Without a doubt, becoming a personal trainer is an incredibly popular career choice. And there’s a specific reason why this is. People around the world are becoming more and more health conscious. They are becoming more clued up on what is good, and what is bad for them. They are reading articles about the best way to improve longevity. As such, they need someone to help them implement this knowledge and the person that they turn to is the personal trainer.
But what makes a personal trainer?
Anyone can take the time to read up on how to exercise, study anatomical diagrams and watch YouTube videos about what the best form is to adopt for various exercises. However, even with this knowledge under their belt they are not PROPER personal trainers.
In a personal trainer course, the student studies how to train a variety of people as well as all of the exercises that can be used to train these people. So people who self-study how to exercise will only be looking up information for them to be able to meet their own personal fitness goals. They will not, for instance, read up on the best exercises for a person, in a wheelchair, to do. This is because if they are not in a wheelchair themselves, these types of exercises will not be relevant to them.
The course that people, who want to become personal trainers, study needs to be comprehensive. It needs to include:
- Anatomy and physiology
- Biomechanics
- Fundamental and advanced nutrition
- Physical Assessments
- Health screening
- Motivation techniques
- Wellness concepts in fitness
- Entrepreneurship in the fitness industry
- Exercise programme design
- Coaching Disabilities in sport and exercise
- Training special populations (pregnant clients, elderly clients and children)
In addition to comprehensive course material, a personal trainer course needs to be accredited by leading health and fitness bodies. This accreditation is the industry’s rubber stamp of approval. It shows clients and potential employers that anyone who has done this personal trainer course is the best trainer out there and that these people need to be snapped up quickly. In South Africa, examples of such bodies are:
- The Register of Exercise Science South Africa (REPSA), and
- The Culture, Arts, Tourism, Hospitality and Sport Sector Education and Training Authority (CATHSSETA).
The benefits of becoming a personal trainer
There are countless benefits to becoming a personal trainer. For example:
- Because you’d be running your own fitness business, as a personal trainer you’d be able to dictate your own income. This is because the more that you work, the more you get paid. This could be scary, for some people, as there is no guaranteed salary at the end of the month and the amount of work that you get directly relates to how well you market yourself.
- What quite a lot of personal trainers do enjoy, and what actually attracts them to the profession in the first place, is the flexible hours. The busy times for a trainer are usually early in the morning and late in the afternoon. This means that, in the middle of the day, they are pretty much free. This means that they have time to do things that people, who are bound to office jobs, don’t get the time to do.
- A career in personal training doesn’t tie you to one location. With a personal trainer course, you can travel the world because fitness is not specific to one location – it’s universal. So, if you’ve ever wanted to see foreign lands, get a personal training qualification and the sky’s the limit!
Contact Trifocus Fitness Academy
Want to discover more about becoming a personal trainer? Check out Trifocus Fitness Academy’s Personal Training Diploma.
