Personal trainers are becoming more and more popular as a way of starting a new career. I work out my one on one clients out of a gym, which is used by a personal trainer training company. I talk to many of the people on those courses as I want to find out what has inspired them to become a personal trainer. The course itself is 10 weeks, full-time. On successful completion, the graduates are granted a Diploma in Personal Training (DipPT). They are then allowed to be let out into the world to train people.
I am a personal trainer of over 10 years. I did the above qualification when I first started. I think it is a good base level, but that should be it. I see many people come out of courses like these and think that is it. A lot of new trainers also think that what they have learned on the course is gospel. When completing my DipPT, I worked as a gym instructor in my gap year between finishing my A-Levels and starting my Sports Science Undergraduate at the University of Southampton. This built my confidence on talking to different people, of building my customer service skills and my sales skills.
Having built up a year of experience as a gym instructor, getting to talk to people, know people, I decided to personal train while I was at university. I only had a few clients a week, but it was enough as I wanted to concentrate on my study. I believe the next step for a personal trainer should be to have a relevant degree e.g. Sports Science, Strength and Conditioning and Exercise Physiology etc. I learnt a massive amount on my course into the finer details of how the human body works and the stresses it comes under when performing exercise and sport.
Since graduating with a BSc Sport Science degree with Honours, I went onto building my client base up. As a personal trainer you need to have good business skills too. At the end of the day you are selling your services and being able to sell is a massive quality to have as a personal trainer. I would say also say practice what you preach. I see new and old personal trainers who smoke, who are out of shape and who put in no time for improving their knowledge. At the end of the day, qualities like these won’t help you sell yourself as a personal trainer.
Read read read and gain more quality qualifications. I am also a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) with the NSCA and I am going to be studying for my MSc in Strength and Conditioning as of September 2011. I read 10-20 research papers, journal articles and articles a week.
Like anything, if you enjoy what you do, it is not a chore to do it. Continue learning as this is a forever developing and changing industry. Seek out the best people and attend seminars and read their material. If you think you know everything there is to be had in this industry, please tell me, I have a lot of questions to ask you. If you continue to develop yourself, service wise, knowledge wise etc, then this is the best quality a personal trainer can have.
Harry Grove BSc CSCS DipPT has helped train people to lose body fat, improve people’s health and train people and teams for various sports for more than a decade. He is the co-founder of PT On-Demand Ltd [http://www.ptondemand.com]! an online training and exercise resource. Find out more about Harry’s brand new training and fat loss program at [http://ptondemand.com/series]
