Working as "PT" without any certification?

Greetings fellow powerlifters.

I assume you all puked a little in your mouth when you saw the letters PT put together in the subject,
but im not talking about the "hotpants-wearing-40-year-old-bicurious-skinny-man-who-doesnt-know-deadlift-from-squats" regular PT here.

Im 20 years old and from norway. Me and some mates are comming over with next semester to study in Melbourne. I hear the part time job market is tough, and i was thinking that being paid to teach some people deadlifts, posterior to the grass squats and bechpresses with stops could be an awsome job. In norway I'v never seen this done in the commercial gyms. If you wanna do something else than work out on the smith-rack and do bicepscurls you gotta go to a powerlifting club.

I was thinking this could be a project to see if i can turn some people into real gymrats.
With some solid information on what working out is really all about, maybe i can get some people interessted in this awsome sport. They will probably be pleasanty suprised that this way of working out will actually give them results aswell.

I'v got a couple years of experience with powerlifting. Im not big or anything, my best is prob 170-130-200 raw, but i know all the techniques, warmups, stretches, food & restitution etc. I'v been up 20 kg, and down the same. I know about eating. ALOT. =) especially women. i hear they are high in protein ^^

Since iv been trolling all major norwegian forums the last couple years iv picked up a couple tips&tricks.

Point is i feel i got all the theoretical and practical knowledge needed to teach beginners. I Atleast I know more than any 6 week course about fitnessballs and treadmills could teach me.

So my question is, is this legal? Without any sort of certification i mean.
Will ofc pay taxes on any income.

Thanks for any help.

Erik


"this was also posted on powerlifters.com.au"

Just found these two forums on a quick google search.

It's possible but unless you know people in the industry over here you will struggle.

Having said that I did it for 2 years so it's no impossible.
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with people taking others to court for slipping over a lettuce leaf i would't risk doing PT without a cert just to cover your own arse if shit hits the fan , not saying that a cert will give you protection but will help out if shit does hit the fan

I currently help a few people at my house, but I can't charge them.
If I charge them, I can be sued if something goes wrong.
If they are just working out on my equipment, and we are all "just mates" suggesting exercises, weight and form, it will be much harder for them to sue.
I do however have a big money box in my gym that they all "donate" money to which will help fund new equipment.

That said, I'm halfway through my "PT" course which will enable me to get insurance. Then I can charge real dollars and advertise to the public n
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thanks for the replys so far.

so basically the real worth in the course is that it makes you eligable for insurance. got it.

maybe i could get some law students to make me a contract wich says something on the lines of "participate at your own risk" =P.

also i know this wouldnt be a money generator, but seeing as im only allowed to work 20 hours a week anyways, i thought it could be a fun project. As there are as many people living in melbourne as in my entire country, there should be some potential to to fill some hours pr week. possible just from other students alone.


what do "qualified" PT's charge pr hour down under?

Erik

Anywhere from $10-100 a session. The majority though is around $20-40
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Sticky said:

Anywhere from $10-100 a session. The majority though is around $20-40
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thats insanely cheap compared to norway. i hope everything else is aswell, if not, poor PTs.

Any creativ ideas out there? im just brainstorming on how to get some income while studying. i know alot about working out and dieting, and seeing as the world is getting more and more out of shape i thought maybe id try to profit frome my knowledge. might be harder than imagined.

maybe try and get a job at weightlifting / powerlifting club ?

edit: while iv got you here, what is the average wager for standard shit jobs you can get with no education in australia? working in a supermarket, driving a cab etc.

thanks for any help

Sticky said:

I currently help a few people at my house, but I can't charge them.
If I charge them, I can be sued if something goes wrong.
If they are just working out on my equipment, and we are all "just mates" suggesting exercises, weight and form, it will be much harder for them to sue.
I do however have a big money box in my gym that they all "donate" money to which will help fund new equipment.

That said, I'm halfway through my "PT" course which will enable me to get insurance. Then I can charge real dollars and advertise to the public n
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Sorry off topic.Scott, I was told that if I had a money box in my gym for mates to "donate" that is still classified as a payment. Therefore my two friends who train, train for free. My brother and I paid for the equipment.I actually went down the track of trying to get insurance, but they wouldnt give it to me without a cert.I'm still liable for public liability, for instance if there is a bolt missing in the power rack and it falls over and kills someone. This is one reason we only use fit for purpose gear. i.e. no wooden boxes for UDLs.I was also told, that advice given by me, whether paid or not could also result in indemnity.To be honest I think its all a load of shit but anyway.

