Fitness: Personal Training Just Might Make Perfect Fit in Career Choice for U.S. Veterans

If you love to train your body and wish to turn your passion into a career, you just might be in luck. According to a recent report, the demand for personal trainers and fitness instructors is at an all-time high in the U.S., especially now that the pandemic seems to be winding down and people are looking to shed not COVID-19 necessarily, but those COVID-19 additional pounds.

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But what’s said to be strange, even with the many personal training courses now available online and in-person, the number of professional trainers hasn’t been keeping up with the demand. That’s good news for you if you wish to make a career out of keeping fit.

Says one personal training public relations specialist, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that the number of personal training jobs is going to increase by 10 percent or more up through 2026. This increase is due to organizations and businesses that see the overall benefits of fitness programs for their workers.

That said, incentives to join health clubs will most definitely increase the need for more trainers. And yet, only 20 percent of those individuals who apply for a career in personal training are actually able to carve out a successful career.

Why then, are so few folks embracing personal training as a career choice when there’s such a high and ever-growing demand?

One personal training expert states that the answer lies in how the expectations and requirements of the career are communicated to prospective trainers while they’re working towards their certificates. For instance, if you want to be a lawyer or a physical therapist, you will be required to undergo years of schooling and/or hands-on training on top of the academic study.

In the end, you will have put in so much “sweat equity” and money, that you will be determined to make a successful career out of it. However, that’s simply not the case with personal training. In a word, there is no real rigor involved. It only makes sense then that if prospective personal trainers are going to construct long and successful careers, they need a rigorous education that culminates with their certification.

Young fitness buffs are said to get into personal training with all the right intentions in mind, but they have little understanding of all the components and elements required to make it a long-term career. That’s because the attitudes, abilities, and skills a personal trainer requires to be a success are simply not clearly communicated during the certification process.

Also, when the business part of the program becomes too overwhelming, lots of personal trainers simply can’t handle it and walk away from the job altogether. This is said to be true of an alarming number of certified personal trainers. In fact, statistics show that the turnover rate is said to be as high as 80 to 90 percent of all certified personal trainers. This is due primarily to trainers not knowing enough about the business associated with the personal training industry.

This makes sense when you consider the overwhelming majority of prospective personal trainers enter into the business simply because they have a passion for fitness and training. They know everything there is to know about proper weightlifting form, the right cross-training, and cross fitness programs and equipment, plus the right nutrition supplements and diets. But they have no idea about business matters and perhaps even find the business end of things annoying or distasteful.

In order to do away with this aversion to the business side of personal training and the upwards of 90 percent turnover, experts say that going forward, prospective trainers must receive a “comprehensive business education” on top of their personal training certifications. Only then will they increase their chances of making personal training a successful, long-term career choice.

What training students must grasp early on, is that to be a professional personal trainer, they need to comprehend branding, sales, communication via websites and social media, and more. Professionalism is the key concept when it comes to creating a small training empire. Personal trainers must find a way to combine the business side of things with what drew them into the training space in the first place—the exercise, the dieting, the nutrition, the overall in-shape attitude.

Once a personal trainer achieves this goal, they can then spend years and years improving the health and lifestyles of lots of people, and be paid well for the privilege.