Trainer & Gym Content
Content that looks like the work.
Your Phone Is Costing You Clients
Most trainer accounts and most gym pages look the same: a screenshot of a workout, a reposted quote, a photo somebody’s member took on an iPhone in bad overhead light. They are not bad at training. They just look, to a stranger deciding where to spend money, exactly like everyone else.
That is the whole problem. A prospective client cannot judge your coaching from the outside. They can only judge what they can see — and what they can see is your feed. If it looks unserious, the assumption travels to the training, however unfair that is.
Good content doesn’t make you a better coach. It stops you being dismissed by people who would have loved working with you.
Shot Where The Work Happens
I don’t bring a backdrop. We shoot in your gym, with your equipment, in your light, with real members or real clients — because a photo of you coaching in the room you actually coach in is the only kind that answers the question someone is really asking: what is it like to train here?
Classes in action. Coaching moments. The faces of people who are clearly working. Equipment and facility details. The atmosphere at six in the morning when it is still dark outside. That is the library, and it is worth more than any number of posed portraits.
I’m an ISSA-certified personal trainer, which matters more than it sounds like it should: I know what a good rep looks like, so I can shoot around a session without asking anybody to stop, reset, or hold something that breaks their form.
Photo And Video, Same Session
Every package here delivers both. Not photos with video quoted as an extra — both, from the same session, cut for where they are actually going.
Vertical Reels for Instagram and Stories, because that is what moves. Stills for your website, your profile, your Google listing, the flyer, the door. A highlight piece when the package includes one. Everything licensed for your commercial use, with nothing watermarked and nothing expiring.
Nobody else in the Inland Empire is doing photo and video together for this market at published prices. Every competitor I can find in San Diego and Orange County is photo-only and session-based.
About me
I know what a good rep looks like.
My name is Mike Thezier (pronounced: tee-zee-ey). I’m a photographer and videographer based in Temecula, California, working with gyms, coaches and athletes between here, San Diego and Orange County.
I’m also an ISSA-certified personal trainer, which is why I shoot the way I do — I can read a session and catch the moment without interrupting it, and I know the difference between a frame that looks impressive and one a coach would be happy to have their name on.
I’m FAA Part 107 licensed as well, so aerial is on the table when a space or an event earns it.
The experience
Before the shoot
We talk about what you actually need the content to do — fill classes, launch something, build your own name as a coach, or just stop the feed looking neglected. That changes what we shoot far more than any equipment decision.
Then we plan the session around your schedule, not mine. For a gym that usually means shooting during a real class rather than staging one, because staged classes look staged. For a trainer it means a time when you have a client who is happy to be photographed.
I’ll tell you what to have ready: which coaches, which members, what to wear, and whether anything in the room wants tidying. Nothing elaborate.
On the day
One to four hours depending on the package. I work around the session rather than running it — no counting down, no asking anyone to repeat a lift for the camera unless we have agreed that in advance.
I’m shooting photo and video throughout, so the Reels come out of the same hour as the stills. If a member would rather not be photographed, tell me and I will simply not point the camera at them; it costs nothing and it matters to people.
For trainers, the Full Brand Day includes a Meet the Trainer piece — you talking to camera, cut with training footage. It is the single most useful thing you can have on a profile, and the part most people are most nervous about. It takes twenty minutes and I will talk you through it.
What you get
A private gallery with high-resolution stills and the video files, licensed for your commercial and marketing use. Post them, print them, run ads with them, put them on the door.
Reels arrive cut and ready to post, vertical, sized for Instagram and Stories rather than handed over as raw clips you have to do something with.
Turnaround is one to two weeks for a session, and monthly on a retainer — delivered on a schedule you can plan a content calendar around.
If you run a gym
A one-off session fixes your feed for about a month. What a gym needs is a supply — which is what the monthly content retainer is for: planned shoots, the same deliverables every month, and a library that never runs dry.
What a month actually looks like
Deliverables are easy to list and hard to picture, so here is the translation. Starter is roughly three posts a week for a month, with stills left over for stories. Standard is four a week plus a highlight reel good enough to run as an ad. Premium is enough to post every day if you want to, and enough left over that you are choosing rather than scraping.
