Training Business at Home - Insurance ?

Off Topic
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Say I train people for money out of my garage, are there insurance issues I need to take care of before I start? Would a waiver that I ask people to sign before I train them release me from any liability in the event of a serious injury? I would appreciate any feedback on this.

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[quote]StevenF wrote:
Say I train people for money out of my garage, are there insurance issues I need to take care of before I start? [/quote]

Yes, get a lot of it. But I don’t know details of what kind of liability packages you will need, it being your home. I’m sure it will be more expensive than a leased property, and you will probably need property and maybe the equivalent of malpractice too… I know like 12 agents though, but they don’t answer questions for free ;).

Don’t trust a good lawyer. They will destroy that waiver, but I would have them sign one anyway. The “flood them with paperwork” approach does work in some cases.

Good for you for thinking of this ahead of time. I’m impressed.

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i have the same sort of thing going on - you will need 3 policies.

  1. you will need to update your homeowner’s insurance to cover people getting hurt on your property - say someone trips in your driveway on the way to the garage gym and gets hurt - this needs to be covered. this is an update to your current home policy and can be fairly expensive. expect to tack on 500/yr or so to your homeowner’s insurance plan.

  2. you will need “personal training insurance”. this covers people getting hurt during your training sessions / if they claim your advice was bad, etc. this is pretty cheap - only like 150 for a year or something like that.

  3. you will need a small business insurance plan, to cover people getting hurt while in the business area… i.e. your garage… if they trip on equipment, or equipment they are using breaks… things like this that won’t be covered in personal trainer insurance. this will probably cost a few hundred dollars as well.

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As far as a waiver goes, if you’re just grossly negligent, it’s your fault regardless… but the thing is since there are generally no state or federally set guidelines for what is appropriate behavior, it’s very rare for personal trainers to get sued. This is why personal training insurance is so cheap.

From what I’ve heard and read, most lawyers won’t even take a personal training negligence case since even if the trainer was grossly negligent, due to the lack of guidelines of what is negligent training, it’s hard to win a case.