The Importance of Professional Development as a PT

Life gets busy as a personal trainer! Training clients, making connections with prospective clients, writing programs, scheduling, marketing and admin all take up a considerable amount of time. With all the hats we have to wear, it can be difficult to find time for personal trainer professional development, but there are three very important reasons why you should do so – and one very convenient way to help you achieve it.

1. Maintain Your Fitness Professional Registration

Most fitness facilities will require you to be registered with an industry registration body, such as AUSactive, before they will employ you.

These registration bodies require you to prove your continuing professional development by earning credits or points for completing courses or workshops that help improve existing skills and teach you how to develop new ones. In the case of the biggest registration provider, AUSactive, you need to earn 20 Continuing Education Credits (CECs) in every 24-month period in order to renew your registration every two years.

The aim of registration is to maintain high standards within the industry. It’s essentially a quick and simple way for employers to see that you have been investing in your professional development with reputable education providers, such as AIF Network.

Earning CECs

Each continuing education course is allocated a credit unit according to the quality and duration of the course; these are known as CEC’s.

The largest provider of these courses is AIF Network. Leading the way in professional development for over 35 years, Network is an education subscription service that offers a broad range of upskilling courses for fitness and wellness professionals. Network offers more than 60 courses across 16 categories, including Strength & Conditioning, Pilates, Women’s Health, Functional Training, Anatomy, Nutrition and Corrective Exercise.

Many of these courses are available at no additional cost if you have an ELITE subscription to Network. This means that for just a couple of hundred dollars or so each year, you have access to dozens of high quality, CEC-packed online courses that otherwise collectively retail for thousands of dollars. If you’ve ever bought two or three professional development courses, you would likely have spent at least a couple of hundred dollars on them. With an ELITE subscription, you don’t need to debate where to spend your education dollars because you have access to more courses than there are weekends in a year!

Network even has a FREE subscription option, which is also packed with value, because in addition to weekly enewsletters featuring articles, podcasts and competitions, it provides a free 1-CEC course every month. This means that you can actually earn all the CECs you might need for industry re-registration without having to spend a cent.

2. Stay up-to-date with research

What the health and fitness industry considers to be the most effective way of training or eating changes continually according to new research. Training modalities and nutrition approaches that are championed today may be in the sin bin tomorrow.

Many years ago, we didn’t know that smoking was that bad for us; ten years ago, we didn’t know that long periods of sitting were as detrimental to our wellbeing as they have subsequently been shown to be. In ten years’ time research will undoubtedly have shown us the error of our ways in some other area that we currently deem perfectly acceptable.

To stay at the forefront of the fitness industry, and to provide educated recommendations to clients in order to enhance their success, personal trainers must stay up to date with the latest science in relation to fitness. Unless you’re a diehard academic, you’re unlikely to subscribe to the plethora of scientific journals out there, but you can sign up for news alerts related to fitness and science news, which can provide overviews and links to further reading if your interest is piqued.

3. Gain more skills to gain more clients

Every client wants an inspiring, knowledgeable and effective trainer. Demand for personal trainers is constantly on the rise as people seek to adopt healthier lifestyles, which creates more competition… meaning, you need to stand out. How? By upskilling of course!

The more skills you have, the better service you can offer and as a result the more you can charge for your services too. 

There are so many Australians seeking personal trainers who can offer them the personalised service they require; whether they are in need of corrective exercise, strength training or fat loss, or have recently given birth and want guidance in their safe return to training. Ongoing education, such as that available with an ELITE subscription to Network, is the key to unlocking more clients and more revenue.

You can also benefit from training tips, profiles, advice and industry developments by reading the latest FREE articles published by Network here and listening to the Fitness Industry Podcast here.

CHOOSE FROM A WIDE RANGE OF PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT COURSES

Offering the most diverse range of courses in the industry, from nutrition and strength training, to functional anatomy and women’s health, an ELITE subscription with Network provides unlimited access to a wealth of courses that you can study whenever and wherever suits you – all for one low monthly price. Plus, with new courses added every month, there’s always something new to learn!

Trial Network’s ELITE subscription for 7 days for FREE, or sign up for the free subscription option here.

• Bio

AIF

The Australian Institute of Fitness

The Australian Institute of Fitness (AIF) is the largest and longest established fitness training organisation in Australia, with dynamic training methods and expert course coaches nationwide - spanning fitness, massage and nutrition. The AIF qualifies more fitness professionals than any other provider in Australia, as well as offering a broad range of continuing education courses (CEC), upskilling resources and partnership programs for existing industry.