Starting at the Aus institute of Fitness

[crankyfrank118]

Hey all

So im a newb. In may i will be starting my cert III and IV at the AIF. I will be doing this part time for 16 weeks. I work full time so its going to be a crazy schedule for the next 4 months....but hopefully worth the end result.
Now im a slender 73kgs trying to start bulking up for my future career. Are most people that start PT courses already nuggets? The reason i decided to start PTing is to prove to myself and everybody who said i couldnt wrong! Plus i hate managing a retail store and need a change! I have been on and off the gym for years and need to commit to this. I think will be a great success story to motivate future clients as well.

Anyone have any tips or motivation to help a starter out?

Cheers Frank

[KyleAaron]

Have you paid already? If you've paid, can you back out while only losing your deposit?

I ask this simply because the AIF has a less than brilliant reputation, and having that on your resume will not help in job interviews. You'd be much better off going somewhere else.

PT clients don't care what you look like. Other young adult males care what you look like, but young adult males rarely hire PTs, because they know everything already. You don't have to be big and buff to be a PT, you just have to be basically healthy, to demonstrate competence, establish trust and rapport.

[Kupa20]

Where would you suggest getting accredited? The AIF...they got me with advertising (shakes head) but I do feel that 12 months is too little a time to teach people industry basics. The actual PT part I already do and have been doing for near 6 months now (just with friends and their partners, seen some good results with my programs and diets too) but I want the piece of paper to add weight to what I do and getting paid rather than just for the experience wouldn't hurt either.

I would like to do a Nutritionist course at Uni SA but I can't get away from 10 hour working days so I thought a PT course would suffice.

Would appreciate any advice.

[KyleAaron]

Just pick a local TAFE, you can do it part-time or full-time as you wish, it'll be cheaper too.

Don't worry about the course being short or long, the contact hours work out the same. You could do for example a "12 month course", it's Tuesday nights 1800-2100 and Saturday mornings 0900-1200, 6hr a week for 26 weeks (uni "year" is not 12 months, but 6 months with long breaks in between), 156hr in all. Or you could do a 6 week "full-time" course with each week having 4 lots of 6hr days, 6 x 4 x 6 = 144hr in all. Same-same. Then one guy says, "oh I did a 12 month course, and you just a 6 week course, you are inferior!" Not really.

Basically the same hours, but the question is, what was the content of those hours? They have a few basic things they have to put in the course for it to be accredited, but the rest is up to them. For example, there is no requirement that they cover the pushup. Thus you can get people leaving Certificate III and IV in Fitness who don't know how to coach a pushup. That's why where you did the course matters more than how long it took you to do it.

Most of what you learn during the course is totally irrelevant to the actual job anyway. Actin and myosin, periodisation, risk analysis, the four chambers of the heart, all that stuff - useless. What you need is ordinary communication skills, knowledge of basic exercise anatomy (eg when you put someone on their back to stretch their hamstring, why do they raise the opposite leg? When you get a newbie to squat, they go onto their toes and their knees track in, why?) and a big library of exercises to choose from.

PT is a trade certificate like plumber, carpenter etc. Difference is, those guys do the theory at school, then they do the practice in their apprenticeship for 2-4 years, so they get 2,000-8,000 hours of practical experience before they're considered qualified. With PT in Australia, you do the course and 20-40 hours practical, and you're "qualified". So provided you don't go to a school with a totally sht reputation, the employer is going to look at your practical skills.

I don't just mean, can you coach bench, squat and deadlift. Sensible employers will have a practical interview. They'll get a staff member to play a new member, you take them through the health consultation questions and then prescribe and coach them through their programme. Here they're looking at your basic social skills, do you make the person feel at ease, do you get all the necessary information and go into detail about their injuries, is the programme you prescribe more or less right for them, do you know how to coach the exercises you're prescribing, etc.

They'll understand that these practical skills take time to develop. Officially PT has no apprenticeship, in practice your first two years or so are your apprenticeship, in that time either your skills will jump up madly or else they'll never improve, you'll quit or just coast being incompetent (lots do). It's just a matter of getting your hands on bodies and training them. In my first year I did 885 hours of gym instructor shifts during which I did over 100 health consultations and another 100 or so programme showthroughs and in the rest of the time coached at least one person in every hour on lifts or rewrote their programme, and 334 hours of PT with about 30 different people. I probably coached over 300 people in all in some aspect of their fitness and movement. That's nothing unusual for your first year, and no school however good can replace that practical experience.

More here,

education
employment
assessment
the pt-client relationship

Any more questions, fire me an email through that blog.

[crankyfrank118]

Really.....i thought they were the better ones....thats dissapointing!