Accreditation
Helping more clients get results = more money
In terms of being able to qualify and set up as a personal trainer, find work in a gym and get public liability insurance – you must study on an accredited training course. That is to say, if you are in the UK or are based in Europe, a course that is approved by REPS or eREPS and qualifies you to register at level 3.
However, fitness certifications on their own do NOT help you earn money as a PT – results with your clients do!
This is a results business, so if you’re overly shy, don’t get on well with people then all of the certifications and offers of guaranteed interviews in the world won’t make you a successful PT. The fitness industry is a PERSONALITY industry.
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Knowledgeable and experienced fitness professionals tutoring you in small groups
Who are your tutors?….
What level of industry experience do they have to teach YOU to become a personal trainer?
At the very least, you should be able to chat with one of your potential tutors on the telephone as part of your decision making process . This is a great chance for you to ascertain their expertise and how it that qualifies them to teach YOU to become the best possible PT that you can be and get a great start in your new chosen career.
A degree in the classroom means nothing in the real world
Remember, a sports scientist degree on its own doesn’t necessarily mean the person knows PT.
How many people have your potential tutors trained this week?
A successful PT will not just be knowledgeable and passionate about exercise and nutrition but will also have a vibrant results-driven business and business acumen and continue to educate themselves by further reading.
If you are doing a blended learning course, find out the level of support and guidance that you can expect from your tutor, and how much access you have to them? Research past students’ testimonies to see how regular and effective their assistance is.
Finally, for your learning to be effective, the student group on the face to face part of the course should be small, say no greater than about 12 students, or otherwise have a low student/ tutor ratio (1:5)
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Diverse Practical Delivery Training
Just because you’re “certified”, dont assume that you are “qualified”. Not all qualifications are created equally… passing an exam simply means that you’ve satisfied the minimum requirements to become a PT.
Choose a course that teaches group fitness
Make sure that the course you choose gets you to deliver practically via a number of different training environments out of the gym to give a more diverse experience of fitness instruction reflecting different PT situations that occur in the real world.
Group training experience and qualification is a must if you want to be able to go away from the course with the tools to earn a good monetary return for your hourly work.
You want to be able to engage your future clients in outdoor training sessions as well as in the gym using Tabatas, padwork and kettlebells to mix things up and make training interesting and at the right high intensity.
I would recommend to you to check out what facilities the training provider is able to offer you in terms of being able to provide diverse training environments for you to gain experience instructing with..
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PT Business Start Up Course as part of the PT certification
You are in the business of marketing your personal training business
A Fitness qualification will NOT help you earn more money on its own – Obviously, the more qualifications that you obtain, then the greater the chance of achieving a bigger income in the future. However, how you use these qualifications are of far greater importance.
Therefore you must:
- Apply the knowledge gained from obtaining these qualifications to get results for your clients… remember, its results that earn you more £££. People are more concerned about what you know and what you can do with what you know than a specific certification.
- Need to know how to market yourself as a fitness professional in today’s age of internet and social media marketing etc in order to grow your PT business.
Early on in my personal training career I learnt a very important lesson.
Here it is…
You are not just a personal trainer, you are a marketer first and a personal trainer second.
You are in the business of marketing your personal training business.
For every hour you spend reading and learning about new training techniques, you should be spending the equivalent amount of time reading about business, sales and marketing.
You must learn how to market and sell
You can be the best trainer in the world, have all the qualifications and letters after your name – but if you can't market and sell… then you're going to have a tough time.
For the first two years of my PT career I read every book I could get my hands on, from nutrition, to fitness programming, to mindset – you name it, i read it.
Then something very important happened…
The sales guy from the gym I worked at soon figured there was more money in personal training, than there was in selling gym memberships.
So he became a personal trainer, a very bad one… he had no interest in fitness, barely trained himself, and every client he trained did exactly the same workout – no matter what their fitness goals were.
But… the interesting thing is within two months he was the busiest trainer in the gym.
Why?
Because first he knew how to market himself, and second he knew how to sell.
That's when I figured out that if I'm going to be successful in the fitness industry, I need to devote more time on being a better marketer and seller of fitness, and not just being a better personal trainer.
Don't get me wrong you still need to become a great trainer, learn everything you can about exercise, diet and get your clients killer results – but you also need to become a great business person too.
Make sure your business can be found online
Business courses should have now moved on from the days of being taught how to prepare a fitness CV and to seek to put yourself on the cover list for classes at the local gym .
Are the training providers that you are looking at tech-savvy themselves? where is their business listed in terms of Google and how do they interact and connect with their marketplace on social media?
If the course providers are not up to speed with the marketing of their own business, how can they hope to give you the best strategies towards the best methods of online marketing.
