I can be found hanging around my new site, writing plenty of fitness articles. Check it out http://www.trainerchrisspring.com/

So in my last post I had passed my PT course, since then Ive set up my new website (small changes still need doing). This site obviously advertises me as a Personal Trainer in Essex and my services. Hopefully this can bring in some interest, however i believe the best way to generate clients will be getting out there, setting up classes (which i still haven’t done, despite my previous post saying that I am) and distributing lots and lots of flyer’s.

As well as targeting my local area, I have since gained a position in Fitness First Covent Garden as a self employed Personal Trainer. This works by me paying them a weekly rent, and in return i get access to there members and the use of there facilities. I’ll be doing this whilst doing my current 9-5, so its going to be a little busy for a while, but totatlly worth it, im sure.

Having spoke to members of various Fitness First gyms, there does seem to be a need of Personal Trainers and they are becoming very popular to use amongst Fitness First members, which of course, is good for me.

I start in a couple of weeks, so will really need to work my ass of to generate enough interest in my services and start to obtain some Personal Training clients. I think that’s going to be the toughest part of the job, which after a while  I hope will become easier as word of mouth will spread.

As always, thanks for reading. I will keep you posted on how i get on with Fitness First and training people locally.

Ciao

Like my nutrition case study, I needed 80% or more to pass. I got 86%, which means I passed with a “credit”, which is better than passing with a “pass” but not as good as a “distinction”, but who cares…? I Passed??

So what now? well I’m going on holiday today for a week, so I’ll have a think about what I want to do, i.e. work in a gym? set up my own business or a bit of both.

I have my Brother working hard on my new website: www.trainerchrisspring.comwhich advertises my services, so that’s a start.

Am well chuffed. Now its time I take a well earned rest for a week and get a nice tan to show some definition

Thanks for reading.

I can back to it 14 weeks later and was so relieved to see that i had done most of the work already.

The friendly people at Future Fit gave me a 1 month extension on submitting my course work (them guys are seriously cool) and i need to get it down to them by the 17th June. Im aiming for next week though as ive only got to feel out the prescription forms at the end.

I got an email asking me what info i used whilst doing my study, which is a good question and to be honest i didnt use that much i dont think. In the manual you get on the 5 day course from Future Fit they give you a ton of reference of books that are worth reading, which is a good way to go, but to be honest, i found that the manual had plenty of info in it to help me on my way. I did stumble across these sites though, that have helped back up what i have done with my client and have reference the ASCM in my case study numerous times:

http://www.exrx.net/Aerobic/AerobicGoals.html

http://www.exrx.net/WeightTraining/Guidelines.html

http://www.acsm.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Home_Page&TEMPLATE=CM/HTMLDisplay.cfm&CONTENTID=7764

I hope these helps anyone else doing a similar course.

Have a good weekend.

Due to the Volcanic Ash in Europe I was stranded in New York for 3 days… but that doesn’t really account for my absence over the last 4 months. I guess Ive been lazy busy.

So any news on my Personal Training? Well for the last 3 months i’ve been doing my Nutritional adviser course and case study and my Personal Trainer Course.

First, the Nutritional Advisor. For this I had 8 weeks to learn the material via Future Fits online learning system, which is great and also annoying. Then after the 8 weeks I had to get a real life client and begin a 8 week Nutrition course with them. This involved collecting Diet diaries, educating them on Nutrition and physical activity, making changes to there diet etc.

The course as a whole, I found, was pretty interesting and of great benefit to anyone wanting to become a Personal Trainer or Fitness advisor, as we all no that making changes to your body is 30% training and 70% diet. As they say, muscles are built in the Kitchen, not the gym. Whilst this course doesn’t teach you specific sport Nutrition (Future Fit has a separate course for that, which I will start in August) it does teach you the importance of Proteins, Carbs and Fats and what they all do to your body. You also learn about the Macronutrients (Vitamins and Minerals) and also how food is broken down by the body.

You then have to take this information and apply to it a client (family member of friend) and record your results and submit a case study at the end. The actual case study was pretty easy, even if you are unable to complete the course with your client (mine got lazy and hard to work with). The questions on the case study practically require text book answers, and that’s what I mostly gave.

The pass mark for this course was 80%. I received my score last week and passed with 83%. The great thing about the marking is that they provide you with comments on how things could be improved, so it serves for future purposes. Also, if you receive under 80% you can re-submit the case study and just amend certain questions you scored low on, so with the help of the markers comments, you should pass on the second attempt.

The second course im doing is my Personal Trainer course, this involved a 5 day work shop which I attended in January, followed by a 12 week case study with a client. Now if you’re an idiot like me and do both courses at the same time, id suggest using 2 different people for each case study, otherwise it gets confusing.

Im going to start writing my case study next week for this course, so will write about it here in my next post… which wont be as long as 4 months, I promise.

Thanks for reading.

I’ve been looking into Venue hire, and contacted my old school, which rents out one of there gymnasiums. £25 an hour, a bit steep, and could probably get some space for cheaper than that, think Church Halls, Village Halls etc. But as its my first outing, I think id like to stick with some where I know, and after spending 5 years of my childhood at the place, I know the school pretty well. I can also use there equipment, like mats, which will save me buying a few, for now. Also, they offer a 10% discount if I book for 12 weeks. So its only £22.50 a week.

Next up was Insurance, I mentioned a while back that any Trainer working independently of a Gym needs their own Insurance. REP’s can sought you out with this, for £80 a year, with a £5,000,000 limit for injuries and death (god, I hope I don’t kill anyone). Just go on the REP’s website and follow the links.

