Coaching & Mindset
Clients Remember The Trainer Who Laughs At Themselves, Not The One Who's Trying To Be Funny
From the FASTER syllabus: this article is taught in full in Fitness Business Accelerator — where the personal brand and content modules are taught →
In short: Fitness Business Accelerator teaches that something is funny when an expectation isn't met but the link from set-up to punchline still makes sense, and for a personal trainer the shortest route there is revealing an ordinary, human trait, like admitting to eating crisps, rather than performing a routine. The course also carries a direction rule most trainers never hear named: always hit up, never down, and the safest target of all is yourself. Copying a trend or a comedian's style is the one thing guaranteed to flop, because a cliché reads as borrowed rather than as the trainer's own. A client remembers the trainer who could laugh at themselves long after the workout's forgotten.
The crisps confession
Fitness Business Accelerator opens its module on humour with an ordinary example: a trainer mentions they've been eating crisps, and a client finds it funnier than anything the trainer could have written on purpose. Nothing about crisps is inherently funny. What lands is the gap between what a client expects from "the trainer" and the very human, very believable fact that the trainer eats crisps like everyone else. The course states the mechanics plainly: funny is where an expectation isn't met, but the link from the set-up to that expectation is still close enough to make sense.
Performing a routine is the wrong move
The instinct, faced with a blank caption box, is to try and write something properly funny, a one-liner, a trending format, a bit borrowed from a comedian who's good at this. The course calls that the exact thing that flops, and names why: a cliché was excellent the first time it was done and stale the moment everyone copies it, and a copied joke reads as borrowed rather than as the trainer's own. The shorter, safer route is the crisps route, a real trait, revealed rather than performed, with the vulnerability that takes.
The rule almost nobody states out loud
Buried in the same module is a direction rule that matters more than any individual joke: always hit up, never down, and the safest target of all is yourself. A joke aimed at a bigger company or a well-known figure is fair game. A joke aimed at a client, or at anyone with less standing than the trainer telling it, is punching down, and it costs the trust the crisps confession was building. The earlier post on sitcom characters covers the traits worth picking; this is the rule for what to do with them once they're picked.
Why the memory outlasts the workout
A set of well-cued reps is forgotten by the time a client's home and showered. A trainer who was funny about themselves is the version that gets brought up to a friend, which is where referrals come from. Fitness Business Accelerator treats this as part of the same skill as writing a caption or filming a video, not a personality some trainers happen to have and others don't.
What to do next
Fitness Business Accelerator, £500, teaches this alongside the whole marketing-to-sale route, in the browser, with lessons that can be watched, read or answered by dictating an answer back. Passing any FASTER course opens PT Manager, free for life.
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You just read one answer. The course is all of them.
Fitness Business Accelerator — where the personal brand and content modules are taught: every answer marked by a real tutor, with free return access for life. The price is on the page, payment plans at checkout, no sales calls.
Also worth a look: PT Manager, free with any FASTER course.
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Frequently asked
Does this mean every post needs a joke in it?
No, the course teaches it as one tool among many, and it only works when it's true to the trainer; forcing a joke into a post that doesn't have one reads exactly like the cliché the course warns against.
Who's allowed to be the target of the joke?
Yourself first, and beyond that only people or institutions with a higher status than you, a big company or a well-known figure; a client or anyone with less standing is never the target.
Does Fitness Business Accelerator connect to PT Manager?
Yes. Passing any FASTER course opens PT Manager, free for life, including the tools that hold a trainer's own content and client record in one place.
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