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How to Become a
Personal Trainer
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Start Your Own Personal Trainer Business with Step-by-Step Guide
If you are info physical fitness, becoming a personal trainer as a career has its benefits. For one, you can arrange your work schedule to fit into your life. Work part-time around your family, work mornings, evenings or evenings if that works better for you. You can easily run a Personal Training Business out of your home, so you can reduce many of the traditional start-up and business operation expenses.
Secondly, you can design the atmosphere in which you want to work. You have the choice to work indoors or out, you can work one-on-one with individuals or teach classes with larger groups, and you can offer your service in people's homes, local gyms or neighborhood parks.
Thirdly, fitness training can be very rewarding, as you help your clients reach their goals. Working directly with people can be socially stimulating as well. You can make a lot of friends in this business.
Based on a survey done by the American Council on Exercise in 2005, the average hourly wage of a personal trainer in the USA was $35. As you would expect, running your own personal training business, you could earn significantly more.
Requirements to Become a Personal Trainer
Although there is not yet a standard educational requirement to becoming a personal trainer, it helps to have a college degree in health or fitness or at least to have completed courses in anatomy, nutrition or exercise physiology. The Penn Foster Accredited Career School
offers a Certified Personal Trainer course that you can complete online from home. This course includes Exercise Science Terminology, Fitness Anatomy and Physiology, Nutrition, Strengthening Upper and Lower Body and Flexibility Training and Injury Prevention. You also want to get your CPR certification.
You can become a Certified Personal Trainer through the National Board of Fitness Examiners, National Strength and Conditioning Association or the American Council on Exercise.
Starting Your Personal Training Business
If you're ready to start making money as a personal trainer, the easiest way to get started is to learn from a successful personal trainer who already runs his or her own business. Professional Trainer Paige Waehner has trained hundreds of clients over the past 15 years. She can give you lots of time-saving advice and step-by-step instructions on starting your own successful Personal Training Business.Here's what we've got: "How to Become a Personal Trainer" Start-up Guide
Here' what it will do for you:
- You'll see exactly how to become a Certified Fitness Trainer, develop training programs and get the physical training equipment you'll need
- Know where to get free assistance and tips about finances and insurance
- Find out how to meet new customers at gyms, how to get referrals from clients & opportunities in online fitness training
- You'll get sample contracts, a medical release form, resume and exercise history questionnaire
- 10 tips to keep your clients coming back
- What do you do now? Download Your Personal Training Business Guide & Start Your Business
Creative Ways Personal Trainers can Train Clients
excerpt from Become a Personal Trainer:
Doing the same exercises time and again gets boring. As you train your clients over long periods of time, you may encounter this phenomenon in the form of no-shows or yawns. A good rule of thumb is: if you're bored, your client probably is too.If your client is no longer committed to the program you have developed, the burden falls on you to find a program they can commit to.
For beginners, it's sometimes necessary to do the same workouts over and over until they build strength and endurance. But once they get strong and can do more, you can be creative and do fun things with your client.
Get outside
Go for a walk or run with your client and make it interesting. Sprint to objects in the distance or race each other. Every five minutes stop and do pushups or jumping jacks. Go to the park and toss a football or volleyball. Make the workout a game.Join a fitness club
You and your client could join a fitness club such as a walking or running club that meets regularly.Circuit training
Set up different stations where your client will go from exercise to exercise with no rest. Have them do a different exercise every two minutes without stopping (i.e., two minutes of push ups followed by two minutes of jump roping, etc.). Use your imagination and make it fun by turning on some music.Obstacle courses
Set up obstacle courses in the back yard. Use anything you can find... playground equipment, old tires, ladders, etc.Put your client in charge
Once a month, designate a day in which the client decides what kind of workout they'll do. Have them pick a specific muscle group to focus on, or an activity they've always wanted to try.The point is to make your sessions interesting and try to associate exercise with fun. This will keep your clients coming back for more sessions while teaching them that exercise doesn't have to be boring.
Health and Fitness Business Plans:
Starting a business can seem overwhelming because there are so many "unknowns" and variables. Putting together a business plan can surprisingly answer lots of your questions and set up an organized plan for you to follow to achieve the success you want in your business.
You don't have to go it alone, and you don't have to pay a professional to write your plan. You can create a professional business plan yourself and save lots of time and money with business plan templates. Simply follow the steps, fill-in-the-blanks and you'll be ready to launch your business sooner than you think.
Download >> Fitness Instructor Business Plan
Download >> Gym Business Plan
Download >> Aerobic Instructor Business Plan
Download >> Massage Therapy Business Plan
Marketing Your Personal Training Service
With a personal training business, you may want to start marketing your services locally, establishing brand recognition in your city and start to generate free word-of-mouth advertising. Here are some low-cost marketing techniques you can use:
- Publicity can be a great tool in launching your business - and it's free. You can write a short press release to your local newspaper or neighborhood magazine announcing your business and the service you provide. Try to tie it in with an event you are sponsoring or help out at a charity function and include that information in your press release to show you're involved in community events.
- Create Business Cards & Brochures. Give them to people in your neighborhood, network with people you know, leave them with stores, offices and other places that busy professionals tend to hang out. With over 300 professional business card designs and easy-to-use templates, creation is easier than you think, and printing is done for you. Also, contact your local Chamber of Commerce and to see of you can put out your brochures.
- Offer coupons in neighborhood mailers or local newspapers to attract new customers to try out your service. You can use mailing services or design your own coupons using online coupon creators.
- Place an ad in the Yellow Pages. Seems pretty basic, but it's sometimes the first place people look - especially if they're new to the neighborhood. Advertise your certifications, awards or references that you have available to increase your credibility.
- Help sponsor a triathalon or other sports race in your city. You may be able to include coupons in the goodie bags that each race participant receives. This makes people view you as a good samaritan and can help you gain new clients.
- Sign up to teach a fitness class, such as an exercise boot camp in your local community. This can be way to introduce yourself to potential clients in a comfortable environment where they can first get to know you before hiring you as a personal trainer.
29 Ways to Get More Personal Training Clients
If you can't find customers to buy your personal training services, your business will never survive. The good news is that finding new clients doesn't have to be hard: simply use the techniques that the experts have learned.
Small Business Marketing Expert David Frey has been around for as long as I can remember. He has helped thousands of small business owners find new clients (including myself).
He gives you all the information you need to find customers, get the to buy more and to keep the coming back to purchase from you again and again. You don't have to buy lots of books, pay for expensive courses or seminars or even hire a costly rep to promote your company. David Frey makes it easy and affordable (and even fun) to find the customers yourself. I highly recommend his website to any small business owner starting out.
Visit David's website and get a free marketing newsletter >> Small Business Marketing Strategies
Personal Trainer Business Resources:
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