Bri­an Chin Le­ung

So you have been work­ing out reg­u­lar­ly and you are now the proud own­er of the most mus­cu­lar pair of arms in the gym; you al­so look good in span­dex. With these two phys­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics you have come to the con­clu­sion that you will make a great per­son­al train­er. While hav­ing mus­cles and look­ing good in span­dex may en­hance your im­age; if those are your on­ly qual­i­fi­ca­tions for per­son­al train­ing, then your mind is ob­vi­ous­ly caught in a 1950's time warp.

There are still quite a few mus­cle-bound char­la­tans out there who pro­mote them­selves as per­son­al train­ers; but the sad fact is that some of them are a far cry from be­ing a se­ri­ous health and fit­ness pro­fes­sion­al.

Get­ting start­ed

If you are se­ri­ous about en­ter­ing the field of per­son­al train­ing, then your first step is to get cer­ti­fied from a rep­utable In­ter­na­tion­al In­sti­tu­tion such as the Amer­i­can Col­lege of Sports Med­i­cine (AC­SM) and Coop­er's In­sti­tute; these are on­ly two, but

there are oth­er great in­sti­tu­tions out there.

These in­sti­tu­tions will teach you how to con­duct prop­er fit­ness and eval­u­a­tion as­sess­ments be­fore you start the ac­tu­al train­ing of a po­ten­tial client. In ad­di­tion to nor­mal re­sis­tance and en­durance

rou­tines, they (the in­sti­tu­tions) will al­so teach you about mon­i­tor­ing prop­er heart rate el­e­va­tion and train­ing peo­ple who may be

re­cov­er­ing from heart surgery or may be suf­fer­ing from a spe­cif­ic phys­i­cal ail­ment.

The in­sti­tu­tions al­so teach you about sound nu­tri­tion­al prac­tices, in or­der that you may out­line broad nu­tri­tion­al guide­lines to your clients. It should be not­ed, how­ev­er, that a client seek­ing a

spe­cif­ic di­et should con­sult a cer­ti­fied nu­tri­tion­ist.

Mo­ti­va­tion­al tech­niques

While prop­er cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is im­por­tant, the abil­i­ty to mo­ti­vate your clients is equal­ly im­por­tant. I be­lieve that the best way to mo­ti­vate clients is for the train­er to de­vel­op a re­al pas­sion for fit­ness and ex­er­cise, and for help­ing peo­ple to achieve their fit­ness

goals. If you are do­ing it on­ly for the mon­ey, your clients will sense this in you, with­out you say­ing any­thing; peo­ple are not as stu­pid as you may think. Even from the fi­nan­cial view­point, re­mem­ber,

if you can't mo­ti­vate the client to come out and train, you won't get paid!

Per­son­al train­ing ver­sa­til­i­ty

I be­lieve that it is a def­i­nite as­set, if the per­son­al train­er comes from a com­pet­i­tive sport­ing back­ground.It could be swim­ming,karate,

ju­do, cy­cling, foot­ball, etc. The point is, from his/her own sport­ing

ex­pe­ri­ence; he would un­der­stand about dis­ci­pline and com­mit­ment and hope­ful­ly be able to pass this on to his clients.He would be able

to com­mu­ni­cate with his clients, and ex­plain to them that to ex­cel in any sport­ing dis­ci­pline, re­quires hard work and not just raw tal­ent.

It is al­so a def­i­nite as­set for the train­er, if he per­son­al­ly can per­form a va­ri­ety of sports such as run­ning, moun­tain bik­ing, kick­box­ing, swim­ming,etc.That way he would be able to avoid clients get­ting bored and al­so keep them to­tal­ly in­volved in a va­ri­ety of dis­ci­plines that would en­hance their health and fit­ness lev­els.

Keep train­ing.