Gym Instructor

Industries: Exercise and fitness

Overview and responsibilities

The role of a Gym Instructor is varied. They are responsible for a wide range of day-to-day activities in a gym environment. Working both independently and as part of a wider team, they have a key role in customer experience and member retention, as well as supporting and motivating clients to commit to exercise to support long-term, health-related behaviour change.

Some of the responsibilities of a Gym Instructor are:

• Conducting assessments, consultations and inductions, providing sound demonstrations of gym-based exercise and equipment.
• Conducting pre-exercise screening and identifying when individuals should be referred to other exercise or health professionals.
• Planning safe and effective gym-based exercise programmes while providing ongoing supervision, monitoring and programme reviews to ensure that they are engaging, varied and progressive to the client’s needs and goals.
• Providing a positive customer experience by routinely walking the gym floor to engage and build rapport with customers and to support safe and effective exercise technique.
• Taking responsibility for health and safety and cleaning relevant to their role within the gym environment.
• Providing high levels of customer care and service excellence as a first point of contact and assisting with any customer feedback as they take responsibility for the customer experience.

Working hours

Gym Instructors are routinely expected to work outside of 9–5 hours, with early-morning, evening and weekend work being standard.

Education

To be professionally recognised as a CIMSPA Gym Instructor Practitioner, we ask that Gym Instructors provide us with evidence of holding a relevant CIMSPA-endorsed qualification, degree or apprenticeship certificate issued by a CIMSPA Awarding Organisation Parter or Higher Education Partner or the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE).

If you have a qualification or degree that is not endorsed by CIMSPA or is over five years old, or if you have an international qualification, we still encourage you to apply for professional recognition. We may, however, need to ask you for additional evidence of other training you have undertaken as part of your application.

Achieving this level of qualification demonstrates that a Gym Instructor understands how to work with a broad range of clients with different needs, in different types of environments, over a set period. It also shows that they have competence in working with one type of client in a single environment (including in small groups) over a period sufficient to show lifestyle, health and fitness improvements.

Once practitioners have gained a gym instructing qualification, they often seek out further qualifications to enable them to work as a personal trainer or with specialist populations.