How to Become a Personal Trainer

With emphasis being placed on getting (and staying) fit, the demand for personal trainers has never been greater. Teaching, guiding and aiding others during workouts and exercising can be a highly rewarding job, especially when you see improvements in both someone’s physical and mental wellbeing.

But how do you become a personal trainer? Here are three steps to take in achieving your careers goals:

Step 1: Do you have what it takes?

A big question to ask yourself before taking your first steps into becoming a personal trainer – is this a profession you’re cut out to do? Being a fitness enthusiast yourself isn’t the only factor you need to take into consideration when deciding if this is the career path for you.

Living a healthy lifestyle yourself is obviously a huge factor, as you want those you are working with to aspire to have a physique and mentality like you. But you also need to have strong personal traits, such as willingness to help others, patience, and being self-motivated to deliver the best possible service to your client. If you don’t feel as if you have all of those characteristics, you might want to look elsewhere for a career.

Step 2: Getting the right qualifications

Although you may be well versed in all aspects of the gym through attending yourself, this doesn’t mean you have the experience and skill set to teach others. Being able to lead, educate and teach those looking to gain advice and assistance within a fitness environment requires specialist diplomas and certificates to ensure you’re providing safe and correct information. It may not be illegal to work as a personal trainer without the qualifications, but having the right accreditations will certainly help you get work.

Depending on location, you often need to get two types of qualification to become a personal trainer. Firstly, you need to obtain the introduction-level diploma – this is where you’ll learn the very basics of how to become a personal trainer, covering areas such as exercise techniques, motivation and personal guidance. Usually, this certificate will allow you to work within a gym or fitness establishment to teach, lead classes and tutor those wanting to get fit.

The second qualification needed relates to running personal training classes outside of a gym – for example, functional training ‘boot camp’ style classes in an outdoor environment. These differ to in-gym classes, as you aren’t reliant on equipment and machinery, but you will be leading a class completely unsupervised and without any additional support.

Step 3: Getting the experience

To be a successful personal trainer, you need to have enough experience on your resume for employers to want to hire and prospective clients to choose to work with you. You need to ensure you’re fully knowledgeable on all aspects of fitness, from dietary regimes and machinery to the best cardiovascular exercise. You may want to specialise further on in your career but during the early stages, it’s best to get an understanding of all aspects of personal training before honing your expertise.

Step 4: Choosing the right direction

Once you have passed your qualifications and have the necessary experience, you need to decide where you see your career going. Would you rather work within a gym on a daily basis, or would you prefer work running classes and workouts outdoors? If you choose one, it doesn’t mean you can never do the other, but you need to choose the most practical and logical direction to suit your needs and expertise.

How is Evo different?

Being a standard personal trainer, you may follow the guidelines of your employer when running classes, teaching the generic workouts set out by the gym. But being a personal trainer with EVO is different. All of our personal trainers receive additional training through the EVO Academy to learn exactly how we customise programs to our clients’ needs. Our aim is to enhance physical and mental wellbeing with innovative training methods, continuously monitoring and motivating those who want to improve sport-specific movement skills, increase metabolic fitness or boost strength, power and endurance.

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