Becoming a personal trainer

kjt

Howdy all,
I’ve been thinking of training to be a fitness instructor lately and I’m wondering what courses are out there. I remember reading about one starting in January but I can’t remember for the life of me where it was. If anybody out there that knows a bit about this could you tell me:

Where you can study for this type of course?
How hard it is?
Is the qualification recognised worldwide?
Is there much work out there?

If people have any good links it would be much appreciated.


Thanks

Boru.

Being a fitness instructor is easily one of the most rewarding jobs available - it is also one of the hardest. I won't go through all the great benefits to being a trainer, the schools do that for me, but I would like to point some of the harsher realities, that many hopeful trainers are not aware of.

As a fitness instructor you have three major options -

1. Work for a gym, where you get poor pay, long hours and have managment generally do everything poosible to keep you form doing your job.

2. Work for a cruise ship - hard work with great pay, where you become more of a pressurised salesman over an instructor.

3. Become a personal trainer, work every hour god sends you, for great pay but high possability of financial failure.

Regardless of which you choose it requires great dedication, passion and commitment. Your primary goal is to give your energy and enthusiasm to others and help them to find a better quality of life through diet and exercise. Seeing that transformation in people is by far the most rewarding thing I have ever experienced.

Being a personal trainer is great fun but also very hard work - if you aren't training clients you should be spending your time trying to find more clients to train. You need to be an expert at running your own company, devising marketing and promotion, implenting that, and taking care of all the logistics of bookeeping and accounts etc, and that's not even taking into consideration the contiunued learning, training, program design + commuting etc.

If it is something you strongly beleive in and if you feel you can really make a difference in people's lives then training here in Ireland is only a brief introduction. For proper qualification you need to study abroad, primarily UK and States.

Irelands courses, primarily run by the NCEHS and the NCEF are at best good introductions. Running about 6 months part time. Most of the information presented in those courses can be found in any basic intro text on bodybuilding, diet, nutrition and aerobics. They won't teach you business managment, marketing or anything else.

The courses here are very easy - essentially show up and recieve certification. The qualifications are not internationally recognized, at best only extending to the Uk and some Eurpoean countires.

A more advanced course is run out in Sallynoggin and is 2 year Diploma Course.

As regards work - there is lots if your are really, really good and dedicate yourself to improving the lives of others. People will talk about you and the results you get. If you follow the standard cirriculum you will get the standard results - unemployment. The majority of qualified fitness instructors either work in gyms or don't work in the fitness field.

The courses are great if you want to learn a little more about yourself and how you can get in shape etc, but for a career as a fitness instructor / personal trainer they are inadequate.

Of course you could just get certified online for far less time and expense and start working as a trainer tomorrow..:rolleyes:

Best of luck, and if you do decide to pursue it, should you need any advice, help or gudiance please feel free to contact me.

LundiMardi

Excellent reply.

Hell, even i'm thinking of it now and i'm overweight haha!!

kjt

Thanks VERY much for that reply Boru, appreciate it.
It's a bit late to think up a few questions now but
hopefully I'll have time to post up some tomorrow.

Thanks again!

Transform

Oh and if you are going to become a trainer please please please practice what you preach!!

In my estimation only about 10% of trainers world wide are in any way decent as most want to do the job out of their own interests e.g. i like going to gym and the social aspect, whereas its all about one thing

GET BLOODY RESULTS WITH YOUR CLIENTS.

Boru.

Actually one other thing struck me based on what Transform said above, many fitness instructors aren't in great shape - and while that's because most don't practice what they preach and are a lazy deisgrace to the profession, it's also becasue a good few genuine sincere people burnout.

For instance when I worked in the gym enviroment I was doing 2.5 hour commutes and working 14 hour days, then another 2.5 hour commute home. I worked in a poorly managed gym and although I loved my job, after 2 months I hated everything the gym represented - it was in my opinion the complete opposite of what getting fit and healthy should be about. After my shift was over, I'd done perhpas 5/6 classes back to back having walked the floors and trained a few people one on one. Sure I was fit going in but I was chronically overtraining and already picking up a series of nigling injuries. At the end of the day - I didn't want to see another weight stack, barbell or treadmill.

