How to Be a Personal Trainer

If you are looking for a new career, and you enjoy exercising, you may want to look into the challenging career of being a personal trainer. Here are some steps that you may need to take to be a personal trainer.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Things You’ll Need:

• A love of exercise
• The awareness of most forms of exercise
• People person
• The ability to touch people
• The willingness to help people
• Patience
• A certificate to work in certain locations and places
• The willingness to continue learning
• Liability insurance (if you desire to have private clients)

1. Enjoy exercising.You must enjoy all aspects of exercising.You must like the clothes.You can't mind the idea of sweating.There are many forms of exercise and you must learn at least a little about each form.
2. Become fit yourself.You can't be a good or a prospering personal trainer if you are not fit.Your clients won't trust you, your advice or your training schedules if you are not fit.
3. Decide if you are a people person.You will work directly with people.You will be showing them the correct ways and the correct postures to hold while they are doing certain exercises.Can you deal with people on a regular basis?Can you handle touching them and guiding them?Can you be patient with them if they do not meet the goals you set forth as quickly as you would like?These are important aspects for a good trainer: Patience, a real fondness for people and the ability to work hands on with people of all shapes, sizes and ages.
4. Decide if you should become certified.Personal trainers must be certified to work in certain locations and certain gyms.Find out if you need to be certified in the area and places in which you would like to work.Find out how much it will cost to be certified and if this can be reimbursed.Find out if there are any pre-requisites, such as certain classes you must take beforehand, such as CPR or possibly even college related course work. If you have to take any classes, see if home studies are available.
5. Decide if you want to become certified in a special area of training. This can increase your chances of finding a better job. (Competition in the personal training field is growing daily). Being certified in specialized areas can increase your pay, too.
6. Decide if you want to take on private clients or even start your own business. You could start out small, going to the homes of clients. You could fix up an area of your home that houses the training equipment you need. If you decide to go this route, definitely take out some liability insurance before you work with your first client.
7. Consider joining a national organization such as the IDEA (Idea Health & Fitness Association).This will help you to keep informed of the every changing world of exercise and give you many resources such as information on new equipment, dates, times and addresses of conferences concerning fitness, information on how you earn more degrees, a place to advertise your services and more.
8. Continue learning You may even want to take additional classes every few years.The world of exercise is always changing and trying to improveYou must keep up with the current phases and the popular trends.This is the only way you can keep up with your clients' expectations and another way you ensure having a job for a long time to come.

Tips & Warnings

• Learn what you can about becoming a personal trainer before you leave your current job.
• Explore what it would feel like being a personal trainer. Ask a friend for help. Plan an exercise routine for him and then show him how to correctly form the routine. See how it feels to play the role of personal trainer.
• Being a personal trainer is a real job. Like all jobs, it will take work, dedication and many hours before you see any real money or real success.