breebreerocks
Member
Think this pretty much sums up most tertiary courses. I studied law. Think the stats say that five years out, under 5% of graduates will be practising lawyers. That's why stats like me lug around a massive HECS debt.
...he has very poor eyesight so he doesn't like to mess with free weights while training on his own. A
At this stage we're just doing the gym instructor's course, and he is not intending to actually become a gym instructor; the Cert III is just to support his martial arts, in which he'd like to become an instructor.Are you sure he realises that a PT is meant to observe clients?
Soviet Boxer spectating slapped it down...
I've heard mixed reports about lots of places.
FIA was where I did my PT studies and I found that a lot of the content was really elementary having come from a uni background in biological science. The nutrition section was especially bad...particularly when you were asked to study the food pyramid and suggest how your diet could be improved by using the food pyramid as a guide........
However, the staff there were quite helpful and really well educated.
I really think that no matter who you get your PT quals through, you really need to take the initiative and read the latest scientific literature and read good text books. Go to seminars and courses and stay up to date with it all.
Contact with other students has been useful, too. Some are knowledgeable or experienced and so can also teach me things. Some are not but know it, so I can practice my own teaching on them! And some are not very smart or interested in things or have difficult personalities, and this is good practice for me, too, as part of any people-oriented job is dealing with people you don't naturally get along with and aren't comfortable with.
You probably saw Certificate III students. They're learning to be gym instructors, and you need Certificate IV to be a personal trainer.Some of the people that call themselves PTs know buggerall about fitness. I was in the gym a week ago and it was full of TAFE students, who were studying fitness. The vast majority were only learning how to train in the gym themselves.
In my experience, most PTs do know about fitness, but they tend to be vaguer on strength and agility. Even so, where they fall down isn't knowledge, usually, but the Care Factor. Most people in most jobs just do the minimum work to avoid getting fired and don't really like their co-workers, and have some contempt for or at best indifference to their customers.
Part of this is a natural response to customer behaviour. When 75% of people signing up to a gym will bail in the first month, and 90% in the first three months, well it's easy for the instructor/trainer to get bitter and cynical, and the 10-25% of customers who are dedicated are going to cop that bad attitude... which probably contributes to their quitting