What does a Personal Trainer do? The question that every new Personal Trainer should think about before signing up for a course, but one that is rarely asked. 

Each job will be slightly different, so it is important initially to know what role you would want.  Currently Personal Trainers are recruited for a number of different roles - 

• Freelance in a gym paying rent
• Freelance in a gym in exchange for hours
• Freelance going in to peoples houses / training in a park
• Employed in a gym

The freelance roles are generally the same, and require you to complete the tasks that I go through further down in the article.  However if you are a freelance Personal Trainer in a gym that exchanges you time for rent (or an employed work around), then you may be required to do more gym instructor based jobs.  It is the same story for Personal Trainers who are employed by clubs. 

The jobs of a Personal Trainer with gym instructor responsibilities can include -

• Cleaning
• Programme writing and inductions
• Teaching small group classes
• Taking prospective members around the gym
• Maintenance
• First Aid
• Reception duties
• Opening and Closing for the gym

The role of a Personal Trainer 

Initially the Personal Trainer will need to find clients, and so to do this they need to be able to do the following - 

• Marketing
  • PR
  • Social Media Management
  • Networking
  • Setting your price (positioning, competition, living)
• Sales 
  • Approaching a client / Booking a Trial Session/ Running a Trial Session
    
  • Asking for money
  • Collecting money

Once you have that client, then the trainer needs to find out the goals of the client, and as long as the client passed the PAR-Q and are within the scope of practice of the Personal Trainer, then the fun works start. 

• First the trainer will set realistic short-term and long-term goals and plan programmes for reaching them
• During the sessions the Personal Trainer will need to entertain, educate, motivate and coach clients to help them follow their programmes safely and effectively
• When required, to help the clients to achieve their goals, then they may need to provide clients advice on health, nutrition and lifestyle changes
• As part of offering amazing service, you may build programmes to help clients with their home workouts