Paullie said:

Sorry off topic.Scott, I was told that if I had a money box in my gym for mates to "donate" that is still classified as a payment. Therefore my two friends who train, train for free. My brother and I paid for the equipment.I actually went down the track of trying to get insurance, but they wouldnt give it to me without a cert.I'm still liable for public liability, for instance if there is a bolt missing in the power rack and it falls over and kills someone. This is one reason we only use fit for purpose gear. i.e. no wooden boxes for UDLs.I was also told, that advice given by me, whether paid or not could also result in indemnity.To be honest I think its all a load of shit but anyway.

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i wonder how you get certified to give out these bogus certificates =P

PT is the same as any skilled job, to become employed by someone else you need some combination of qualifications, experience, and connections. If you have no qualifications then your experience or connections had better be very fcking good indeed.

To become self-employed you need some combination of qualifications, experience, connections and personality.

Being sued is a minor risk, really. Once qualified and registered with a fitness industry body, insurance costs only $100 a year. By contrast, car insurance costs much more than that. That is, insurance companies asses your chances of having a serious car accident as much greater than your chances of being sued as a qualified and registered PT.

The law requires that we take a "reasonable duty of care" with people when training them. Court cases look at your whole approach in that regard. Do you seek education, formal or informal? Do you learn first aid? Do you have proper equipment in the workplace, or is it just makeshift crap? Is your approach at work careful or careless? Etc.

As Nick said, you'll have to know somebody to get a job. Or else have a lot of personality to create your own job. I can't think of anyone who would hire you just to teach the basic compound lifts. Some gym managers think those are important, some think they're not. The ones who think they're not important won't hire you, the ones who think they're important already have qualified and experienced staff they've hired to do the job, they don't need an extra one.

So you'd have to go self-employed. Which is a big hassle of bureaucracy for someone on a student visa, good luck.

Paullie said:

Sorry off topic.Scott, I was told that if I had a money box in my gym for mates to "donate" that is still classified as a payment. Therefore my two friends who train, train for free. My brother and I paid for the equipment.I actually went down the track of trying to get insurance, but they wouldnt give it to me without a cert.I'm still liable for public liability, for instance if there is a bolt missing in the power rack and it falls over and kills someone. This is one reason we only use fit for purpose gear. i.e. no wooden boxes for UDLs.I was also told, that advice given by me, whether paid or not could also result in indemnity.To be honest I think its all a load of shit but anyway.

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One of the guys that train is a lawyer. He said while their is still a risk it's not as much as if I charge peole and have clients.
At the moment, we are just mates who train together and chuck in for new equipment.

I'll have insurance within a few months anyway.
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Exactly, what happened to common sense?

If some mate did try to sue you

1. they arnt mates
2. they might go missing depending who you are...

-n00bs

I should still be able to get insurance, regardless of whether I have a PT cert or not.

I can provide a reasonable duty of care to people that train in my gym. In fact, I myself have sat and listed to personal trainers, and I know more about compound lifting and diet than they do. Kyle, you are obviously an excellent trainer.

Paullie said:

I should still be able to get insurance, regardless of whether I have a PT cert or not.

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You'd have to speak to an insurance company about that.

I can provide a reasonable duty of care to people that train in my gym. In fact, I myself have sat and listed to personal trainers, and I know more about compound lifting and diet than they do.

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The thing is that, from the perspective of a court case, you have to not only be able to do something, but be seen to be doing something, and be able to demonstrate it. Our bureaucratic system is run on pieces of paper.

For example, in hospitality there's a thing called HACCP. Hazard Analysis of Critical Control Points. It's a system originally developed by NASA to make sure nothing goes wrong - since in space, if something goes wrong it goes spectacularly wrong. Big hotels got tired of being sued when some dickhead ate 18 oysters, steak with garlic sauce, a liqueur coffee and a chocolate mudcake and then felt sick and said, "the oysters must have been bad."

So they started recording everything. When the oysters arrive from the supplier the box serial number is noted and the temperature of the oysters is taken. They're then put in a coolroom. Outside that coolroom is a sheet of paper on the wall, four times a day a chef notes the current temperature of the coolroom and writes it down.

The oysters are then transferred shortly before service into a fridge under the chef's counter, and only taken out to be plated up to send out to a customer. This fridge under the counter also has a sheet of paper where the temperature is noted four times a day.

As well, there are endless procedures of handwashing after going to the toilet, soaking chopping boards in diluted bleach overnight every night, wiping down counters with diluted bleach, and so on. There's manuals in the place, designated sessions at work where staff are trained in endless cleaning and noting down temperatures, there are checklists for cleaning and so on.

