Personal trainers sooner or later will get gay clients. I’m a certified personal trainer and have had quite a few gay clients. So how would a personal trainer know that some clients are gay in the first place? In my case, they told me; it came up in conversation.
If you’re a personal trainer wondering how you should “handle” gay clients, there is no particular way to “handle” or deal with them; they are like any other gym patron; their fitness and exercise goals are the same as those of straight individuals.
However, you may be wondering how to respond when a client tells you he or she is gay. This all depends on many variables. I was working with two men, ages 24 and 29, and at the beginning, all I knew about them was that they were friends. I didn’t have a clue they were gay. One day, one of them commented he was engaged and the wedding would be soon. I asked him how old his fiancée was; I didn’t say “she.” I said “fiancée.”
He was the 29-year-old and replied “24.” And that was that. Within a few days I had a session with the 24-year-old and he just happened to mention he was engaged. I asked how old his “fiancée” was. (Never mind why I was asking the ages; suffice it to say, I just was.) He said “29.”
I then said, “That’s ironic, because Adam (his 29-year-old friend) is engaged to a 24-year-old.” The man then told me, “Adam is my fiancée.” I responded, “Ohhh… I had no idea you were engaged to each other!” This revelation did not change my personal training dynamics.
I had a female client who one day called, sobbing, to cancel an appointment, telling me her “partner of eight years” broke up with her. Somehow, it came out that the partner was female, so that’s how I found out she was gay. Outside of that, the only problem I had with this individual was getting her to eat more to gain weight, which was her goal, and getting her to stick consistently to exercise sessions.
Another female was married to a man but having marital problems. She was extremely talkative and would outright point out to me women in the gym whom she thought were hot. She definitely had no qualms about being open about her sexual orientation, and eventually divorced her husband.
I had another female trainee who told me she was bisexual, but I don’t recall what prompted her to reveal that. I never talk about sexual orientation with my trainees. Rather, my trainees on their own bring up their own sexual orientation.
Gay clients who are the same gender as their personal trainers will not come on to their personal trainers any more than will straight people of the opposite gender. In fact, one of my straight male trainees invited me over his house for a cookout. I had reason to believe there was some attraction; I declined the offer; accepting would be a breach of professional behavior.
It’s perfectly okay for a personal trainer to make physical contact with a gay client of the same gender to assist with a workout routine; this doesn’t mean the gay client will perceive this as a come-on, any more than a straight client of the opposite gender will perceive physical contact during the personal training session as a come-on.
The personal trainer with gay clients should not assume that there will be anything “funny” going on throughout the duration of the personal training course. Gays hire personal trainers for the same reasons as do straight people.
