Owning a successful personal training studio is dependent upon hiring and retaining top trainers that truly care for people. This is how we scaled our little personal training studio to the biggest and best functional movement personal training studio in downtown Boise and possibly the Treasure Valley.
As of June 2025, my wife and I will have owned Body Basics for 10 years. Pretty remarkable considering we’ve watched so many of our competitors go out of business that were here when we purchased Body Basics. There may be many reasons for our success, but one of the most important factors has been hiring and retaining top talent.
Most gyms or studios that offer personal training don’t usually equip trainers on how to coach clients. They just hire certified trainers and send them clients, or they allow them to rent space and make them find their own clients. At Body Basics, we have developed a complete personal training philosophy along with core values. These do two things: 1) The core values help us hire trainers that are a good fit for our team. 2) The personal training philosophy helps us ensure we’re interpreting movement and prescribing exercises in a consistent manner. This produces consistency and dependability for the clients too. A client may have a personality preference of a trainer, but the service they receive will be the same.
Our Core Values are used in hiring, reviewing, and (on rare occasions) firing. They are:
- Expert
- Role Model
- Team Player
- Captain America (kind, caring, honest, dependable)
- Lighthearted and fun
These are foundational to each of our trainers, and they represent the core of who we are.
Our Personal Training Philosophy is far too long and complicated for a short blog, but it can be summed up to say this… We improve the way clients move. This is distinct and different from training studios that focus simply on power lifting, body building, or sport-specific improvements. They may not prioritize quality movement over performance. I literally see this all the time when watching sports. I’ve seen tremendous athletes have massive movement limitations but are so gifted they get by with it. This is not to say we don’t help clients improve their performance or get stronger; we do! It just means the foundation of our philosophy is improving human movement through adequate mobility, stability, body awareness, and strength/fitness.
We help clients move better by first doing an initial assessment. This assessment allows the trainer to observe the client performing compound movements and isolated joint movements. If a fault in one of the movements is observed, the trainer will develop hypotheses. From there, they move through a check list that starts with mobility first, stability second, and body awareness third. We confirm one of the hypotheses to be true and prescribe exercises to correct it. All trainers at Body Basics will use this philosophy and implement the corrective exercise strategy with their clients. The corrective exercise strategy is the system by which we prescribe exercises to improve movement.
I can attest that each time we interview personal trainers they unanimously say they’ve never seen a process like this and are amazed we offer training and support to our trainers.
To ensure our philosophy and exercise strategy is being done correctly and/or to its potential, we hire and utilize a Fitness Manager. The fitness manager’s role is designed to be a checks, balance, and support system to all the trainers at Body Basics. Each time a new client is brought on at Body Basics, the fitness manager reviews the assessment and programs designed for that client. They also assist trainers in developing programs, review clients’ programs on a regular basis, and provide knowledge and expertise to our entire staff.
In sharing this, our hope is the clients of Body Basics have some insight into the behind the scenes of their training and programming. It has been carefully developed over the past 10 years in an effort to provide the very best functional movement personal training in Boise. My wife and I have extremely high expectations and will continue to refine and improve our processes and training as long as we own our little studio.