So then when the dickhead gets sick, the hotel can bring up all these pieces of paper, records of temperatures and cleaning and say, "See? The oysters were never above 5 degrees centigrade, he could not have got sick because of us. The contamination must have been at the oyster processing place."

The truth is that even without those pieces of paper, the basic things of "keep uncooked food chilled, wash your hands after going to the toilet, keep your work area clean" are going to be followed by almost all staff anyway. And when you walk into a coolroom, you know it's cold, you don't need to measure the temperature every four hours to figure that out, you're freezing your balls off in there.

But unless there are all those pieces of paper, a court won't be as inclined to believe it.

It's stupid, but there it is.

In practice, the big hotels and famous restaurants do this stuff, the small places don't. That's because the risk of a court case being brought is pretty low, and the risk of losing it lower still. The real risk is to the reputation of the place, stories in the newspaper and so on. Having a hotel or restaurant empty for a few months will be far more expensive than any court case. But a small place has no reputation anyway so it's not worth the trouble.

There are lots of things like this in society. We can whinge about it, but that's the way it is. Don't like it, write your MP.

So much for self-employment. For employment, you just have to ask yourself, "Why would someone hire me, and not someone else?" As I said, they want qualifications, experience, connections. One of the jobs I've got, when they put an advert up they got 40 resumes. No-one is going to interview 40 people, so they had to bin at least 30 of those resumes. One of the reasons they bin them is that the person has no demonstrated qualifications or experience.

Abilities demonstrated by qualification matter. For example, the other day a guy fainted during a workout. I knew he needed to be given oxygen. I've done it in the army, but never got a formal qualification in it, and anyway that was years ago. So I got on the radio and called the duty manager, I knew she has the lifeguard qualification and is qualified and practiced in using the oxygen.

Let's say the guy went into a coma or something, and his family and lawyers asserted that it was because he'd been given too much or too little oxygen. If the DM used it, the centre can say, "Well, we had the DM do it, and she has the qualification, what else could we do." If I'd been the one using it, the centre is stuck. "Someone unqualified to use oxygen used it when someone qualified was available," the lawyers would say, case lost. Their chances are simply better with the qualified person doing it.

"But Kyle used it years ago in the Army! He knew exactly what he was doing!" they could cry.
"Yeah and look what happened to the guy," the plaintiff would say.

Of course I wasn't thinking of legal liability at the time. I just didn't want to leave the guy alone to run and fetch the oxygen - when someone's fainted, you don't know what'll happen next, maybe it's a heart attack or a diabetic coma coming on, who knows, best to stay with them - and I was not 100% on using the oxygen, I wanted someone more confident with it using it. That is, I was taking a reasonable duty of care.

So these sorts of situations illustrate the problem. What if there'd been no-one on duty who knew how to use the oxygen? Thus the employment issue: Okay, maybe you're really good, even without qualifications. But other people are really good, too - and they have qualifications.


who would you hire for your workplace?

Add in the fact that the fitness industry is absolutely flooded with qualified people - 40 resumes for one job, remember, at least 30 of whom had qualifications - and I don't rate our Nordic friend's chances highly.

Thus my comments about self-employment.

Paullie said:

Kyle, you are obviously an excellent trainer.

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I'd let my clients judge that, and their results. But I will say that I take a reasonable duty of care towards them. The guy who fainted, when he came back for his next workout I added in a lot more warmup stuff and gave him stern advice about sleep and food (he'd had less than five hours' sleep the night before, no breakfast, ran the 2km to the gym, and this was his first workout in years).

Back to the op.

Its great to see you are interested in PL. To train clients in PL, you will need your own equipment and gym, chalk is not allowed in most commercial gyms here, deadlifts are frowned upon.

Your best chance of getting work is in a PL gym.

The next problem you face is that most teenagers in Australia that PL can already lift more than you, raw.

PL gyms arent full of novices, commercial gyms are, and thats where your client base lies.

For instance, in my gym, we have 63 lifters who pull over 200kg without a belt. I have a lot of clients and can handle them all alone, most PL gyms are similar, you will struggle, make that nearly impossible, to get work in a PL gym, and nobody will hire you in a commercial gym, which frowns upon PL anyway, without stupid papers.

Drop by for a work out if you like.

Good luck.

Im not looking to advertise PT services. I simply want protection when a friend comes and uses the gym, and perhaps kindly donate into a money box so we can get new equipment from time to time.

I'm an Engineer, so I know red tape, but even in my profession there are pretend Engineers going around still able to get employment as an Engineer, and get the insurance.

Markos expresses it well.

