The Role Of A Personal Trainer

The role of a personal trainer is to provide one to one support and develop personalised structured training based around their clients’ goals. Another element of their role is to provide advice, by taking a pragmatic and at times a principled approach to help coach a person through lifestyle choices, such as nutrition, physical activity and mental health. It is also part of their role to make sure there is a sufficient advice, guidance and mentoring set up to allow these changes to possible. Of course, the decision around what is required and what is not for the trainer comes down to their clients’ individual goals, as with all clients the points above will be different. The role of a personal trainer includes testing and retesting individuals to track progress throughout the transformation process and provide feedback and remedial advice where necessary.

How to become a Personal Trainer

To become a personal trainer, you will need to achieve a CIMSPA endorsed qualification from a CIMSPA endorsed Training Provider. This is the recognised standard to work as a personal trainer in the UK. The qualification needed to be a PT is the Level 3 Diploma in Personal Training. This should be awarded by an Awarding Body such as Active IQ or YMCA Awards. It is important to note that the prerequisite to the Level 3 PT course is a Gym Instructor qualification – though many providers offer both the Level 2 Gym Instructor and Level 3 Personal Training as one big course. You can check if a provider is a CIMSPA endorsed Training Provider by checking the CIMSPA directory. 

Some very useful resources to help you find high quality CIMSPA endorsed Training providers are:

• CIMSPA Careers Hub – information of a career in the sports & active leisure sector
• Which Personal Trainer Course – information and comparison site for personal trainer course providers

Becoming a personal trainer takes a lot of time and hard work and you will need to complete a range of assessments. However, your qualification and the passing of exams that take a student officially from a fitness instructor to a personal trainer is just the beginning to a career in the fitness industry. A personal trainer needs to know multiple angles of human physiology, periodisation of training, correct exercise technique and nutritional strategies. Combining knowledge with practical experience is the key to becoming a top personal trainer. Your qualification is your licence to practice, but your skills and knowledge are what sets you apart.

Skills you will learn

To become a personal trainer, you need to start to learn some key areas for working with your clients for example: what motivates your client, how do you adapt your programme if the current plan does not work, how do I network myself for success, what is my unique selling point for referrals of clients and how do I want to design my PT Business?

As you can see when we start to look at what is the diversity of the role of a personal trainer, there is not really a simple one size fits all description, as you can specialise in different aspects of health and fitness. However, no matter what your niche is, it basically comes down to ensuring your clients get the service they require to be able to achieve the goals they wish to achieve, for example muscle growth, weight loss or sports performance. A key factor in successfully helping clients is by being able to use your interpersonal skills developed through working with the public and building a professional relationship with your clients. This will aid you in being able to carry out successful consultations and fitness testing, which will contribute to the personal training programme you design leading to successful outcomes for your clients.

Business

As many PTs are self-employed, one of the most important parts of being a personal trainer is maintaining your own business. You are going to be responsible for the success of this where you will need to arrange such things as:

• Business Plans
• Marketing
• Accounts
• Reflection and personal development

All CIMSPA endorsed PT courses should include a business unit which will help with some of the above.

Conclusion

A career as a personal trainer can be very rewarding and represents a chance to get a career you love! It is however very important that anyone wishing to become a PT gets properly qualified with a CIMSPA endorsed Level 3 Personal Trainer qualification. Once qualified the opportunities are endless and the start of a potentially amazing careers begins.

The world of a personal trainer is a vastly diverse and complex role, however if you spend time getting the right qualifications and work hard, you will be able to set up a successful career and business, to allow you the flexibility to be the best personal trainer that you can be.