Andrew Wyant Returns as ISSA’s CEO, Looks to Close Trainer Readiness Gap at Gyms

Wyant grew the fitness educator’s revenue nearly eightfold during his first tenure. He spoke with ATN about his priorities for his second stint as ISSA’s CEO

The International Sports Sciences Association (ISSA) has rehired Andrew Wyant as its chief executive officer, bringing back the leader whose first tenure lifted the fitness certification company’s annual revenue from about $10 million to nearly $80 million.

Wyant, who ran ISSA from February 2018 to April 2024, takes over effective immediately, the company said Monday. He replaces Warren Heffelfinger.

“It is absolutely thrilling to be back,” Wyant told Athletech News. “This is the perfect time to be here.”

Though Wyant kept his seat on the company’s board while he was away, the industry looks a bit different. When he left in 2024, he said fitness was still in its post-pandemic phase, and many people assumed workouts would go remote and AI would take over.

The past few years, he said, have shown otherwise.

“Any AI tool can build a terrific workout program for any person based on the criteria that you describe,” he said. What it can’t do, in his view, is get someone to do the work properly and keep at it. “I’ve rarely in my life seen a person who — on their own, or even with a camera — could go to a gym and really push themselves the same way that they would with a personal trainer,” he said.

Overall, the mood for fitness trainers offers a bright spot at a time when many workers are bracing for AI. In Indeed’s 2026 Job Search Report, more than a third of the over 2,000 workers surveyed said AI will hurt their job opportunities and career growth, edging out burnout as job seekers’ leading concern.

Personal training jobs, by contrast, are projected to keep growing. The Bureau of Labor Statistics counts 388,400 fitness trainers and instructors nationwide. It expects that segment of the workforce to grow 7% between 2025 and 2035, faster than the job market overall, with roughly 68,000 openings a year.

Gyms are fuller as well. U.S. gym and health club membership hit a record 81 million in 2025, up 5.2% from the year before, according to the Health & Fitness Association. 

And amid all of it, fitness operators are still struggling to find trainers ready to work on day one, ISSA says. In the company’s 2026 Fitness Hiring Report, gym operators said new trainers most often lack skills like finding and keeping clients, regardless of certification.

“Gym owners tell us they need trainers who can sign a client, keep that client, and grow a business from their first week on the floor,” Wyant said in a statement. “That is what job-ready means. Every trainer we prepare makes a gym stronger, and every gym that hires from ISSA creates opportunities for the next graduate. We are going to build every part of the ISSA experience around that.”

Filling a trainer opening frequently takes two to four weeks, sometimes longer, according to the report. ISSA also points to shortfalls at major chains: Equinox plans to bring on more than 500 new coaches over five years, Snap Fitness is looking for 4,000 more trainers worldwide and Anytime Fitness reports it is short roughly 1,300 coaches at its U.S. locations.

Wyant expects the job itself to change. Wearables and sensor-equipped machines will increasingly log every weight and rep, he said, freeing trainers to act as a client’s concierge and gateway into the gym, working, as he puts it, in an advisory capacity, like a consultant.

For gym owners, he said, that makes trainers as important as ever, because they increase revenue, stickiness and retention among gym members.

“The role of personal trainer will keep evolving away from being the best at programming to being the best at human connection,” he said.

Wyant has also run a rival certification company. From 2011 to 2017, he served as president of the National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM). He has also served as executive vice president at Ascend Learning.

During his first run at ISSA, the educator branched into yoga, Pilates and running certifications, began offering programs in Spanish and made three acquisitions.

Fitness wasn’t the first destination. Wyant started at Boston Consulting Group, ran sales and marketing at identity-theft protection company LifeLock and founded Direct Spotlight Media, the outfit behind the NCAA March Madness Million Dollar Bracket Challenge. As CEO of Natural Golf Corp., he took the company public on the American Stock Exchange and built a national certification program for golf instructors. He holds an economics degree from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

For Wyant, the work is personal. Both of his parents were deaf. His father worked in a factory in Hamilton, Ohio, working hard to give his family a better life.

“Being the child of deaf parents, I learned about listening and translating,” he said. His father’s example, he added, is what made him want to work in a business where he helps people get into great jobs.

ISSA’s typical student, as he describes it, might be working as a barista or an Uber driver while harboring a passion for fitness. 

“You probably won’t find many people in the fitness industry who are as excited about certification as I am,” he said. Over the years, he said, he has watched graduates buy their first homes, get married and start families.

ISSA says it certified 35,293 new personal trainers in 2025, up 12.8% from 31,298 a year earlier.

ISSA outlined several priorities for Wyant’s second tenure, including helping more students finish their coursework and pass their certification exams, teaching the business side of training and getting graduates hired. The business lessons cover how to land clients, keep them and build a client base. Students in ISSA’s personal trainer program can also take an exam accredited by the National Commission for Certifying Agencies through NCCPT, an ISSA subsidiary. Another initiative teaches students how to use AI tools for their clients.

Wyant sees other areas the industry underplays, pointing out that trainers field questions on everything from creatine to nutrition. 

“Personal trainers are the front lines; they get asked everything,” he said, adding that topics like rest and recovery are emerging.

Wyant will spend his first weeks making the rounds with staff, students, graduates and the gyms that hire them, ISSA said. 

ISSA has already been building direct lines to employers. In September, it expanded its partnership with Life Time to guarantee eligible ISSA-certified personal trainers an interview screening with the luxury athletic club operator, which plans to add hundreds of trainers at clubs opening through the end of 2026.