How To Show Professionalism When Applying for Fitness Instructor Jobs

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Looking for a job in personal training? Here’s some advice.

As an established personal training company, we receive applications from both experienced personal trainers and newcomers to the fitness industry, looking for personal training jobs with us.

And we do often offer vacancies for freelance personal training opportunities. So I read each CV and talk with applicants on a regular basis. But common red flags are raised that makes it harder for me to say yes to working with some individuals.

The biggest hurdle is showing they understand the meaning of professionalism. Having a clear sense of professionalism makes it easier for someone looking for fitness instructor jobs or personal training jobs to sell themselves because it makes it easier for others to hire you. Professionalism should be at the core of how a personal trainer conducts themselves. So I have some advice to those trainers (or soon-to-be trainers) on how to develop in three areas of professionalism.

Professionalism: “the skills, behaviours and qualities belonging to any given profession”

Skills

Teaching

Most personal training involves a high level of teaching. It’s not the client’s responsibility if they fail to understand something they’ve been taught. It’s the trainer’s. Clients may learn in different ways and at different speeds. So it’s important to notice how a client learns and to adapt the teaching to accommodate them.

Motivation

I’ve never been one for machine-gun style ‘motivating’ speech. The kind of non-stop encouragement that sounds like:

‘That’s great, keep it up you’re doing really well, give it 100%, keep pushing, all the way, nearly there, ten seconds to go, that’s fantastic, well done, another 3 reps, superb, awesome, brilliant try…’

This isn’t motivation, it’s commentary. Motivation comes from within the client. Their trainer’s job is to remind the client of that motivation.

Technical knowledge/competence

Most personal trainers love to learn. They are constantly going on courses, reading new books and research or developing their own training style. I recommend though that depth of knowledge is more valuable to the professional than breadth of knowledge. Digging deeper into only the subjects that really interest, will lead to more understanding.

Behaviours

Respect

The client is the boss. Keeping that in mind, all the other advice in this post will just come naturally (unless one has a problem with authority!)

Reliability

This includes punctuality, being available for rescheduling sessions, delivery of programmes on time and answering emails and calls promptly. Just simply being there for the client.

Organisation/Planning of one’s professional life

No one becomes a personal trainer because they want to do admin. But admin organises the getting and keeping of clients. So a professional trainer ought keep a strict diary system, pick up voicemails, save for a tax bill, have folders for client notes, schedule time in the week to keep their business moving forwards, run a project/to-do list.

Qualities

Principles

A professional fitness trainer should have a clear belief in what you are teaching i.e. have principles upon which your service is based. Show clients and potential clients that you have principles behind your service and let them decide if that is something they want to be around and invest in.

Understanding

Sometimes personal trainers can get very frustrated with the job. Dealing with clients who consistently cancel or don’t follow dietary advice, or receiving enquiries from members of the public that lead nowhere. With experience comes the ability to understand that life is complicated for everyone and you can never know everything that is in another person’s head. Professionalism is doing the best job you can under the circumstances.

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We’re always looking for professional personal trainers, of all levels of experience, to work with us now, or in the future on a freelance basis. Complete our ‘Work With Us’ form gives us the basic information we’d like, but if you also send us your CV we’ll read it too: info@muddyplimsolls.com.

We post actual job opportunities from client enquiries from time to time on social media so Follow us on Twitter, Like our Muddy Plimsolls Facebook page or connect on Linkedin or Google+.

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