personal trainers in Australia help!

[BJS001]

Hi everyone,

i'm in Melbourne Australia and just wondering if any one can give me some advice on becoming a personal trainer and courses they did, also were a bouts they studied these courses and what they got out of them?

i'm looking at one with the Australian Institute of Fitness, its the same as there cert 3 and 4 courses but online (online easier due to i currently work full time during the day).

any advice and help greatly appreciated, thank you in advance.

[KyleAaron]

I'll answer your questions below, but I'll start with my own: why do you want to become a PT?

Schools
Education is like any other service, you can have it good, fast or cheap - if you're lucky you get two of them, usually just one of them, never all three.

I went to Holmesglen for Cert III, and RMIT for Cert IV. In the meantime I shopped around a lot and talked to a lot of people involved in courses.

TAFE (Holmesglen, Chisholm, etc) is cheap (about $600 in all for Cert III, $1,700 for Cert IV). Neither good (burned-out teachers, disorganised courses, poor manuals) nor fast (4-5 months part-time).

AIF is fast (6-8 weeks in all). Definitely not good (they churn you through), and very expensive ($6,000-$8,000 for Cert III/IV combined).

CAE is good. Not fast (months part-time), nor cheap (I forget how much, a few thousand). It's known for attracting the more passionate students (see below).

RMIT is good and fast, the manual and teaching are excellent, and it's 12 weeks part-time (Tues nights and Sat days) or 6 weeks full-time (Mon-Thurs days over the summer). It's not cheap ($3,600 for Cert III/IV combined) but cheaper than at AIF.

There are a whole swag of smaller places which I don't know what they're like, these are the places that don't even reply when you email them or call back when you ring them, doesn't bode well for their engagement with students.

Students
In all, remember that school is only the beginning of your education, and anyway you get out of education what you put into it. Most teachers respond generously to genuinely interested students, since those are rare. You get basically four different kinds of students in your courses.

The injured are those who had some injury, had to work back from it, and in the process got interested in physical training. They rarely want a fitness career, they're just doing the course out of interest - and fair enough, too.

The martial artists and bodybuilders likewise develop the interest during their related hobby, a few might go on to become martial arts instructors, but most are like the injured just doing it out of their own interest.

The drifters are long-term unemployed, or younger people (17-25) who aren't sure what they want to do with their lives, so they're giving this a go. Most of them don't pass the course (poor attendance and failing to hand in assignments), and even if they do, don't usually pursue careers in fitness. Some do, they become the very ordinary trainers you sometimes meet in gyms.

The passionate are those who are really into fitness and helping people. They go onto careers in fitness, but many of them get burned out by it all. That's why you tend to see new staff in gyms all the time, lots of people coming and going.

Burnout
75% of new gym clients quit in the first month, 90% in the first three months. It's hard to remain positive when only 10% of your potential clients are likely to ever achieve anything. As a good personal trainer you can improve those stats quite a bit - especially since when people fork over the cash for a PT, they're obviously more committed than the typical New Year's Resolutioner.

Still, many bail, and PTs spend a lot of their time being lied to. "Oh yes I had just one beer on the weekend... sure I've been exercising heaps, yeah..." It's like any service job, you need a positive attitude, to be able to see through people's bullsht without (usually) openly calling them on it, to be encouraged by the good clients but not discouraged by the bad, and so on.

[KyleAaron]

You're welcome.

[BJS001]

You're welcome.

thanks for that, it was very helpful, i'm currently in another industry but have recently gone back to sports and am enjoying that a bit more than my current work atm.

i'm probably in the 2nd and 3rd groups as i'm at the end of the 25 age group and have been going to the gym since i was 18 and playing cricket since i was 9 including junior footy for a number of years, and a couple of other sports, was looking at it as a career change, was thinking of getting into it part time and seeing how it goes.

i have also been thinking about starting my own business slowly and building it up in the trade i'm in now and have been buying some equipment, so been looking for information and looking into the fitness side as a possible change and further in hance my fitness for sport.

so have been in two minds as it may be that i'm just not enjoying the current work place and have been at others with no problems(only went there as old employer was bought out by new one) and looking for a way out as well as helping my own fitness and understanding.

so am in two minds on if i genuinly want to move into this field or stay with the industry currently in as i have recently done some work on my own things with the field i'm in after starting to look into fitness industry and enjoyed that more by myself than in my current work place. trying to do as much research as possible to find out and work out if this is defenatly the way i want to go and this has greatly helped.

thanks.