So, you’re considering a career as a personal trainer. You know you like exercise, but do you have what it takes to harness that love of fitness to help people change their lives? Being a personal trainer is about far more than simply walking someone through a workout, and requires a specific mindset, and lots of hard work and dedication.
Don’t let the mention of hard work discourage you. Being a personal trainer is a rewarding job, one that can take you to beautiful places and introduce you to wonderful people. If the idea of helping people transform their lives for the better through fitness, health, and wellness, you could have a promising career in personal training. In this guide, we’ll cover some of the qualities that help make a successful personal trainer.
Openness and Curiosity
As a personal trainer, you will encounter people from every walk of life at every level in their fitness journies. With each new client, you will discover new ways of teaching, communicating, and interacting with clients, helping to expand your knowledge base and expertise. Though these can be valuable learning experiences, you must be willing to be open and curious in order to engage with clients and benefit from the experience.
Just as everyone’s communication style is different, all bodies move differently and have different needs. As a personal trainer, you need to be open to making changes or modifications to exercises in order to allow your clients to perform exercises safely and effectively. Rigidity is a difficult quality to have as a personal trainer, as an unwillingness to be flexible for different bodies and personalities can leave you clientless.
Patience and Empathy
In the world of fitness, many of us feel compelled to take on a hyper-competitive mindset. For fitness fanatics, pushing yourself to the limit is a rush, and the desire to consistently improve is a constant motivator. Though these traits may make for excellent athletes, these traits do not necessarily serve you well in a role as a personal trainer. Working one-on-one with clients requires a certain amount of patience and empathy since the results of your work are not always readily detectable.
Though part of your responsibilities as a personal trainer will be to motivate and push your clients towards success, most clients you encounter will not have the same threshold or exercise tolerance as you do personally. Clients should only ever be pushed to the thresholds they themselves can reach, any further could result in injury. There will also be days where you feel as though your clients have made no progress at all; rather than becoming frustrated, it is your job as a personal trainer to be patient and understanding of your client no matter where they are in their journey.
Friendliness and Enthusiasm
Many clients you encounter will be nervous to start a fitness journey, and some will be starting a fitness journey for the first time. Filled with jitters and worried about encountering judgment, some clients may at first be reserved, skeptical, or even standoffish for fear of discomfort. Approaching all clients with friendly enthusiasm is key to setting nervous clients at ease, and can help set the stage for a positive relationship between yourself and your client.
Along their fitness journey, your clients may encounter challenges and setbacks, making them uneasy about continuing, trying new things, or committing during times of high-stress. Your enthusiasm will be the thing that helps your clients push through the difficult times and recommit to their journey. Your enthusiasm for fitness can be the catalyst to help your clients develop their own enthusiasm, helping them commit longterm to healthy living.
Drive and Motivation
Building a personal trainer business is hard work, and committing to the long hours requires a certain amount of drive and self-motivation. Personal training doesn’t end after your hour-long workout sessions, you’ll be on-call to help motivate your clients even when you’re far from the gym. Between creating engaging new workout routines, developing homework assignments, setting goals for your individual clients, and helping each one to stay motivated themselves, you’ll need a lot of drive to keep all your balls in the air.
Education and Training
You might think that your personal trainer education is done once you complete your certificate 3 & 4, but in reality, being a personal trainer will require a lifelong dedication to continued education and training. At PT Academy, we offer not only basic personal trainer certifications but also a huge variety of continuing education courses.
Attending courses, taking new certifications, and educating yourself in the latest and greatest in the world of fitness can help keep your career as a personal trainer flourishing. In order to be competitive as a personal trainer, you will need to show potential clients that you are well versed in the latest trends and best-practices in the world of fitness.
Feel like you might be a good candidate to become a personal trainer? Learn more from PT Academy or sign up for a course today!
