How to Become a Personal Sports Trainer

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Ashleigh Gass, certified strength and conditioning specialist with BrilliantAthlete.com. How do you become a sports trainer? Well a sports trainer can mean a number of things, but typically this refers to someone like myself who works with athletes in the areas of strength, recovery, flexibility and speed type of training. Someone like myself we usually consult with teams as well as individual athletes. How do you get to the point where you can do this? Well ideally you want to go to school to get a degree in a related field like kinesiology or human movement. However if that's not an option for you, there are organizations you can seek out such as the NSCA or National Strength and Conditioning Association. You can get a certification as a personal training through this organization and you can also get a title called certified strength and conditioning specialist or CSCS, this is one of the, probably one of the top organizations in the world for certifying trainers and trainers that specialize with athletes. There are some other organizations that you can choose from but I would highly recommend the National Strength and Conditioning Association. The one other that I'm aware of is the American Academy of Sports Medicine. That might be more of an avenue for you to pursue as well, but when you're looking at being a sports training, it's important that you've got a foundation in anatomy, physiology and that you develop a base of athletes to work with. You'll probably end up volunteering some of your time for a while so that you get that experience and really learn what works and what doesn't work. My final piece of advice for those of you that are interested in becoming a sports trainer is to find a mentor. Look at someone in the industry that you know and you trust and that you know does good work and that's someone you're going to want to start to learn from. Volunteer your time, ask questions and really just get the ball rolling on your own. For more information on this industry, you can contact me at BrilliantAthlete.com."