What Skills Are Needed to Be a Personal Trainer?

Every profession requires a different skill set. Dentists must have dexterity, for instance, while accountants need to be good with numbers. Having certain skills can also help you become more successful as a personal trainer.

Overview of the Personal Trainer Role 

Understanding what a personal trainer does can make it easier to see why they need specific skill sets. Many of these responsibilities can be found in a personal trainer job description.

Duties of someone in a personal training position include:

• designing a safe, effective exercise program

• ensuring that clients use proper form to avoid injury

• helping clients set a realistic fitness goal

• monitoring clients’ progress, changing the fitness training if needed

• providing advice on health and fitness topics

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the median personal trainer salary is $40,700 per year. Additionally, fitness instructor jobs are projected to increase by 19% between 2021 and 2031. This rate is almost four times faster than the average growth rate for all occupations combined, making it a good time to enter the fitness industry. (1)

What Skills Are Needed to Be a Personal Trainer?

If you are interested in fitness instructing, you may be wondering about the types of skills you need. Personal trainer skills can be split into two categories: hard skills and soft skills.

Hard Skills

Hard skills are technical skills. These are skills related to job-specific tasks that you are required to perform in a specific role. 

For personal fitness trainers, hard skills needed include those related to:

• exercise physiology (how the body responds to physical activity)

• movement issues and dysfunction 

• fitness level assessment

• proper exercise technique 

• exercise program design and modification

• progress tracking

Soft Skills

In addition to these hard skills, there are a few soft skills that can help you become a more successful personal trainer. Soft skills are personal qualities or character traits. The ones that can benefit exercise professionals include:

• Passion for fitness. If you aren’t passionate about exercise and fitness, your clients can tell. This can cause them to lack passion as well. Before you know it, they’re not showing up for their training sessions. But here’s the thing about passion: it’s contagious. The more excited you get about fitness, the more excited your clients will get too. This helps you retain them longer because they are looking forward to coming back to you.

• Helpfulness. The core of the personal training role is helping others. Sometimes, this involves training them in the gym. Other times, it’s more focused on physical education. Having a desire to help others achieve their goals is critical to the success of fitness workers. You must be able to put their needs before your own.

• Good communicator. Communication skills are essential for a fitness trainer. You must be able to clearly explain proper exercise form or your clients could get hurt. Being a good listener is also part of a trainer’s needed communication skills. This helps you understand what your clients want in terms of fitness. It also encourages a good rapport with them, strengthening the client-trainer relationship.

• Time management skills. If you offer a 20-minute workout, it needs to be 20 minutes. Go over or under and you’re likely to upset your clients. That’s why a trainer has to be good with time management. Being able to adhere to certain timing is also important if your exercise routine is time-based, such as doing a specific exercise for one minute before resting.

• Problem-solving skills. No two clients are the same. While one may respond to a specific exercise routine, another might not. Being able to solve these types of problems helps you know when and how to modify their workout plan. This can keep clients from hitting a plateau, which can make them want to give up on exercise altogether.

• Positive attitude. A good personal trainer knows the importance of having a smile on their face and a can-do attitude. People struggle with fitness enough. Hitting their goals is even harder if they have a trainer who is always scowling or tends to focus on the negatives.

• Motivational. This skill is so important that it should be incorporated from day one. Motivational interviewing enables a fitness trainer to solidify the client’s commitment to change from the first day they meet. Stoking that motivation during every training session thereafter strengthens their commitment even more.

• Reliable. If your training starts at 10:00 a.m., you must be there and ready to begin on time. If you’re not, clients will quit showing up because they’ll view you as unreliable. Reliability also means doing what you say. If you tell your client that you will check in with them mid-week, they expect you to follow through. The last thing you want is to become known as the personal trainer who says one thing and does another.

• Organizational skills. When a client is in a good rhythm or cadence, you don’t want to break it by having to stop the workout to go find the next piece of equipment. Having good organizational skills enables you to provide a more seamless exercise experience. It also helps on the business side of things by making it easier to find the forms or paperwork you need when you need them.

• Empathetic. Some people want a personal trainer who is like a drill sergeant. But a little empathy goes a long way. When you can understand how your clients feel, it helps create a bond. This makes them more willing to share what’s on their mind. And the more you know about what they’re thinking, the better your ability to tailor their workout to them.

• Patient. Training clients can sometimes test your every nerve. They might always interrupt you when you’re trying to explain an exercise. Or they may struggle to remember exercise sequences or proper form. Having patience helps you get through these sessions with your professionalism intact. It also makes it possible to extend some grace to clients who may need more of it.

• Flexible. Most people today live busy lives. This requires a personal trainer to provide some flexibility in the training schedule. This could involve working out on different days and times throughout the week. The more flexible you are, the easier it is for your clients to continue working with you.

Skills Helpful for Growing a Fitness Business

In addition to hard and soft skills, there are a few skills that can be beneficial to instructors with their own business. Business skills that can be helpful to obtain or grow include those that involve:

• branding 

• marketing skills

• client retention techniques

• budgeting and cash flow

• fitness technology (especially for online fitness instructors)

Ways to Promote Your Skill Sets as a Fitness Professional

Clients may look at fitness professionals’ skill sets when deciding which trainer to choose. Listing your skills on your website tells them whether you can help them reach their fitness goals. 

If you’re skilled in helping your clients lose weight, for example, you would be more appealing to a client who has excess weight to lose. If your skills revolve around strength training, clients looking to gain muscle mass may be more inclined to choose you.

Promoting your skills is also important if you’re looking for a job as a fitness trainer. Include a skills section on your personal trainer resume. This tells a potential employer what you bring to the table. If they use software to read their personal trainer resumes, listing your skills can also help you make the final cut by including the keywords the program is searching for.

How to Gain Personal Trainer Skills

You may already have some skill sets valuable to the personal trainer role. Your communication skill might be top-of-the-line, for example. Or maybe you’re known for your empathy or patience. Other skills, hard skills particularly, can be learned.

One of the best ways to develop your hard skills for a fitness instructor role is with a personal trainer certification course. This type of training course teaches you important skills, such as:

• how to assess a client’s fitness level and body composition

• how to design a complete exercise program

• how to incorporate effective training principles

• how to work with specific demographics (such as seniors or youth)

• how to work with clients who have chronic health conditions (arthritis, diabetes, etc.)

The Next Step: Personal Training Certification

If you haven’t already completed a certification course, enrolling in one is a good next step for developing the skills you need as a fitness trainer. This course can generally be completed in a few months if not weeks (when you choose the fast track option). And the cost is less than if you were to obtain a bachelors degree in a fitness-related field, such as exercise science or sports medicine.

Ready to get started? International Sports Sciences Association (ISSA) offers a Personal Trainer Certification program. This program can be taken online and provides the skills needed to perform personal training services. 

References

1. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2022a, September 8). Fitness trainers and instructors : Occupational Outlook Handbook. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/personal-care-and-service/fitness-trainers-and-instructors.htm#tab-1