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See I am more so wanting to do it to give myself a more in depth knowledge while I'm training myself. And my teacher and I discussed it as well. My mother has a neurological disorder called Fibromalagia and so with that she has met a few people through her pain management course. She wants me to train her but my knowledge is very limited. Certificate 3 and 4 should be longer in my personal opinion and they don't seem to cover everything that they should.
 
Worth it? Hmmm what job do you want or are likely to get? How much is this diploma?

If youre a pt no one i know would care how much study you did

Be a pt for the love not money
 
Worth it? Hmmm what job do you want or are likely to get? How much is this diploma?

If youre a pt no one i know would care how much study you did

Be a pt for the love not money
I dunno if you can charge more for having a diploma over a cert.
Does anyone PT for money?
Looks pretty rough to me, people cancel all the time only book early late or weekends?. Unless you have a gig at a gym or you are an A+ superstar PT specialising in any sports competitive coaching or own a gym. ?
 
Quals don't determine session fees, it's location. PT at Fitness First Melbourne Central will cost more than FF Shepparton.

And half your income goes to facility rent (commercial gyms) or as a straight percentage (community gyms).

The real income limit to PT is hours. Fitness is basically a part-time job for 80% of the people in it. Because who has money to pay for PT? Mostly it's people with Mon-Fri 9-5 jobs. So 80% of PT sessions happen 6-8am and 6-8pm. Unless you spend 6am-9pm in the gym every day this limits your PT hours to about 20 a week. Some trainers get up to about 30hr but they don't last long, you just get burned out, sick of being in the gym all day, and tired with all the personality changes you need from one half-hour session to the next, like you can't talk to a 65yo retired woman the same way you talk to a 22yo male student.

You can do gym floor hours to get a bit more income, but most shifts are available at the busy times for PT - you need lots of trainers on the floor Monday nights, not many Sunday morning - so you'll only squeeze another 10hr or so out of this at most. Most shifts are done by newbie PTs with few or no clients - yep, it's inexperienced newbies introducing inexperienced newbies to the gym.

There are group fitness classes, but remember the trainer participates in those, apart from a few women with eating disorders (and you do get a lot of them being PTs) nobody's doing 4 hours of BodyPump a day, so the limit here is 5-10hr a week. And again, most of these classes are at busy PT times, so again it's either/or.

There's also front desk customer service roles, and lifeguard if the place has a pool. Again, most shifts will be at busy PT times.

Management really boosts the hours because there are always more meetings and KPI reports to do. So there you get a salary, or else you take a chunk of other trainers' session fees.

You can open your own gym, of course, and take 100% of the fees, but... then there is normal rent, utilities, etc to pay for. Barbells and that don't cost much, but if you want treadmills and shoulder press machines - easy-to-use stuff so you can collect membership fees from people without spending hours with them - those are like $5,000 each, which adds up quick. And if you have stacks of them then you have to have gym floor staff to clean and maintain them, which costs money, etc.

More trainers are moving to small group stuff. Most people don't need one-on-one past the first few weeks. Some people want it - the "personal" is more important than the "training" - but most don't need it. So okay, instead of 1 person @ $100ph let's have 4 people @ $40ph. And those 4 people will work harder and have more fun because they're in a small group. A bit more work for the trainer as you have to come up with stuff all 4 can do, but also less work because you don't have to try to get everyone into conversation, they just talk shit amongst themselves.

But the real money in the fitness industry isn't in actually training people. It's seminars and DVDs and certificates and "online training" and meal plans and so on. More people reached with fewer hours. Not many gym members will splash out $1,000 for a weekend seminar, stacks of trainers do it. Poliquin charged $7,500 for a 5-day seminar in Australia and he didn't even come, he sent a flunky. Dan John charged $2,500 for a weekend, Klokov $1,500 I think it was. Those guys all have names, but two guys from Starting Strength came to Australia without Rippetoe and charged $600 for a day workshop, there are endless kettlebell certificates from groups and people you never hard of, etc. Obviously there are flights and accommodation to consider (though they often shack up for free with the host gym owner), and lots of work to prepare for the thing outside that weekend, still it's not bad for a weekend a month.

The fitness industry is very much like the hospitality industry, I know because I've been in both. It has a low barrier to entry and is composed mostly of young single part-time casuals who will not be in it two years from now, and the real money is not made by the people actually producing the end results.

So yeah, location and hours are the real things affecting income.
 