None of it is filler. Every frame is one I would put in my own portfolio, and every clip arrives cut and sized for where it is going rather than handed over as raw footage you have to do something with.
| Tier | Each month | Photographs | Video | Monthly |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | 1 visit · 2 hours | 20–25 edited | 3–4 short vertical clips | $650 |
| Standard | 1–2 visits · 3 hours | 30–35 edited | 5–6 clips + a 60-second highlight reel | $1,000 |
| Premium | 2 visits · 4–5 hours | 40+ edited | 8–10 clips + highlight reel + strategy call | $1,400 |
Three-month minimum, and it works out around 15% below booking the same work as individual sessions.
Your coaches, photographed properly
Every tier includes coach and trainer profiles — a clean headshot and a working frame for each of them, refreshed as your team changes. That alone tends to justify the Starter tier: your website, your Google listing and your door stop showing three different eras of the gym, and a coach with a real photograph gets taken more seriously by the member deciding whose class to try.
It is also the cheapest retention tool you have. Coaches who are visibly part of how the gym presents itself tend to stay, and they share the work, which puts you in front of their networks at no cost to you.
Video is what makes you look different
Every gym has equipment, a logo and a class schedule. On a screen those look interchangeable, which is why so much fitness marketing is indistinguishable — and why price becomes the only thing left to compete on.
What no two gyms share is the room. The 5:45am regulars. The coach who knows everyone by name. The wall someone wrote on. Photographs tell a stranger you exist; thirty seconds of the actual room tells them whether they would belong in it, and belonging is what people are really shopping for when they pick a gym.
That is what The Forge above is, and it is why video is in every tier rather than sold as an upgrade. A gym that only ever posts stills is asking people to take the atmosphere on trust.
What gets shot
Classes in action — members working, coaching moments, the atmosphere of a full room. Individual member and athlete spotlights. Coach and trainer profiles. Equipment and facility details. Seasonal promotions and announcements. Member transformations, with their permission and never without it.
The arithmetic. Two new memberships a month more than covers the retainer at any tier. If better content brings you two people, it has paid for itself and everything after that is margin — and unlike an ad spend, the library does not stop working when you stop paying. Last month’s frames are still yours next year.
Tell me roughly how many members you have and what you are trying to grow, and I’ll come back with which tier I’d actually recommend — including if that is the smallest one.
Trainer packages
Questions
- I’m awkward on camera.
- Nearly everyone says this, and it is almost always about being watched rather than about how you look. So we mostly avoid it: you coach, you train, you do your job, and I work around you. The talking-to-camera piece is only on the Full Brand Day, it takes about twenty minutes, and I will give you the questions in advance.
- Do my members have to be in it?
- Only the ones who want to be. Tell me who is happy to be photographed and I will work with them; anyone who would rather not be, I simply do not point the camera at. For a gym I will usually ask you to give members a heads-up the week before.
- Can I use these for paid ads?
- Yes. Everything is licensed for your commercial and marketing use — organic, paid, print, the lot. Nothing is watermarked and no licence expires.
- How is this different from a session at a studio?
- A studio backdrop tells someone what you look like. It cannot tell them what it is like to train with you, which is the actual question. Shooting in your own room with your own people answers it, and it costs less than a studio hire on top of the session.
- How quickly do I get everything?
- One to two weeks for a session. On a retainer, delivery lands on the same schedule each month so you can plan a content calendar around it.
- I’m a trainer inside someone else’s gym. Does that work?
- Usually, but check with the owner first — most are fine with it and some will want to be there. If it turns into a problem I am happy to shoot somewhere else, or to talk to the owner about covering the gym at the same time.
Next step
Pick the package that fits and send it over with where you train or coach and what you’re trying to grow. I’ll come back with dates.
A 50% retainer holds your date and comes off the total; the balance is due on the day of the shoot. Monthly retainers are invoiced at the start of each month, with a three-month minimum.
Not sure whether you want a session or a retainer? Tell me roughly what you’re working with and I’ll tell you which I’d book — including if that is the cheaper one.