As jobs dry up, personal trainers are going door-to-door

(By Caixin journalist Zhang Ruixue; Photo: Zhang Ruixue/Caixin)

On the first weekend after winter break, Li Chengcheng walked into an upscale residential compound in Kunming draped in colourful plastic hoops, carrying a bundle of fitness equipment in each hand and a rolled-up yoga mat tucked under his arm.

He is a door-to-door personal trainer, and his job is akin to delivering “sports takeout” — arriving downstairs right on time to provide athletic instruction for children.

In recent years, house-call personal training services have surged in major Chinese cities. Trainers take orders via social media or service platforms, showing up at clients’ homes to help teenagers improve their fitness, boost physical education exam scores or master specific skills. Each class lasts 60 to 90 minutes and costs between 100 RMB (US$14) and 300 RMB.

Li is a former track-and-field athlete with a bachelor’s degree in business administration. After failing his postgraduate entrance exams for the third time, he joined his former classmates in the door-to-door personal training business about three or four months ago.

Spending his days outdoors, his skin has tanned to a reddish-brown. “My biggest headache right now is that I can’t handle all the students. There are simply too many people asking for classes,” Li said.

Most of his students are concentrated in Kunming’s prominent school districts and high-end residential compounds, with parents who are mostly business owners, civil servants or doctors. Half of the children struggle with obesity, while the other half are looking to build physical strength, grow taller or learn a new skill. “Many of the kids I teach right now have very poor physical fitness and can’t even pass the most basic exams,” Li said.

He sums up why parents hire trainers to come to their home: they are too busy to shuttle their kids around. Sometimes, he even picks children up from school, takes them to their apartment complex to train, and then sends them home.

For parents, at-home sessions save time and energy. One mother whose child takes the classes pointed out that sending her child to a training centre requires actually driving them there, followed by a long wait until the lesson is finished. “But with a coach coming to our door, I can do chores or finish my own work while the child is in class. Nothing gets delayed.”

Another benefit is peace of mind. “The class is right downstairs, so I can just poke my head out and see how my kid is doing,” she said. She hopes sports can serve as a stress reliever for her child. “Exercising for a while after school rests the eyes and soothes the mood. With classmates joining in, they get companionship and joy. I think it offsets some of the academic pressure.”

An at-home coach’s schedule must revolve around the children and their parents. Because he’s always on call, Li keeps all his equipment piled on his e-bike, taking it wherever he goes.

Li previously taught professional track-and-field training. In comparison, his house-call clients are much harder to teach. “They don’t like to move, and they’re lazy. If they can’t get the movements right, some just stand there motionless. Even if their parents scold them from the sidelines, it still doesn’t help,” he said.

As the evening sun spilled across the paving stones of a residential garden, Huang Tingshun stood beneath a tree, wearing boxing focus mitts and repeatedly guiding seven-year-old Zhang Wanruo in how to throw punches.

Senior passersby stopped to watch, a sight Huang has grown accustomed to. When other children approach to mimic the exercises or play with the equipment on their own, he politely intervenes only if it disrupts the lesson. His class is identical to most general fitness sessions: warm-up, sports games, physical conditioning, specialised training and a cool-down stretch. However, the space required is minimal. Depending on how much open space there is in the compound, a ten-metre stretch for shuttle runs is often enough.

Zhang’s mother said she initially scouted traditional training institutions but found that one teacher would handle 20 to 30 students, making it impossible to promptly correct individual movements. As a result, she opted for one-on-one coaching at home. Her daughter has stuck with it for a year.

The changes in Zhang have been conspicuous. According to her mother, the girl has first developed the courage to say “no” to violence. Second, her physical fitness has improved; during a year fraught with various flu outbreaks in her first-grade class, Zhang only caught a bug once.

Before pivoting to door-to-door personal training, Huang spent years as a teaching director at a taekwondo studio. But he decided to strike out on his own after struggling with the fierce competition in the business, the difficulties of finding new students and a feeling that revenue wasn’t fairly distributed.

He considered opening his own gym, market research revealed that venue and labour costs were exorbitant. Moreover, consumers had long grown indifferent to aggressive sales tactics. Even an offer of free trial classes rarely resulted in a closed deal.

In contrast, house-call trainers charge per class with no gimmicks, and startup costs are low. After spending roughly 1,000 RMB on portable equipment like marker cones, resistance bands and boxing gloves, his business was up and running.

With stickers in hand, Hu Yutao squatted between two children. The kids stared eagerly at him, completely focused, waiting for their after-class reward. This is a standard ritual at the end of every class Hu teaches — distributing stickers based on the children’s performance. “Does losing a game matter? Winning and losing are normal. Getting angry won’t solve anything,” he told them.

Throughout the class, Hu appeared calm. Whether the children were bickering or slacking off, he routinely brought the class back under his control.

Before becoming a house-call personal trainer, Hu worked at a sports agency where he was frequently the top salesperson. Just as he was on the short-list for a promotion, he learned that a college classmate was doing door-to-door training in Hunan province. After digging deeper into the job, he realised it was exactly what he wanted. After a month thinking about it, he quit the sports agency to go solo.