0ni at times makes things complicated but all in all he dose what he enjoys.

lifting and using some basic exercises even to a mild type intensity of work will produce incredible results in 6 months.

it doesn't require a degree in exercise science.
which for the most part is full of lies and stupidity, and things that we should avoid.
 
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0ni at times made things complicated but all in all he did what he enjoyed.

I imagine so. As human beings we try not to do things we don't enjoy.

lifting and using some basic exercises even to a mild type intensity of work will produce incredible results in 6 months.

it doesn't require a degree in exercise science.
which for the most part is full of lies and stupidity

Maybe for an untrained lifter, but point remains that squatting for instance at mild intensity is vastly to squatting at high intensities. The trainee does not require a degree, if we were all born with degrees in sports physiology there would be no PT industry. The trainee may well require instruction and assessment. If this wasn't the case athletes wouldn't have coaches.
 
This is the purpose of pregressive resistance packer.
and in the squat you start off light and progress.
at a time when there was no internet and not many gyms, many a very strong men got extremely strong in basement gyms, and more often than not these men were gifted, using the very basic tools.
 
2/3 of new gym members do not take the "free" (actually paid for by joining fee) initial appointments offered. Of those who do, 2/3 do not do the programme given more than once. So 8/9 of gym members are not doing a routine given them by a trainer working there. A very few will have programming from some other trainer or book, but not many.

Basically 85% of gym members are doing their own thing. Next time you go to the gym, have a look around and see how that's working for those people. Again I note: 20 men and 6 women out of 5,000 people who could do what any healthy person under 50yo can do in 3-6 months. Similar numbers for, for example, 5km run under 30' - for those who just do cardio, that's fine, at least be good at it. Yet less than 1%.

So I would suggest that most people are not able to achieve very much on their own.

It's much like how, in theory, you can get the equivalent of a university education with a library card. But how many do? Most people need guidance and structure.
 
This is the purpose of pregressive resistance packer.
and in the squat you start off light and progress.

Thank you, I had no idea.


at a time when there was no internet and not many gyms, many a very strong men got extremely strong in basement gyms, and more often than not these men were gifted, using the very basic tools.

Let me add to the sentence above then - 'for those who may not be gifted'.
 
The point I'm making with "the enjoyment" is you can listen to some dude with a piece of paper, who's given you some cookie cut cherry picking routine, it can be as fun is it wants, but if you are not getting stronger, fitter and more flexible then there will be no enjoyment.

0ni is or was working towards a perceived ideal, he was mostly "training" not working out" there is a difference and it's another topic.

methods of training
methods of increase muscle tissue

and still there will be confusion

as I believe increased muscle facilitates the environment for increased strength and flexibility
 
I think we are talking about different coaching scenarios. It has already been established that most PTs are of little use to experienced trainers. However, I believe that a good PT (of which there are only a few %) or Coach (we'll call a coach a trainer with knowledge and experience in a specific area e.g. powerlifting) has a lot to offer advanced trainees. A 'cookie cutter cherry picking' program will be of little use to someone like this.
 
I talked a bit about strength standards here, taking them as a percentage of world records. Most people would do very well if they got to 50% of an (age-matched) world record in strength or cardio - it'd totally change their lives. Past that won't improve their lives much and is really only useful for its own sake, for competitions in that thing. Same could apply for bodyfat, for those weightloss trainers - getting you as a man from an obese 30% bodyfat to a normal healthy 15%, this will totally change your life; going from a normal healthy 15% to an amateur drug-tested bodybuilding level of 7-8% really is another thing entirely.

A competent personal trainer helps someone get the first 50%, you need a coach after that. And historically a "coach" is someone who works with competitive athletes at whatever level.

Many of you are confusing the roles, and forget that most people are at 1-10% of their possible performance. Most people are not trying to figure out how to get their 160kg squat up further - they're trying to figure out how to squat! This is why we have many many personal trainers and they can make a living from it even if they're not very good, while we have not many coaches and many of them have a day job.
 
If it was me, I would just go to someones gym and ask can I watch/be involved in a few sessions he is training someone, aka work experience.
 
lets not confuse squatting in a way that you squat the most weight with just regular squatting for the thighs
 
lets not confuse squatting in a way that you squat the most weight with just regular squatting for the thighs
Which is where most of the confusion in this thread stems from. We all know stem is good for nothing.
 
In regards to practice for a sport played, the best way to increase performance is to practice skills specifically as one intends to demonstrate those skills.

Although, *greater function- can be oobtained through general weight training

this is most relevant even for the sport of the powerlifter

specificity is is a whole new topic, most of which coaches get it wrong.

*to demonstrate proficiency, not skill
 
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