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Should you Become a Personal Trainer?

If you enjoy fitness training and helping others achieve personal fitness goals--you may be a great fit for a career as a personal trainer. While enjoying fitness and athletics are an important asset to have as a personal trainer--there are other considerations to think about too! Here are some things to consider as you wonder if you should become a personal trainer.



What do you know about becoming a certified personal trainer? As with most careers, personal trainers demonstrate their skills and commitment to the field through a certification process. There are many programs available to help you gain the skills and education required to become a certified personal trainer--and many additional certificates and courses that you could take, like health coaching or nutritional coaching, to add value to your personal trainer offerings. Choosing your route toward the best personal trainer certification for you is going to take a lot of research and a little soul searching as you choose the path best suited to your interests and goals. Understand the requirements of the certification process--and be aware of extra tasks like getting a CPR certification--that will likely be necessary for new trainers.

Successful personal trainers are successful business owners. While you may enjoy physical fitness and may love working with people and teaching--you need to remember that successful personal trainers are also successful business owners. Whether operating a personal trainer business from home or through a local gym, make sure that you are building a business plan and seeking out the business development, marketing, legal, and financial support you need to launch and grow a successful business! Plan to spend a good portion of your time in the office rather than the gym to manage a successful personal training business!

Successful personal trainers motivate, inspire and educate clients. Learning to train a body physically is an amazing skill. Unfortunately, personal trainers find themselves training clients’ minds for success as well! You will need to learn different motivational techniques for different clients--and you will need to develop the people skills necessary to encourage and teach in ways that help your clients want to improve and grow. Becoming a certified personal trainer is much more than developing exercise plans and working through them with clients. Are you willing to become a mentor, leader, and support coach on those difficult days when the client’s motivation is lacking?

How flexible is your schedule? Personal time is often a bit of a career casualty for successful personal trainers. Clients schedule personal training sessions around traditional work schedules--often scheduling you on evenings and weekends. Depending on whether personal training is your full time job or part time extra income--you may need to become pretty flexible in managing your free time around your training schedule!

Balancing health and wellness with work should be easy, right? While you will spend a lot of time in the gym or with clients working out--you will likely need to put in a little extra workout time beyond the client work to meet your own physical goals. There will be a lot of pressure to “look the part” of a personal trainer--so you will feel pressed toward strict nutrition and workout plans. With planning, you can balance--but, initially, you may find yourself feeling you live in the gym--or will never see a pizza again! If fitness and nutrition are not really a lifestyle for you--you may have a personal learning curve to balance work with your personal life.

Personal trainers are so valuable to so many! If the demands and rewards of becoming a certified personal trainer are in keeping with your life goals--go for it! If you aren’t sure--spend some time. 

 

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