Dutch Indie conglomerate Person Trainer, in concert at the 2025 Eurosonic Fe4stival in Groningen, Netherlands.
The band, occasionally referred to as collective, is built around frontman Willem Smit and has a continuously changing line-up with which they perform.
Personal Trainer initially started as a solo project of Smit, who frequently asked different people to play along on stage. Currently, Smit is the only permanent member of the group, and his fellow band members rotate between artists who are part of, among others, Pip Blom, Bull Home Counties, The Klittens, Global Charming, Canshaker Pi, and Steve French.
In 2020, Personal Trainer performed at Eurosonic Noorderslag in Groningen. In 2021, the band played continuously for 24 hours in Paradiso Amsterdam. They have furthermore performed at major Dutch festivals, such as Down the Rabbit Hole, Best Kept Secret, and Into the Great Wide Open.
In December 2023 it was announced that the band had signed to the Bella Union label.
In July 2024, the band released their second album Still Willing.
Willem is the epicentre of the band, which originated from impromptu and exhilarating live shows featuring ever-shifting members of different local bands sharing a bustling stage. The live line-up has solidified somewhat but Willem still welcomes the contrast with his recorded work: “When I make the record, it’s me calling the shots. But I can’t tell everyone exactly what to do every second when we’re on stage. There’s, like, shakers flying around or instruments being thrown all over the place, so I don’t have the capacity to control that. And that’s really exciting to me.”
The music itself was written as a love-letter to the burgeoning Dutch indie-rock scene, a scene Willem has pulled from extensively while trying to fill the various open positions in his band at any one time. Formerly pigeonholed in the up-and-coming category, the band made it to the big time after appearances at Eurosonic and London Calling, in addition to doing a mad-capped, audacious 24-hour live-streamed show at Amsterdam’s Paradiso. For that last one, much personal training was required, of course.
Here is an excerpt from their Eurosonic Festival gig in January of this year.
