How To Become A Fitness Trainer

© Nishant Baxi, 2023

ISBN 978-5-0059-7885-1

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How To Become A Fitness Trainer

Nishant Baxi

Requirements for Fitness Trainer Certification

Before you can take any of the different certification tests for becoming a fitness trainer, you have to meet certain standards. These standards will sometimes change according to the type of fitness trainer certification you’re applying for, as well as the standards set by the ruling body of the fitness organization from which you’re applying for certification. A good rule of thumb is to make inquiries before applying for a certification test, asking what requirements the organization may have. By and large, however, here are some of the requirements that are common to most, if not all, fitness organizations for certification.

Age Limit and Diploma – most organizations will set the age limit for their certified trainers at around 18 or 21 and will require, at the least, a high school degree. Not every group requires college degrees, though some of the stricter ones require college degrees in sports sciences even for basic fitness trainer positions. If you’re applying for advanced trainer courses though, such college degrees are a hard prerequisite.

First Aid Training, Especially CPR – knowledge of first aid is a must, and the minimum requirement you can expect to see in most organizations is a certification from taking at least a CPR course. These certificates must be at least 1 year up to date, and old or expired certificates are not accepted. Some certification courses require full first aid training, right down to splinting broken bones and dealing with shock and trauma. This is more commonly needed in fitness trainers for sports therapy-related fields. We will be discussing first aid in-depth in an upcoming chapter.

Basic Knowledge of Anatomy – basic knowledge of the parts of the human body is a must. The tests for fitness trainer certification don’t simply deal with muscle groups, but also include knowledge of the cardiovascular, respiratory, and nervous systems, as these are all integral to fitness and health training.

Basic Knowledge of Cardiovascular Exercise – one of the basics of fitness training is cardiovascular work. The certification tests will determine if you have the necessary knowledge of the drills and exercises required to bring overweight and out-of-shape people back up to speed in terms of their endurance and wind. Having some basic training in jogging/running and aerobics will usually be enough to fill this bill.

Basic Knowledge of Resistance Training – this is another field of study that’s basic knowledge for any fitness trainer. Working with weights and isometric machines is a necessary part of any fitness trainer’s regimen. You need to know not only how to pump iron, but how to do so safely, including knowledge of how to work solo, with a spotter, using free weights, resistance machines, and the like.

Basic Knowledge in Nutrition and Sports Nutrition – these two areas of knowledge are important in fitness and health. You have to be able to determine the dietary habits of your clients and recommend necessary changes to keep them fit. Some organizations require that you know only one of the two, but the stricter ones require that you know both the dietary requirements for basic fitness as well as the ones for higher-end dedicated athletes.

Watch for upcoming chapters on nutritional strategies and sample fitness meal plans.

Basic Certification (for advanced courses) – advanced trainer courses will require that you already have passed the basic fitness trainer requirements above, and have a certificate for them. Advanced courses will often have their fields of specialty, kind of like the difference between a heart or brain surgeon as opposed to a general medical practitioner, and they will train you in those specialized fields, like certification as a yoga instructor or children’s sports and fitness instructors.

Specialized Knowledge (for advanced courses) – as stated above, advanced courses usually focus on a specialized field of study. While they often teach most of the necessary skills during the certification course, some fields will require that you have at least a passing knowledge of other areas of study related to the chosen course. For example, an advanced fitness trainer in basketball sports science must, of course, already know the nuances of the game intimately.

Prior Work Experience (for advanced courses) – lastly, advanced fitness trainer course certification requires at least 1 year’s experience working as a certified basic fitness instructor. Some organizations require 2 or even 3 years of experience first, depending on the estimated complexity and difficulty level of the advanced course you’re applying for.

Educational Requirements

Educational Requirements for a Fitness Trainer

Being a fitness trainer in the modern age is more than a matter of having sheer muscularity and knowing how to pump iron. Modern fitness trainers must come armed with a wide variety of knowledge that will allow them to maximize the physical potentials of their clients, as well as skills that will let them help their clients achieve what they need as well as want, be it an improvement in their overall level of health or a marked increase in their performance in sports. To that end, advanced fitness trainers are required to learn more than just the basics of working out. Here are some of the higher educational requirements that are necessary to truly excel as a fitness trainer.

The Basic Requirements – to re-iterate what we have learned, before taking certification as an advanced fitness trainer you must already have a basic fitness trainer certificate and at least 1 to 3 years of working experience in the fitness industry. You must also know first aid and an up-to-date certificate to that effect, and have a working knowledge of cardiovascular and resistance training.

Now let’s take a good look at some of the more advanced subjects that you should be aware of.

Anatomy – knowledge of anatomy is a must. This covers knowing the different parts of the human body and what each part does. This helps you know not only about the different muscle groups and their functions but the workings of the internal organs that keep people functioning. Knowledge of the cardiovascular, respiratory, and nervous systems are particularly important, as these are most heavily affected by exercise.

Physiology – anatomy teaches you what each body part does. Physiology teaches you how they interact with each other. The human body can be likened to a machine, and each part of the body has its role in keeping the entire thing going. Knowledge in physiology lets you know not only how certain exercises affect related working muscle groups but also lets you know what kind of impact the drills will have on the rest of the body’s systems as well. This lets you avoid certain exercises for people with, for example, weak hearts. Some grills don’t overstress the cardiovascular system in such cases, and those are what you would apply in such situations.

Kinesiology – this field of study specializes in the study of human movement and its impact on the body. It takes information from the other fields given above like anatomy and physiology and applies it to such areas as physical and occupational therapy, massage, and chiropractic.