“I really love the feeling of giving it my all every month and earning more if I work more. It brings a great sense of accomplishment,” he said. “At an agency, there’s a ceiling on exchanging your time for money. Once your schedule is full, that’s it. But as a house-call trainer, I can build a team in the future or start my own company.”

It was hard at the beginning. For the first three months after resigning, Hu barely booked any new business, maintaining only two or three students. “Because this industry is relatively novel in Kunming, many parents might be hearing about it for the first time,” he explained. “This leads to trust issues. Without a physical storefront, they worry you’ll take the money and run.”

To dispel parental concerns, Hu posted his certifications online one by one, obtained a business licence, opened an online storefront and signed formal contracts with parents. “After standardising things slowly, more parents became willing to sign up for trial classes.”

Hu’s backpack always contains bandages and traditional heatstroke medicine. “Though I haven’t used them once, safety is always the number one priority,” he said.

In his view, door-to-door personal training requires more than just athletic prowess. It demands the ability to communicate in language children understand, build trust with parents, improvise during emergencies and market oneself on the internet.

Born in 1998, Li holds a bachelor’s degree, but sports is his sole passion. So when his former classmates asked him to join them as house-call personal trainers, he agreed. Even though he only makes 3,000 RMB to 4,000 RMB a month and has to ride his e-bike across the city every day, he feels it is worth it.

“Doing this makes me feel at ease. I’m active and can’t stay idle. Teaching students allows me to immerse myself in my own world.”

He appreciates the absence of office politics, adding, “Teaching the kids well and keeping the parents happy is enough. For me, it’s quite pure.”

The problem is that the industry has a low barrier to entry, making it seem like anyone can be a trainer. Observing a peer’s class, Li noticed the instructor couldn’t even teach basic running posture correctly. “He was actually teaching the kid to run on his tiptoes! But there’s nothing you can do.”

Three years of studying for the graduate school exams left Li with extensive theoretical knowledge of kinesiology, but he has realised that in the door-to-door personal training market, professional knowledge doesn’t guarantee financial returns. Those who know how to market themselves are far more successful.

Li considers his sprinting skills to be top-tier in Kunming, having previously trained top-level athletes. But downstairs in an apartment compound, none of that matters. Parents just want their children to sweat, grow taller, lose weight and pass their exams.

Li, meanwhile, insists on riding 20 kilometres round-trip every day to his alma mater’s track to train, aiming to qualify as a top-level athlete. He is considering pivoting toward training camps in the future.

Reflecting on the generational gap between him and his parents, Li noted that his parents’ generation would stick with one thing forever, while he cares more about his own feelings and is constantly trying new approaches. “You can’t just stubbornly bang your head against the wall on one thing. If it really isn’t working, quickly pivot and do something else.”

Huang, born in 1995, feels a severe “psychological gap”. He once managed training operations for more than a dozen gym branches, priding himself as someone capable of delivering results. Even when handed a new branch no one else wanted to deal with, he could hit performance targets in half a month.

Now, he scrambles between residential gardens to unroll yoga mats, surrounded by strolling seniors and kids on skateboards. “At first, I couldn’t swallow my pride. It was like peddling goods on the street after running a luxury boutique.”

The income ceiling for an at-home coach is strictly limited by time. On weekdays, children are at school, so bookings are scarce. Huang’s weekends are packed as he rushes between sessions. On average, half the time is spent teaching and the other half commuting. “With one-on-one sessions, having 15 or 16 students basically maxes you out. An annual income is around 100,000 RMB, give or take depending on individual ability.”

Hu has also experienced moments of doubt, wondering if this is a young man’s game. He eventually came to terms with it: “Nothing lasts forever. Solving the immediate problems is more important; thinking too far ahead only makes you more anxious.”

As his student roster grows, Huang has also grown content with his new career. “What I need is to ensure my survival, ensure I can still invest in my brain, and still learn new things.”

He obtained a psychological counselling certificate, actively practised his on-camera skills and recently became obsessed with AI tools to avoid being left behind. “When I became a coach, all my cognition was trapped in this industry: how to teach kids, how to run a gym. But now I have to jump out and think: For the next 20 years, where will my next meal come from?”

He plans to eventually leverage a loyal client base to offer outdoor sports and educational trips during the holidays, hoping to shatter his career ceiling.

As for whether he could rely on personal training to make a living indefinitely, Huang was uncertain. “You can’t predict how many years house-call personal training will last. Sports will continue, but this is just the current format,” Huang explained.

He acknowledged that once the novelty wears off, parents might stop paying for at-home sessions, just as they grew tired of traditional taekwondo studios. But at least for today, the classes are taught, the money is earned and the children have worked up a sweat.

This article was first published by Caixin Global as “Weekend Long Read: As Jobs Dry Up, Personal Trainers Are Going Door-to-Door”. Caixin Global is one of the most respected sources for macroeconomic, financial and business news and information about China.

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