If there is one thing i would advise any trainer in the gym enviroment to do is to pace yourself - lead by restrained example. 6 hours of high intensity / Impact cardio while making the gym memebers happy WILL NOT make you HEALTHY. The amount of gym instructors that have chroinc kness, hip and back problems after a year or two is unreal.

After 2 months of that I was burning out and rather than hate exercise and fitness for the rest of my life and resenting it, I decided to leave that enviroment and started my own PT company (best decision ever).

My first appointments every week are with my most important client - ME. After that I know I am in great shape to serve the needs of my clients, which I keep to a limited number, for 2 reasons -

1. You can work with only X amount of people and still give 150% to each. Stretch yourslef too thin and you fail yourslef and your clients, everyone has their own limit.

2. My time is extremely valuable to both me and my clients - thus based on consistent proven results and becasue I only work with a limited amount of poeple at any given time I charge quite a lot and am probably one of the more expensive trainers in Dublin. Thus I can maintain a better living than most, while at the same time remain motivated, invigorated, and healthy.

If you want to become a fitness instructor so you can make money while working out - your in the wrong business. Become a pro bodybuilder and get paid for product endorsements.

If on the other hand as LundiMardi mentioned you want to get in shape yourself and want to share that remarkable achievement with others and help them find that same benefits you have through healthy diet and exercise then by all means become a trainer.

Everyday I am hugely gratefull that I get to live a life where I can share my passion with others and help them create meaningful lasting change, not just physically but in every aspect of thier lives. It as a great privilage and a huge responsability. I sincerely believe that in many cases working as a personal trainer is the most important position in the health and medical sector.

As a trainer you have the very real ability to reduce obesity, heart disease, arthritis, osteoperosis, the risk of cancer and more - it is the very best kind of medicine - preventitive, and I sincerely believe if we had more dedicated trainers we could influence the educational system and teach an ever increasing number of people the benefits of a clean diet and invigorating exercise program. This in turn could reduce the pressure on our doctors and GP's, our specialists and experts, freeing them to concetrate on procedures and cures for conditions that we cannot reduce the risk of through a healhty lifestyle.

The truth is the great majority of the daily medical complaints many of us suffer from are brought about by what we eat and how we live. A personal trainer's job is to teach and aid people in improving these, thus imporving the quality of life. I know of no other job that allows you to create such a positive impact on both the individual and society as a whole.

kjt

Thanks for the replies.

Boru if you don't mind me asking, what qualifications do you have?
and how did you go about getting them? There is a HELL of a lot of
information you have to learn for it isn't there.. like muscles, bones,
blood types, skin... pretty much the whole human anatomy.

Boru.

I've got several dozen at this stage - and each one is as worthless as the next next if you don't have the right personality and desire. Having dozens of qualifications doesn't make you a good trainer, it just means you've paid out a lot of money.

I started out with the NCEHS and from their went off and trained in specific feilds that intrested me such as reboundology, vibration therapy training, isometrics, measured intensity training and about a dozen nutrition course and many more, but I also picked up additional quailifciations from places like the ISSA, NESTA, ACSM, ACM, etc. I've continued that on and now am a qualified clinical medic and acupuncturist. But I still continue to learn and read about 2 or three books a week on fitness protocols, training programs and nutrition.

In fact I was recently invited to join the NCEHS as an instructor. Still undecided on that one. :rolleyes:

A partial list of my qualifications reads as follows (does not include business, marketing, motivation courses seminars etc);

Bachelor of Arts UCD
National Certificate in Exercise and Health Studies NCEHS
National Certificate in Personal Training NCEHS
National Certificate Stability Ball Training NCEHS
Certified Personal Trainer ACE
Certified Group Fitness Instructor ACE
Certified Clinical Exercise Specialist ACE
Certified Reboundology
Certifed Kangoo TTR
Certifed Vibrational Therapy Training
Diploma of Acupucnture and Tradional Chinese Medicine
Certificate Clinical Medicine

