A Career as a Personal Trainer

Personal fitness trainers lead, instruct, and motivate individuals in exercise activities, including cardiovascular exercise, strength training, and stretching.

Personal trainers work one-on-one with clients either in a gym or in the client's home. Trainers help clients assess their level of physical fitness and set and reach fitness goals. Trainers also demonstrate various exercises and help clients improve their exercise techniques. Trainers may keep records of their clients' exercise sessions to assess clients' progress toward physical fitness.

Working Conditions
Most fitness workers spend their time indoors at fitness centers and health clubs. Personal fitness trainers may split their time among the office, personal training, and teaching classes. Personal fitness trainers at all levels risk suffering injuries during physical activities.

Personal fitness trainers often work nights and weekends and even occasional holidays. Some may have to travel from place to place throughout the day, to different gyms or to clients' homes, to maintain a full work schedule.

Personal fitness trainers generally enjoy a lot of autonomy and have the freedom to design and implement their clients' workout routines.

Training, Other Qualifications, and Advancement
Personal trainers must obtain certification in the fitness field to gain employment. They also may improve their skills by taking training courses or attending fitness conventions.

Personal Fitness Trainer programs prepare graduates for a career in the health and fitness training industry in gyms, fitness centers, private studios, corporate wellness programs, or their own personal fitness training business. Graduate will be prepared for the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) certification among others.

Personal Fitness Trainer programs typically feature courses in:

• Anatomy, Physiology, Kinesiology, and Pathology
• Development of sport-specific exercise programs
• Development of weight loss or weight gain exercise programs
• Working with a variety of exercise equipment and methods

People planning fitness careers such as becoming a personal fitness trainer should be outgoing, good at motivating people, and sensitive to the needs of others. Excellent health and physical fitness are important due to the physical nature of the job. Those who wish to be personal trainers in a large commercial fitness center should have strong sales skills.

Personal Fitness Trainers usually do not receive much on-the-job training; they are expected to know how to do their jobs when they are hired although newly certified personal trainers with no work experience sometimes begin by working alongside an experienced trainer before being allowed to train clients alone. Workers may receive some organizational training to learn about the operations of their new employer.

Personal trainers may advance to head trainer, with responsibility for hiring and overseeing the personal training staff and for bringing in new personal training clients.

Employment
Fitness workers held about 205,000 jobs in 2004. Almost all personal trainers and group exercise instructors worked in physical fitness facilities, health clubs, and fitness centers, mainly in the amusement and recreation industry or in civic and social organizations. About 7 percent of fitness workers were self-employed; many of these were personal trainers, while others were group fitness instructors working on a contract basis with fitness centers. Many fitness jobs are part time, and many workers hold multiple jobs, teaching and/or doing personal training at several different fitness centers and at clients' homes.

Job Outlook
Opportunities are expected to be good for fitness workers because of rapid growth in the fitness industry. Many job openings also will stem from the need to replace the large numbers of workers who leave these occupations each year.

Employment of fitness workers—who are concentrated in the rapidly growing arts, entertainment, and recreation industry—is expected to increase much faster than the average for all occupations through 2014. An increasing number of people spend more time and money on fitness, and more businesses are recognizing the benefits of health and fitness programs and other services such as wellness programs for their employees.

Aging baby boomers are concerned with staying healthy, physically fit, and independent. They have become the largest demographic group of health club members. The reduction of physical education programs in schools, combined with parents' growing concern about childhood obesity, has resulted in rapid increases in children's health club membership. Increasingly, athletic youth also are hiring personal trainers, and weight-training gyms for children younger than 18 are expected to continue to grow. Health club membership among young adults also has grown steadily, driven by concern with physical fitness and by rising incomes.

Participation in yoga and Pilates is expected to continue to grow, driven partly by the aging population demanding low-impact forms of exercise and relief from ailments such as arthritis.

Editorial provided by Chuck Darling, SW Regional Director of High School Admissions, ATI Career Training.