How To Become A Personal Trainer

The world of health and fitness has exploded over the last few years, with more and more people wanting to change their careers and become personal trainers. So, if you are one of those people, below are a few tips on how you can make your dream come true…

What does a personal trainer do?
A personal trainer is there to help their clients reach their health and fitness goals.

By talking to your potential clients to find out about their current fitness levels and their health history to determine a plan of action…

• Set realistic short-term and long-term goals and plan programmes for reaching them
  
• Educate, motivate and coach clients to help them follow their programmes safely and effectively
  
• Give clients advice on health, nutrition and lifestyle changes
  
• Help clients with their workouts
  
• Check and record clients’ progress, using methods such as measuring heart rate and body-fat levels

How do personal trainers get work?
There are a few different ways in which you can work as a personal trainer. In some cases you might work full-time as a gym instructor in an established gym and do personal training sessions outside of your normal hours of work. Whereas other personal trainers will do personal training full time.

Different gyms will offer different ways in which you can work with them, depending on what you are looking for and their way of working. Check with each gym before you sign up to become a personal trainer and make sure what they are asking is suitable for you. Here are a few examples…

• Pay rent to a gym – If you don’t have spare time to give to the gym, paying rent is a great way to work out of a gym without having to give up more of your time.
  
• Give the gym hours as payment – If you don’t have a lot of clients yet, you can give your time to the gym as a way of payment for being able to work out of their facilities.
  
• The gym take part-payment from your clients – Say you have a client who pays you £50 for a session, the gym might ask for 10% of that £50 payment in return for using their gym.

What qualifications do I need to become a personal trainer?
To become a personal trainer you would first need to be qualified as a Level 2 Fitness Instructor with a recognised qualification, such as…

• Level 2 Certificate in Fitness Instructing – Gym
  
• Level 2 Diploma in Health, Fitness, and Exercise Instruction
  
• Level 2 Diploma in Instructing Exercise and Fitness

Once you have this qualification under your belt, you can then take it further and do your Level 3 Personal Trainer qualification, which all gyms will ask for to be a personal trainer. These qualifications include…

• Level 3 Diploma in Fitness Instructing and Personal Training
  
• Level 3 Diploma in Personal Training

Where can I do these courses?
Fitness instructor and personal trainer courses are widely available through colleges and private training providers and you can now even do these courses online.

The courses done through colleges and private training providers are generally done in week/month long residential courses so you get to complete them in a quicker time frame, whereas the online courses are generally done over a 6 month period for you to complete as and when you have the time to do so. Both are great options, it just depends which would be better suited to your other commitments.

Do I need anything else?
Yes, once you have your recognised qualifications, you will also need to become a member of a professional organisation, such as the Register of Exercise Professionals (REPs) or National Register of Personal Trainers (NRPT).

To work as a personal trainer you must also have public liability insurance and a first aid award. This must include a cardio-pulmonary resuscitation certificate (CPR).

We hope you found this article helpful but if you have any questions, please do get in touch.

The Fitness Focus Team

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