In the highly competitive fitness industry, there are various reasons why gaining a personal training certification is essential. With diverse roles such as exercise instructors, nutrition coaches, and physical therapists ensuring that the variety of work never becomes stagnant, specialising your knowledge through education is one of many ways to ensure your success. Let’s discover 3 reasons why getting and staying certified as a personal trainer can be beneficial for fitness professionals.
Credibility
It is no secret that when looking for a personal trainer, a potential client makes a value judgment about how believable, transparent and trustworthy their instructor seems. In an industry where knowledge of the human body, exercise and nutrition are assumed, qualifications are something of a prerequisite. Although a typical client is rarely too concerned with where exactly a fitness professional has gained their personal trainer certification from, qualifications still provide an acquired sense of accreditation.
Above all, competence is something that must, to an extent, be earned through hard work and dedication. Certifications allow personal trainers to establish their identity as an expert in the field. This in turn, allows you to negotiate higher pay rates. By being able to explain to clients your level of schooling and qualifications, you might be able to justify why your prices are higher than a competitor as a result of the additional and prestigious level of service you can provide.
Specialisation
Specialising in a certain area of health and fitness can effectively lead personal trainers to tap into a niche audience of people who require a certain type of personal training service. Fitness needs vary by individual according to factors such as age, ability, and overall health. For example, working with the elderly to help them stay fit while managing conditions such as chronic pain, or arthritis, is very different to advising a bodybuilder on how to pack on muscle.
Branding yourself as an expert in a unique field or sub sector of the fitness industry is a unique way for personal trainers to build a profile and differentiate themselves from other trainers. With more people than ever before entering the personal training sphere with backgrounds in health science as well as diversified career backgrounds, the bar is constantly being raised, so specialization ensures you can target populations while at the same time improving and extending the reach of your services.
Staying Up to Date
With new research, workouts and diets entering the fitness fray on a regular basis, being able to wade through the headlines and find out what really works is essential. By acquiring additional personal training qualifications, you can have peace of mind that your services are to an industry standard and that you offer clients an innovative and current approach to health and fitness. Moreover, success as a personal trainer is largely a case of blending tried and tested experience with the latest knowledge.
Taking a certification in personal training can satisfy your thirst for further education by studying stimulating content with practical applications to everyday life. Learning new skills and ideas is the only way to further your career. Additionally, furthering your knowledge can also lead to unique networking opportunities with other fitness professionals giving you an inside glimpse into new topics relating to your field.
Qualifications and certifications are one of the many ways you can get ahead in your personal training career. There are plenty of unique learning opportunities out there that can help you to make progress, so doing some research into your next steps can be an exciting and rewarding prospect.
In some cases, personal trainers can work alongside people with dietary intolerances to help them to live healthy and fulfilling lives. To learn more, check out this blog post about how a personal trainer can work with a client with coeliac disease.
