a few useful pointers…

Check whether you really need special insurance

Various insurances available are especially applicable to many gym instructors, but whether that “many” would strictly include you remains a distinct matter. Here, you should carefully consider whether you are employed directly by a gym or work freelance or independently for one.

If an organisation like Virgin Active or David Lloyd Fitness employs you directly as a trainer or fitness instructor, leaving you with guaranteed clients and a fixed-rate wage, research your gym’s insurance policy. You might notice that you fall under it and thus don’t need to opt for your own plan.

However, OriGym, the provider of personal training courses, warns that “if you are independent, or freelance, the likelihood is that you will need to take out some sort of insurance plan, particularly if you own your own gym and equipment.”

Meet your duty to the public by holding public liability cover

Imagine if you tried to talk a client meticulously through a particular move, only for the client to fall and injure themselves in the attempt to follow your instructions. Such a galling situation could, for you, be worsened if the client then alleges, in a compensation claim, that you were at fault.

That client could resolutely believe that you failed to properly explain the move – but, even if the court finds in the client’s favour, public liability cover could help to rein in the resulting blow to your finances. The cover could also help if a client deems you similarly culpable for an illness.

You mustn’t underestimate the potential cost of such compensation claims, as they can run into millions of pounds, the Startups.co.uk website warns. At Fitness Gold, we offer gym insurance policies automatically including public liability with a standard limit of up to £5 million.

Carefully calculate costs of replacing your gym equipment

You have probably built up an extensive range of equipment for use in your gym classes. Such equipment could include dumbbells, barbells and sound systems and be difficult to replace without shelling out significant sums of money. However, what if you have contents insurance?

You can source exactly that as another automatically-provided cover from Fitness Gold. You could even take up the option of insuring items for when they are kept away from your gym, but remember to insure each item for the full new replacement value.

This advice remains applicable even if you originally bought the items second-hand. Failing to heed this advice could mean that, if any of the insured items are damaged or stolen and so you decide to make a claim, you might not be paid the entire amount of it.

Do you employ staff? You need employer’s liability cover

Even as a gym instructor, it’s not beyond possibility that you might employ – or, at least, want to employ – other gym instructors. Indeed, such a move could be especially appealing at times when business is particularly hectic and you need a few extra pairs of hands!

However, if you do employ any staff or trainees, you would legally require employer’s liability insurance. With each of our gym insurance policies, we automatically provide this cover up to £10 million, and you can expect it to protect you against compensation claims from employees.

Such claims could arise from employees who, while working for you, become injured and then opt to sue you out of a belief that you were ultimately responsible for the injury. If you violate the legal requirement for this cover, you could be fined up to £2,500 for each day that you are without it.

Check which buildings insurance you need, if any

If you work as an independent trainer, you might have your own gym, whether you own or rent it. If you do rent it, ask the landlord whether the building is insured. If it isn’t, or you own the building and know it isn’t insured, then adding buildings cover to a policy could prove shrewd.

What policy? A gym insurance policy from Fitness Gold, that is. Buildings cover is one of our optional covers, which you can learn more about on our website.

You could find yourself prone to accidents, too

Alas, you could find this to be especially the case if you are still relatively inexperienced in instructing. It’s reassuring, then, that our gamut of optional covers includes personal accident cover.

Though we automatically provide this type of cover for a gym’s Principal, Partners or Directors, you might not occupy any of those roles in addition to your gym instructor position. Furthermore, the automatic cover only accounts for the loss of use of hands or fingers.

If your classes depend on you using other body parts that you fear could, when you work, too easily be injured beyond usability, we would urge you to choose the expanded optional personal accident cover from our offerings. If you do, the hands-only cover will be deleted to save you money.

There’s a lot for you to think about when you insure your gym-instructing activities, but we can guide you through complexities – especially if you ring 020 8655 0444 to speak to our staff.