Since we've dealt with the OP's question, we can drag the thread off. Markos, you mentioned the prospect of employment at a PL gym, how the places are small. Given the success at recent comps, the growth in PL comps in Australia, and working on starting your own fed, do you think you might expand beyond your garage? I mean at some point you are either going to have people on the street waiting to lift in relays or you are going to have to turn people away. More space needed?

Warehouses must be cheap around Frankston.

Nina and I have already discussed this Kyle, I'm always looking around for a cheap place.

There are alot of idiot trianers..

In sydney anyway problem is they get work? I dontknow how..

There is 1 older guy in my class he is a trainer apparently he says he knows all these powerlifting people blah blah blah.

Then he goes on to tell me how muscletech creatine is better then others because it is anabolicly activated. WTF is that? This is when Christians brain stops listening. Then i find out his bench is 80 and i stop listening completly...

Its almost like the personal trianer in my class who told me you can spot reduce body fat. It drives me insane.

Yet these people het hired and make money? I see absolute begginers at my gym and this trianer gets them doing all this band stuff and those rex strap things? Just give the bloke a barbell and teach him to squat.

I think all the fancy ness is for show... When you look at westside there are not many fance exercises. There is no special secret its fairly basic. Is it something FIA teahces that the rest of the world doesnt know? Do begginers need to do pistols on a half fit ball while scratching there ass?

Or is it just that they try to fit so much crap in as to confuse the client so they think they could neer do it on their own. I see some people with a different wokrout everyday.. How the **** are you going to moniter progress?

It just seems like a little too much smoke and mirrors for me. But i suppose every industry is the same. Its like me telling you that you have a cobalamin* defficiency so you need to see me every week so we can moniter it for you as it can cause a whole host of problems...


*how many of you will google it?

It's the same in every industry.

I've been to two physios recently. One would give me a single exercise to do, tell me to come back in a week. Happened every week.

The other would give me a big list of exercises to do, tell me how to progress them, tell me to come back in a month - and then tell me, "Well done, you're fine now, go away."

My 1.90m tall, formerly 165kg now 140-145kg guy who was sedentary up until June this year is one of the strongest guys in my gym. He has front squatted 75kg, put 40kg overhead, and deadlifted 140kg. I don't expect anyone here to be thrilled by that, I'm just putting the numbers up there for perspective - as for him, he's stronger than he was, that's the important thing. And strength isn't his main goal, "It's nice but really I just want to lose some weight." So we've not been training him specifically for strength. Yet he's one of the strongest guys in - well, actually either of my two gyms.

Why? Because in every session we had him do a deep knee-bend, pick something heavy up off the ground, and put something heavy overhead. Usually it was front squat, overhead press, and deadlift - starting with dumbbells, moving up to sumo barbell deadlifts. Those three are about 2/3 of all the reps he's ever done with me. How does he feel? Well, he spends about $120 a week on sessions with me and just has a middle-class job, what do you reckon, either he's seeing progress or he's in love, I hope it's progress.

Did a fill-in PT session for another trainer the other day, had a woman in her 50s, and in several months of training she'd never squatted. "We've been working on my core." First session, she struggled to do 5 bodyweight squats. This week, she happily did 10 bodyweight squats with a broomstick held overhead. Is her core stronger now?

Has her other training benefitted her? Absolutely, no doubt about it. But I gave her stuff she could do on her own, and it had tangible results quickly.

"But people like variety," other trainers tell me. Sure they do. But they also like progress. The woman struggled with 5 reps, now she did 10 reps with her hands overhead, this is clear and obvious progress. Next week I will have her squat just the 20kg bar. Progress again. And how about her core? After that she's back to the other trainer, it'll be interesting to see what happens, will her training change or not, will someone complain about me, or what.

As I've said before, I think of it as like my old cheffing. We'd have specials of the day, some new dish. We didn't do this to entertain the clients, we did this to entertain ourselves. It gets boring always making one menu of a dozen or so dishes, we want variety. I think it's the same with trainers, they'd get bored always training squat, deadlift, press.

I don't get bored because individuals vary so much, you have to work on each individual, maybe this one has some flexibility issue, another some recent surgery, etc. A couple of weeks back I had to come up with a full-body routine for a guy with a dislocated AC joint while he waited for his surgery. Another guy has such tight hamstrings he can only get into a half-squat straight up. Another has had three sprained ankles - on one ankle, and it's very unstable. Yet another is a swimmer and just wants bigger legs, she's happy with her upper body. And so on.

So the variety in clients and their individual capabilities and goals is enough for me, I don't have to bring in circus act training.