STRATEGIES DEPLOYED BY PERSONAL TRAINERS IN THE HIGH-TOUCH SERVICE SECTOR

Date

2026-6-22

Author

Karagöz, Dilek

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This thesis examines the strategies personal trainers in Ankara develop to sustain their work, professional identities, and livelihoods in the high-touch fitness service sector. Based on in-depth interviews with twenty women and men working in gym chains, boutique studios, and hybrid freelance arrangements, the study analyzes personal training as a form of embodied, gendered service work shaped by precarity and weak regulation. The theoretical framework brings together bodily capital, emotional labour, gender performativity, hegemonic masculinity, intersectionality, and digital visibility to explain how trainers navigate the demands placed on their bodies, emotions, and professional selves. The findings show that trainers construct and maintain their bodies as a form of capital and visible proof of competence, while also performing intensive emotional and relational labour to motivate clients, build trust, and retain loyalty. They develop strategies of boundary management to protect their time, safety, and emotional wellbeing, and increasingly rely on social media and self-branding to secure recognition and income. These strategies are shaped by gender, age, educational background, workplace setting, and contract type, producing unequal opportunities and risks across the sector. The study also highlights women trainers’ informal solidarity networks as a response to harassment risks and weak institutional protections. The thesis argues that personal training should be understood not as a purely technical occupation but as precarious service work in which bodies, emotions, and online selves are continuously managed as professional resources.

Subject Keywords

fitness, emotional labour, bodily capital, gender performativity

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/119475

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis