When you decided to become a personal trainer, you did it because you wanted to help people achieve their fitness goals and live a healthier life. You did it for the love of it. You care about people and want to help them succeed. You’ve never asked yourself, “What insurance do personal trainers need?”
This can be a very rewarding and lucrative career, but it can also be a risky one. When advising people about physical activity, you need to be careful. The last thing you probably thought of when going into this career was that you should look into liability insurance for personal trainers, but there are many reasons why you should explore the business insurance opportunity.
What is Personal Trainer Liability Insurance?
Personal trainer public liability insurance protects you in the event that lawsuits or similar claims are brought against you. You’ll want the absolute best personal training insurance policy you can find to stay protected.
In order to qualify for personal trainer insurance at Marine Agency, you can either be a certified or uncertified personal trainer.
The insurance program will provide protection against bodily injury liability, property damage liability, and personal and advertising injury liability. It will also cover litigation costs. There is no deductible and the policy will cover up to $1,000,000 per occurrence.
Our personal training liability insurance will cover suits resulting from:
- Participant injury or death.
- Spectator death or injury.
- Volunteer death or injury.
- All activities needed to conduct training.
- Property damage.
- Incidental medical malpractice.
- General negligence claims.
- Ownership maintenance or use of practice areas.
- Corporal punishment.
- Costs associated with the investigation and defense of claims.
Why Do Personal Trainers Need Liability Insurance?
Many things can happen when you’re dealing with people and physical activity. that make liability insurance for a personal trainer necessary. While you try to do your best to prevent accidents, it’s impossible to prevent everything and things can easily go wrong. You don’t want to put yourself at risk.
Why Clients Sue Personal Trainers
People can have grounds to sue over many things, including the examples below. You want to make sure you take all the precautions you can to ensure you are covered in the case that:
Clients didn’t receive proper instruction.
Your clients can claim that you did not give them the proper training on the equipment that they are using and that is why they injured themselves or didn’t achieve their desired results.
You need to make sure that you are doing all you can in explaining the exercises you’ve chosen for them as well as demonstrating the correct form. You also need to be fair in expectations of results.
Even though you want to gain clients, you need to be fair in setting goals and not just telling them what they want to hear.
There was a problem with equipment used.
You need to be aware of issues with machinery and equipment. Someone can be easily hurt if there are problems with an exercise machine.
If you let someone on a machine that has a problem, even if you weren’t aware of it, it will be very difficult to fight fault on that one. It is your job to make sure the machines are safe.
They weren’t properly supervised.
A lot of clients are probably new to the gym and go in not knowing where to start. You have to supervise them to make sure that they are using the proper form so they don’t get injured.
You didn’t know their medical history.
Before you begin training someone, you need to know their medical history as well as their injury history.
You need to make sure that they aren’t doing something that will put them at risk. They need to complete a fitness test as well so you know where they stand going into training.
You gave nutrition or supplement advice.
Unless you are a certified dietitian, do not give recommendations on nutrition or supplements. This can get you into trouble because you don’t know how someone may react to these products.
You didn’t explain risk and consent forms properly.
It is your job to make sure that your clients not only sign these forms, but that they understand them and that you keep them on file should something happen.
People need to understand that they are entering into this at their own risk. They should also be cleared by a doctor ahead of time.
You pushed clients too hard.
Your clients could claim that you pushed them too hard. They will probably try to impress and please you, but you need to know where their limits are.
You need to teach clients how to listen to their body when something doesn’t feel right so they know to stop.
It is good to have liability insurance and make sure you have the proper protection for your personal training business.
Things can happen and you want to make sure that you can still work in your field should something go wrong. You went into this wanting to help people and you want to make sure that you can continue to do so.
If you’re ready to protect yourself and your personal training passion, give Marine Agency a call today for all of your liability insurance needs. We’ll give you a free personal trainer liability insurance quote.