The following are several correspondance courses I've taken;

Certified Personal Fitness Trainer NESTA
Master Personal Fitness Trainer NESTA
Functional Training Specialist NESTA
Sports Injury Specialist NESTA
Speed, Agility & Quickness NESTA
CORE Conditioning Specialist NESTA
Fitness Nutrition Coach NESTA
Personal Trainer Certification NFPT
Master Trainer Certification NFPT
Sports Nutrition Specialist NFPT
Endurance Trainer Specialist NFPT
Weight Trainer Specialist NFPT
Personal Trainer Certification (CFT) ISSA
Specialist in Sports Conditioning (SSC) ISSA
Endurance Fitness Trainer (EFT) ISSA
Fitness Therapy (FT) ISSA
Specialist in Martial Arts Conditioning (SMAC) ISSA

Oh and I have a 6th Dan in Shotokan Karate and am a Level 2 Reality Based Personal Protection Instructor.

I'll doing the Kettlebell Instructors course next year! Woo!

The way I started was interviewing all the major colleges and seeing which course offered me the most at that time - the NECHS gave me the best options and covered the material I thought I needed. It was only after finishing the course that I realised how much more I needed to know. I started traevlling to England to attended the major seminars and conferences, then to the states. Read tons of stuff from guys like Charles Poliquin, John Berardi and more. I wanted to know who the best in the business were and why. Then I found the areas that really intrested me and specifically focused on them.

I also supplemented this with business and marketing courses, development programs, self help, motivation, NLP etc.

Most of what I learn now days is through correspondance courses, seminars and confrences. I take on a new course every 3 months or so. It gets fairly easy to do these after a while and you can fly through many of them as there's not a huge difference in them. That siad you often pick up oe or two nice points that you can add in that I often find worth it. (So why do so man?, Simple - tax deductable, continuing educational credits and many were paid for by the company fitness company I managed for 2 years. whahahah).

As for what you need to learn - that depends. If you have an intrest in fitness and training you will most likely know most of the stuff you need to know such as training mehtods, resistance training methods, proper form Aerobics, stretching technqiues etc.

Anatomy, Physiolgy and Myology are very intresting things to learn and undertstanding the proper insertions of the muscles gives you a greater ability to deisgn and understand exercise for specific tasks.

I'll put it this way...the books I read when I'm relaxing are diet guides, training manuals, martial arts instruction, philosophy, biographies, medical journals and Batman comics. Health and Fitness are not a career - it is a way of life that I am lucky enough to be paid well for.

I honestly don't think I have ever "worked" one day while doing this. I walk around the parks breathing fresh air and enjoy stimulating converstion on range of topics, I get to explore the motivations and mindsets of incredibly diverse and vibrant people and I get to see the best aspects of human will when people push that little bit harder and strain to overcome the obstacles I lay before them. I get to share in thier joy at success and thier delight in achievement.

The thing is most of what I do with my clients now isn't taught in conventional schools, nor are the diet and nutrition protocols I employ. That said I could not have found the techniques and methods I apply without having done those basic introductory qualifications at the NCEHS.

Boru.

Oh and by no means do you have to do all those to be a good PT.

kjt

Thanks again Boru, you don't have many qualifications now do ya? Ha
Did you study for the NCEHS here or abroad?

The way your describing it really seems like it would suit me.
I really enjoy working with people and helping them in situations
I'm able.The only problem would be getting around to doing it,
I'd say to start off all the courses could cost a lot. If you don't
mind me asking what age you were when you started all of this?
(ofc you don't have to answer if you don't want to)


Thanks!!

Boru.

The NCEHS qualification can be obtained in the National Training Centre 16a St Josephs Parade, here in dublin. Website details - http://www.ntc.ie/

I started my qualifications around 4 years ago, so I am still very new to fitness training, with a huge amount to learn still. Prior to that had been a martial artist for 14 years and studied a great deal informally so as to make myself a better martial artist. Really helped me out.

Best of luck,

juanveron45

what do ye think of this course?

http://www.premierglobal.co.uk/course/diploma.aspx