Personal Trainer

Industries: Exercise and fitness

Overview and responsibilities

Personal Trainers work on a one-to-one or small-group basis to coach clients towards their health and fitness goals. They do this by planning and delivering a creative and personalised exercise programme and providing clients with instruction as well as nutrition and overall lifestyle-management advice. They play an important role in improving the nation’s health, creating opportunities for people to get more active, more often.

Personal Trainers analyse their clients’ needs, adapt and modify guidance, and provide specialist tailored advice within the scope of their practice to positively change their clients’ behaviour. They have a good awareness and understanding of when to refer their client to other professionals, such as physiotherapists or registered dieticians, for specialist information and guidance. They also need to have a comprehensive understanding of business, finance, sales and marketing to enable them to build and retain a stable client base.

Working hours

Personal Trainers can be employed by fitness or leisure centres or be self-employed. They often work non-standard hours, which may include evenings, weekends and public holidays.

Education

To be professionally recognised as a CIMSPA Personal Trainer Practitioner, we ask that Personal Trainers 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 the Personal Trainer is able to work with one type of client, in a single environment, over a period long enough to show lifestyle improvement in their client. They will also have a good underpinning knowledge of:

• anatomy,
• physiology and kinesiology,
• lifestyle management and client motivation,
• health and wellbeing exercise programme design and delivery,
• exercise technique,
• nutrition,
• and business

Once practitioners have gained a personal training qualification, they often seek out further qualifications to enable them to work with specialist populations, such as children or older adults. They can also progress to work within an exercise referral role with further qualifications.