Personal training is available pretty much everywhere nowadays. So what sets one personal trainer offering apart from the next? What helps certain personal trainers stand out from their competitors? The credibility of personal trainers is what is important for long term fitness business success.
While the personal training industry isn’t unregulated (As in, it’s not true that just anyone can walk in off the street and get a job at a gym as a trainer), there are huge variations in how trainers are educated, what background they have before they get a job, and which methodologies they use.
With all this in mind, if you want to stand out for your gym offerings, bringing on credible personal trainers is paramount. Here’s what you need to know.
ACE Certification: the Gold Standard of the Industry
Each gym has its own set of requirements when it comes to onboarding and hiring personal trainers. Most gyms. For example, require personal trainers to be ACE-certified. Alloy does this and has set out these requirements for years. But why? What’s so important about the ACE certification?
Simple: The ACE Personal Trainer Certification Program is accredited by the National Commission for Certifying Agencies (NCCA). As such, it’s considered to be the highest possible bar personal trainers can reach for certification.
In other words, ACE-certified trainers are the best in the business, and they add a huge level of credibility to an organization. As Rick Mayo, founder and CEO of Alloy says:
“The education and certifications offered by ACE are best in class for personal training and health coaching education. The content and instruction that ACE provides perfectly align with delivering the quality of fitness services expected by Alloy’s customer base.”
Plus, ACE itself has a scientific advisory panel that helps ensure continuity of education for all trainers, and guarantees that the information trainers are learning is the best in the industry. Here’s what ACE says about it:
“ACE doesn’t merely claim to be up on the latest exercise and behavior-change science. We have an outside panel of advisors that helps ACE ensure that is the case. The ACE Scientific Advisory Panel is composed of world-renowned subject matter experts who are the leading thinkers and researchers in their respective fields.”
As you can see, this focus on science and technique coming together creates award-winning personal trainers that lend credibility and trust to every organization they work within.
What Makes Credible Personal Trainers? Continuing Education
While ACE certification is a critical consideration for credible personal trainers, the pursuit of greatness doesn’t end there. Instead, the best personal trainers continue to build their skills via continuing education (CE).
7 Benefits of Continuing Education for Personal Trainers
- Annual renewals of certifications. Once a personal trainer gets certified, the journey doesn’t just stop there. Trainers must renew their certifications regularly, and they do it through CECs (Continuing Education Credits). If a trainer allows their certification to lapse, they’ll find it impossible to buy liability insurance, use local facilities, and get a job as a personal trainer.
- Access to insurance. Continuing Education is critical because it allows trainers access to liability insurance policies, which is essential. Trainers protect both themselves and their clients by purchasing liability insurance policies that extend beyond the policies of local gyms they work with. Again, Continuing Education is required for any trainer who wants to access liability insurance.
- Better service. The fitness industry is a dynamic place, and it continues to grow, shift, and change all the time. Luckily for trainers who want to stay on the cutting edge of that, continuing education allows teams to do so. Continuing Education changes each year and focus on the newest trends in the industry, incorporate new research, and help trainers keep their fingers on the pulse of everything that’s happening in the world of personal training.
- Offering specialized focuses. Continuing Education excels for its ability to help trainers specialize and drill down into a given niche. For example, say a trainer wants to spend more time with the 50+. Active aging population. There are CECs that would allow the trainer to do just that. There are also CECs for trainers who want to work with pregnant women, people with injuries, or people who want to focus on certain movements or exercises. IIn short, Continuing Education is an excellent way for trainers to specialize in their areas of interest and work with the clients they want to work with, across the board.
- Partnering with local health establishments. Again, personal training is available virtually everywhere, and the one primary thing that separates one trainer from the next is experience. Trainers with the most experience stand out for gyms and franchises and are easily the most marketable and in-demand trainers out there. They’re also the trainers who focus the most on CECs and ensure that their education is always as current and up-to-date as possible. These trainers have more chances to further their careers and are better equipped to participate in a challenging, competitive, and rapidly-changing industry.
- Credibility. The trainer who commits to Continuing Education is a more reliable and credible personal trainer in the industry. They add a level of professionalism to the gyms they work with and can even draw in customers who want to work with the best in the business. If you take a look at the level of trainers gyms hire, you’ll see high-quality gyms onboard ACE-certified trainers, while lower-quality gyms have less experienced trainers, as a general rule.
Alloy Personal Training Franchise Provides for ACE-Certified, Credible Personal Trainers
If you’re looking for a personal training fitness franchise that goes above and beyond where the credibility of personal trainers is concerned, Alloy is here to deliver. Hiring ACE-certified personal trainers, we pride ourselves on the expertise and experience of everyone we work with.
In addition to providing cutting-edge services for our customers, these trainers help move the fitness industry forward and keep us a competitive and groundbreaking force in the industry.
Ready to learn more? Contact us today to speak with our team or to request your free information packet.