Knowledge of Kinesiology is applied in fitness training by giving an accurate analysis of the impact of a certain movement on a human body and giving the correct, ergonomic approach to correct movements so that they will have an as little negative impact as possible on the person performing the movement. This allows you to teach your clients to perform a movement in a manner that minimizes injury and maximizes efficiency and effectiveness.

Pathology – while not as seemingly necessary as the three fields given above, knowledge of pathology is important for fitness trainers. Pathology in the broadest general sense is a study of damaged body cells to analyze the effects of damage and disease on them.

For a fitness trainer, studying a special branch of pathology dealing with the effects of physical injuries on body tissue is important. This lets you know the signs when a person’s muscles are getting overstrained, or when a person may have some sickness that they were previously undiagnosed for (like heart illness). Knowledge of pathology lets you know when your clients are starting to feel pain, and can let you diagnose the potential cause of their discomfort before they overextend themselves and take serious injury from training.

Diet and Nutrition – knowledge of diet and nutrition for both normal and sports applications is important for a fitness trainer. If we were again to compare the human body to a machine, then food would be the body’s fuel source. Knowledge of what foods are healthiest and provide ample supplies of energy is just one application for this field of study. Knowledge of the potential drawbacks to certain foods if eaten by people with certain medical

conditions is also important. An obvious example is avoiding excess sugar if you’re diabetic.

Business Management

Business Management Applications for Fitness Trainers

Fitness trainers in the current decade have evolved far beyond their predecessors in the industry. Before, the qualifications and standards to be a fitness trainer were loosely defined, and anyone who had a decent physique and the skills to impart some basic knowledge of exercise to people could already pass as a fitness trainer. With recent developments in medicine and new branches of study like kinesthetics, ergonomics, and sports sciences, being a fitness trainer now has as much to do with scientific knowledge as with sheer physical skills.

Fitness trainers have even expanded into other fields in an attempt to learn new things that could be applied, both directly and indirectly, to the betterment of their profession. Aside from the obvious things like learning anatomy, physical therapy, and massage, some fitness trainers have seen how most successful business managers operate and have adapted their business practices into techniques that can be applied in fitness training.

One of the most important lessons that a fitness trainer can learn from a business manager is the skill of leadership. Leadership skills used by successful managers have more to do with a humanitarian approach than in previous years, where people were treated simply as drones. Current managerial practices stress the need to see people as people, with needs, personal lives, emotions, and feelings.

Leadership training seminars for managers place a great difference between being a leader and being a “boss”. Leaders lead by example and action, instead of simply telling people what to do. Applied to fitness training, this means that a trainer must work out alongside his or her trainee instead of simply telling them what to do and then leaving them to their own devices.

Another aspect of leadership training applicable to fitness training is the practice of empathy. Empathy is the ability to gauge people’s emotions based on subtle clues like body language, verbal intonation, and facial expressions. Managers use this skill to determine what the people they’re leading are feeling and thinking so that they can do right by workers without any underlying bad feelings. Fitness trainers can use this skill in a much simpler fashion, to find out more about their trainee’s distinct personalities and tailor a teaching approach to suit them.

Marketing Standards are another aspect of business management where a fitness trainer can learn useful tricks. Marketing standards are a predetermined level of quality that is used as a basis for whether a new plan, product, employee, etc. is up to snuff or not. Applied to fitness training, this can be an ideal “goal” of fitness that the trainer can use as a standard towards which he can train his clients.

On another note, marketing standards are also partially determined by the manager’s competition. Industry standards for performance help managers gauge what levels they and their companies must be at to remain equal to or above the rest. Fitness trainers can also use this comparative benchmarking style when determining if their training methods, equipment, fees, and such are up to par with other fitness trainers at their level.

Ethics are the last key point of being a good manager. Taking an ethical approach means playing straight and doing right by all parties who depend on you. In the case of middle managers, for example, they have to keep their team happy and productive, make sure they get paid on time and don’t get “shorted” by the company. They have an equal responsibility to their superior officers to make their teams perform at levels that will benefit the company, and a duty to make sure those shirkers who are essentially cheating the company of valuable resources are corrected and dealt with.

In fitness training, this simply translates as a duty. As a fitness trainer, ethics means that you’re not in it simply for the money. This doesn’t mean you need to be altruistic; rather it is a matter of balance. You’re there to make sure that your clients get what they pay for, and to help them achieve their personal goals as far as exercise is concerned. Your primary concern is their health and well-being, as a doctor except that your actions are more preventive and supportive rather than recuperative.

Fitness and First Aid

First Aid’s Importance in Fitness Training

One of the basic requirements of certification for becoming a fitness trainer is learning CPR. While this may be enough for most basic trainers, if you’re planning on expanding your career as a fitness trainer you have to learn first aid fully, as well as study other fields of medicine that can be applied, both directly and indirectly, to your chosen profession.

Being a fitness trainer does not mean you have to be a paragon of muscularity that flexes muscles and tells people to haul long metal bars with huge iron plates attached to them. A true fitness trainer concerns himself, first and foremost, with the health and well-being of his clients. In the mind of a good fitness trainer, it is better to look slightly overweight but be in perfect health rather than look like a world-class bodybuilder but have a gimpy heart or weak lungs. With this in mind, knowledge of first aid and a few supportive medical skills is a must for every true fitness trainer.

CPR aside, the full basics of first aid include knowing how to treat bruises, and concussions, treating mild to moderate wounds, and splinting broken bones, and is a must for every fitness trainer. While ideally no one under you should get injured in the line of training, accidents can and do happen. If you’re a martial arts instructor as well, this is a matter of course, but even if your training is all about fitness and something relatively low impact like aerobics, there are always those clumsy students that may take a bad fall or turn an ankle. Or even worse, for resistance training, there are those students who pile on more weight than they can manage and forget to lock the plates properly, dropping them on someone’s toe…

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