I found out on my Circuit course I did through Future Fit, that you also need a Music Licence if your doing your own classes. This is to allow you to play CD’s you buy or to play music from an MP3 player. There are different licences out there depending on what it is you will be doing. For the use of up to 1000 songs to be played in a Fitness Class the Fee is £100. The question is, will anyone actually check up on you to make sure you have a licence? I doubt it, but I don’t fancy taking the risk, knowing my luck they would.

Finally, equipment. It is possible to set up a Circuit Class with next to know equipment really. Just have your participants do Body Weight exercise. But who would want to keep going back to a class like that? I wouldn’t. I’ve come up with a small list of essential equipment that I could use to make a pretty okay class to begin with. The list includes, 2 Gym Balls, 2 Steps, Resistance Bands, Dumbbells and a skipping rope.

I was thinking I’d need a few dumbbells, but then I thought of Resistance Bands, which can easily be used for several exercise and are far cheaper than weights.

So total cost for my first 12 weeks, I reckon, will be £600. The only ongoing Fee will be the Venue Hire. Everything else is either payable annually, or as and when I want to add/replace equipment.

Oops, I just remembered about advertising, that’s probably the most important thing. Obviously I have my website, and I can use the services of Facebook and Twitter to get the message out to my friends, but to get the word out to the masses, id need a lot of flyers and make sure a lot of people see them. Apparently 10% of the people who see your flyers will attend your class, or was it 1%? Will have to check that. That’s what my instructor said on my course.

The good thing about a lot of these costs is that they aren’t need every month etc. Once I start getting a fair amount of people along each week I don’t need to advertise the class, word of mouth is pretty powerful.

Not that I’m really that bothered anyway, as the job sounded pretty crummy, and has made me decide that I don’t think I really want to work for a large gym chain in one of there gyms. First of, the pay was minimum wage and the job involved me having to clean the gym. I’m worth more than minimum wage surely. People in McDonald’s earn minimum wage. Ive just spent £2500 learning how the body works, different muscle names and how they function, how to advise people to look after themselves, and LA fitness think im worth the same as some school drop out who serves burgers for a living. Fcuk that.

So im going to go it alone. After speaking to a few guys in the office, they have really motivated me to use my Circuit Instructor Qualificationand set up my own local Circuit Class, which could earn me between £60 – £100 an hour. That’s more like it. Not that I’m in this industry solely to earn money. I want to help people. And by teaching my own class I can certainly help more people that I could if I was cleaning floors.

What do I need to do to set up my own Circuit Class? So far i have this on my to do list;

• Find Venue
• Adverise it – Leafets, Website, Social Networking etc
• Create a Circuit
• Buy some simple equipment

Any thing else I missed?

Going to aim to get this all set up so i can hit the “New Year Resolution” market in January.

Will try my best to document it all on this blog, right here!!

So a while back I sent my CV out to a few gyms around London looking for some part time experience, well surprisingly, yesterday I got a call from LA Fitness, about a Part Time position with them as an “LA Coach”, which is just basically a Fitness Instructor with some reception work thrown in when required.

We had a 5-10 minute chat on the phone, where they asked me a few “interviewy” questions and explained a bit about the role. I must have passed the initial test as they invited me to an Interview with them on Friday and if successful, I will be offered the position.

Whilst on the phone she mentioned that as a level 2 instructor the pay is 14k (annual for full time) so would be pro-rata’d to part time etc, which isn’t much at all, but as its only a Part Time job to work around my current office job, im not concerned at all about the pay, I just want to get some experience and get in the industry.

She also mentioned that as I’d mostly be working of an evening I’d have to take some classes which they would provide training for, would that be ok? Err, yeah. Free Training and experience doing classes, right result.

Will let you know tomorrow how I got on, fingers crossed.

What is REPs?

REPS is an independent public Register which recognises the qualifications and expertise of health enhancing exercise instructors in the UK. One of our key functions is to provide a system of regulation for instructors and trainers to ensure that they meet the health and fitness industry’s agreed national occupational standards.

What’s the importance of REPs?

Provide clarification and recognition of qualifications that meet agreed national standards available in the fitness industry

Provide confidence in the quality of services provided by fitness professionals

To safeguard the livelihood of professionals who have invested time and money into their education

 To protect the public from individuals who do not meet nationally recognised standards

Basically, anyone can call themselves a Personal Trainer and start training people, no qualifications are actually needed. So any Tom, Dick and Harry can start playing around with peoples health’s and bodies, which isn’t very safe.

So now, a lot, if not, all gyms will only employ REPs certificated Instructors, Personal Trainers etc and its highly recommended that if your going to Train with a Personal Trainer outside the Gym, to make sure they are REPs certified.

You can find out more information by visiting the REPs website.

After completing my Gym Instructor course the other month, Future Fit applied for my Membership and I recently received this through the post the other day, YAY. Although strangely I only got a Level One membership (there are four levels altogether), I should be level 2, as I have passed my Gym Instructor course, which qualifies your for Level 2. So I had to send my Certificates to them and they have to upgrade my membership. Pretty lazy on Future Fits behalf, as they could have just applied for Level 2 membership for me.

Upon completely my Diploma I will be Level 3 Certificated, and to get to level 4, you have to do extra courses, which I will do in a few years.

So if your thinking of becoming a Personal Trainer, make sure you get REPs Certified, or face a very hard job getting any work.

If you do become REPs Certified, you get the right to display this cool badge, which is worth the membership alone!!: