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Four Great Reasons to Become a Personal Trainer

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Interested in a career in fitness? If you’ve been thinking about training, here are four great reasons to become a personal trainer

Disclosure: this fitness post is sponsored by ACE Fitness and contains affiliate links for ACE Fitness
Interested in a fitness career? Here are four great reasons to become a personal trainer - @thefitcookie #ad #getACEcertified #fitness ~ thefitcookie.com

Hi friends! How is your year coming along so far? It’s been a few months since New Years—are you working on those goals and plans you set for 2016? Are you doing what you truly love and working in a career that fits your life and interests?

There are plenty of amazing careers out there, but becoming a personal trainer is a great way to have a flexible schedule and make a difference in people’s lives in a field that is continually growing.

So far I have been a personal trainer for almost four years, and I have been teaching group fitness for about six years. Being a fitness professional has some challenges, but it’s also very rewarding and it keeps me moving and constantly learning. I love it! Here are four of my favorite things about being a personal trainer:

#1: You can make your own schedule

This is one of my personal favorites. Being a personal trainer allows me to do other things that are really important to me, like teaching group fitness, training for races, and blogging.

I am not super-busy with my personal training right now, and I am happy with my schedule! It gives me time for family and friends, cooking healthy meals, blogging, doing my own workouts, and going to sporting events and school functions with my kids. With personal training, you can be as busy as you would like to be, and you can do it alongside other part-time or full-time work as well.

Interested in a fitness career? Here are four great reasons to become a personal trainer - @thefitcookie #ad #getACEcertified #fitness ~ thefitcookie.com

#2: You get to make a difference in people’s lives

Making a tangible difference in people’s lives is the reason many personal trainers choose this career, and it keeps our work fresh and rewarding. One of my favorite moments as a personal trainer was seeing a client with MS improve mobility, strength, and daily functioning as a result of personal training.

Personal training isn’t just about weight loss (thought that’s important, too). It’s about giving your clients the tools to take charge of their health and fitness goals with confidence.

I often joke about putting myself out of a job because my end goal with training is to empower people to help themselves so they can eventually become independent exercisers. It makes me feel great to see former clients continue to pursue their health and fitness goals long after we have finished training together.

Interested in a fitness career? Here are four great reasons to become a personal trainer - @thefitcookie #ad #getACEcertified #fitness ~ thefitcookie.com

#3: You decide which area you want to specialize in

You can decide to work in general fitness or work in specialties, like bodybuilding, senior fitness, therapeutic exercise, endurance sports, youth fitness and sports, prenatal fitness, etc. There are so many areas to choose from! Whatever your passion is, you can make it happen. If your interests change over time, you can change your specialty, too.

Not only can you choose your own niche, but you can also choose where you want to train. I train at a community recreation center, but there are plenty of other options out there. You can train clients at home, online, in private clubs and studios, big-box gyms, community centers, churches, schools, corporate headquarters, or in the great outdoors.

#4: You can develop your own personal fitness goals

Continued learning and staying current on new research is a must in the fitness profession, and your new and expanding knowledge base can further your own personal fitness goals as well as your clients’.

Becoming a personal trainer is one of the best decisions I have ever made! Besides informing my work with clients, it also builds credibility in my health and fitness blogging. Starting a career in personal training doesn’t require years in college, so it’s something that is affordable and accessible to people regardless of their backgrounds.

Interested in a fitness career? Here are four great reasons to become a personal trainer - @thefitcookie #ad #getACEcertified #fitness ~ thefitcookie.com

I’m currently studying to become a health coach through ACE® Fitness!

If I’ve convinced you to look into a career in personal training, then check out the ACE® Fitness certification programs. ACE® Fitness is the world’s largest nonprofit health and fitness organization and has been educating trainers for 30 years.

Download the ACE® Fitness career guide
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This blog post is part of a paid SocialMoms and ACE® Fitness campaign. The opinions and ideas expressed here are my own.

25 thoughts on “Four Great Reasons to Become a Personal Trainer”

  1. I totally agree with all the points that you’ve highlighted. Adding on, personal trainers help us to maintain our daily routine. When we try out this ourselves without any help, its really difficult to maintain a routine.
    But if we are under someone’s guidance,we can maintain a daily routine and do it in a much better way.
    Great post buddy..!!!

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  2. all of these reasons sounds like a wonderful opportunity. i love fitness classes due to my instructors and kudos to all of them for keeping us motivated and pushing us to be better and strong every day 🙂

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    • Teaching group fitness is also very rewarding – that’s how I got my start in fitness was taking group fitness classes, which later inspired me to become an instructor and personal trainer! It’s very rewarding 🙂

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  3. The best part is probably to make such a positive impact on people’s lives 🙂 Helping and changing people’s lives simply is really rewarding.

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  4. hehehe, love these reasons! #2 and #3 are why I’m going into family medicine! ;P Gotta love being able to make your own schedule and develop your own personal fitness goals whilst on the job though! :]

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    • That’s definitely a bonus! Teaching group fitness, too, gets me active and makes me stick to a regular workout schedule. That’s one of the reasons I started doing it as well!

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  5. Sarah, WHAT A GREAT POST! You have no idea how much I needed to hear this right now. I’m an ACE-certified GFI, and am “studying” for my CPT exam through them right now. (I actually need to schedule my test date within the next few DAYS.) But I’m lacking some serious study motivation right now (hence why studying is in quotes). How did you manage to push through your studies for the CPT? For my GFI, I was pretty intrinsically motivated to get it done, but the CPT I’m struggling with hardcore. Not the material (yet), but more finding the motivation to devote the time!

    Anyway, long rambling story short, ACE is awesome, and I really hope my motivation kicks in to pick up the books again. Congrats on choosing the Health Coach cert as well! I hear that’s a really good one to have in your repertoire. Let me know how the studying goes!

    P.S. Just curious why you chose ACE for your CPT over NASM? Do you think you’ll get your NASM cert in the future too?

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    • Thanks Ellyn! My CPT certification is through ACSM, but I’m studying with ACE right now for my health coach certification. Several years ago when I was researching certifications our facility worked with ACSM to get a live workshop set up and so that’s who I went with. It worked out that I got the workshop for free through my facility since I was helping to set up the event, so it worked out really well!

      The CPT studies are a bit more technical and might be harder to get through than the GFI certification, but I took anatomy and physiology in college and loved those classes so I don’t mind the technical stuff. With the health coach studies and my personal training studies, I keep my end game in mind all the time to keep myself from slacking on home study. The “why’s” behind getting the certification keep me motivated. With the health coach certification I’m studying for now I feel pretty motivated to study almost daily (some days I don’t get to read) since I’m learning so much and I feel like it’s filling in the gaps in my personal training. Plus I’m hoping to expand my blog offerings and personal training offerings through this certification and one day teach classes and lead workshops locally and do coaching online. Thinking about what I can accomplish with the certification helps me stay consistent in studying! It gets me excited about the future, too 🙂

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  6. I worked full-time as a personal trainer for two years before transitioning back to working in mental health research, but I keep my certification because I love helping people even if it is just part time. I still have people who contact me and share their victories because of what I helped them to accomplish and see in themselves. It truly is a fulfilling career on so many levels.

    Reply

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