Subjects You Need to Become a Personal Trainer

What  Subjects do you Need to Study to Become a Personal Trainer? Well, to become the best personal trainer you can be, there are a number of fundamental subjects that you need to study. Because without a thorough grip on these areas, you won’t make a success of your personal training business.

Anatomy and physiology

‘Anatomy’ refers to the study of the parts of the body. For example, in anatomy, you’ll study organs such as the brain and spinal cord.

If one speaks about ‘physiology’, you’re talking about how the organs of the body function. To use the example above, in physiology you’ll study the nervous system which comprises, among others, the brain and spinal cord.

As a personal trainer, you need to know how the body as well as its various organs function. This is so that if you’re training a client - and he or she experiences some sort of pain during the exercise - the personal trainer will be able to isolate this and adapt the exercise based on the client’s feedback.

Biomechanics

It is a personal trainer’s fundamental job to teach people how to exercise properly. To carry this task out effectively, they will need to know how the body moves. The science of how the body does this is called biomechanics and personal trainers, during their studies, will need to gain a thorough grounding in this aspect.

A good grounding in biomechanics is also extremely important for personal trainers to have because often times they will find themselves with clients who aren’t able to perform a particular exercise. Their biomechanical knowledge and training will help them to adapt an exercise to suit the needs of the client.

Programme design

A personal trainer will also need to learn about how to put exercise programmes, for their clients, together. This is so that they can help the people they train to meet their fitness goals in the most efficient way possible.

In addition to this knowledge, personal trainers will also need to gain a good understanding of assessment techniques and so that they can see where clients are at from a fitness point of view. Armed with this knowledge, they will be able to design the clients’ programme to make sure that it takes into account the client’s current physical capabilities and build up their fitness from there.

Business management

As a personal trainer is effectively an entrepreneur, he or she will need to learn fundamental skills necessary in running a business. These are, for example, marketing, sales and managing finances.

In many professions, candidates are well schooled in the nitty gritty of becoming the best professional that they can be. However, they are not taught how to run their own businesses. As a consequence, they fail on these basic principles. This means that for a personal trainer to have his or her business fly, they need to be schooled in business management.

Communication skills

Any personal training qualification worth its salt will have a significant chunk dedicated to communication skills – both written and verbal. In a personal training situation, communication is vital – from the way that you explain exercises to your client, the chats that you have during the session right down to the way that you communicate with them between sessions. This means that a personal trainer needs to be a top-class communicator.

Some people are naturally great communicators and others may need a little bit of work. However, the communication module in a personal training qualification will help everyone become better written and verbal communicators.

If you want to become a world-class personal trainer, you need to think very carefully about the qualification that you decide to study. We recommend that the institution that you decide to study with is endorsed by recognised industry bodies. This will make sure that your qualification stands the test of time and that potential employers and clients have faith in you because you’re backed by the best.