Should I become a personal trainer?

We bet that many of you have asked yourselves this question!

If you have, you’re probably in one of two situations:

• You’ve just finished school and your parents are breathing down your neck to choose a course to study.
• You’ve been in the job that you’re currently doing, for a number of years; however you’re just not feeling it anymore. You’re always watching the clock, trying to calculate how many hours it is until you can close your laptop lid and head for the gym.

If you’re considering a career in personal training, you’re probably the go-to person in your friendship circle for advice on exercise and nutrition. They value the help that you give them and they can see the tangible results as a direct consequence of what you advised them.

 

So, the question is, should you become a personal trainer?

Are you passionate about fitness?

To be a world-class personal trainer, you need to be passionate about fitness. You must not mind spending hours and hours in the gym working on the parts of your body, which you want to tone up or bulk up. In fact, you must absolutely, without a doubt, look forward to getting stuck in at the gym.

Are you a people person?

A personal trainer has to deal with a variety of people on a daily basis. This means that they will need to adapt their communication skills in order that they can communicate appropriately with who they need to. So if you’re an introvert, perhaps being a personal trainer won’t be a good fit for you.

Are you entrepreneurial?

Remember that if you’re a personal trainer, you’ll be running your own fitness business. The buck stops with you. You’re responsible for making sure that the finances and taxes of your business are 100% (or if you don’t want to do this, you’re going to need to hire someone to help you to do this.) In addition to this, you’ll be responsible for your marketing and making sure that you continuously attract a steady flow of clients who want to train, into the business.

Are you enthusiastic?

One of the primary jobs of a personal trainer is to motivate their clients to keep on exercising. If the people who they’re training feel like they want to give up, it will be your job to make sure that they keep on pushing in order for them to reach their goals.

If you feel that the responses to the above four questions describe you, then you should really become a personal trainer!

Once you’ve made this life-altering decision, the next step is to choose a fitness college to do your training. Here are some things which you need to look out for when making your decision:

• The college must be accredited by a recognised fitness body.
• The course material must be extremely thorough.
• The course facilitators must be personal trainers themselves. (This is important as it will give a practical spin on the theory that they are teaching so that students can know how to apply it.)
• The fitness college must offer a number of methods of teaching. For example, they must provide an online learning platform which students, who are currently working, can use to further their education at night or over weekends.

So, to come back to the question that we posed in the title of the article: should you become a personal trainer? Well, if it’s something that you fee that you want to do, deep down in your gut, then you need to make that leap and become a part of the fitness industry!