By Rick Mayo, Special AFS Contributor
Personal training: it’s available pretty much everywhere nowadays. So what sets one offering apart from the next? And what helps certain personal trainers stand out from their competitors? The answer is simple: credibility.
While the personal training industry isn’t unregulated (As in, it’s not true that just anyone can walk in off the street and get a job at a gym as a trainer), there are huge variations in how trainers are educated, what background they have before they get a job, and which methodologies they use.
With all this in mind, if you want to stand out for your gym offerings, bringing on credible personal trainers is paramount. Here’s what you need to know.
ACE Certification: the Gold Standard of the Industry
Each gym has its own set of requirements when it comes to onboarding and hiring personal trainers. Most gyms. For example, require personal trainers to be ACE-certified. Alloy does this and has set out these requirements for years. But why? What’s so important about the ACE certification?
Simple: The ACE Personal Trainer Certification Program is accredited by the National Commission for Certifying Agencies (NCCA). As such, it’s considered to be the highest possible bar personal trainers can reach for certification.
In other words, ACE-certified trainers are the best in the business, and they add a huge level of credibility to an organization. As Rick Mayo, founder and CEO of Alloy says:
"The education and certifications offered by ACE are best in class for personal training and health coaching education. The content and instruction that ACE provides perfectly align with delivering the quality of fitness services expected by Alloy’s customer base.”
Plus, ACE itself has a scientific advisory panel that helps ensure continuity of education for all trainers, and guarantees that the information trainers are learning is the best in the industry.
Here’s what ACE says about it, "ACE doesn't merely claim to be up on the latest exercise and behavior-change science. We have an outside panel of advisors that helps ACE ensure that is the case. The ACE Scientific Advisory Panel is composed of world-renowned subject matter experts who are the leading thinkers and researchers in their respective fields.”
As you can see, this focus on science and technique coming together creates award-winning personal trainers that lend credibility and trust to every organization they work within.
What Makes a Personal Trainer Credible? Continued Education
While ACE certification is a critical consideration for any personal trainer, the pursuit of greatness doesn’t end there. Instead, the best personal trainers continue to build their skills via continuing education (CE).
Here are a few benefits of Continuing Education:
- Annual renewals of certifications. Once a personal trainer gets certified, the journey doesn’t just stop there. Trainers must renew their certifications regularly, and they do it through CECs (Continuing Education Credits). If a trainer allows their certification to lapse, they’ll find it impossible to buy liability insurance, use local facilities, and get a job as a personal trainer.
- Access to insurance. Continuing Education is critical because it allows trainers access to liability insurance policies, which is essential. Trainers protect both themselves and their clients by purchasing liability insurance policies that extend beyond the policies of local gyms they work with. Again, Continuing Education is required for any trainer who wants to access liability insurance.
- Better service. The fitness industry is a dynamic place, and it continues to grow, shift, and change all the time. Luckily for trainers who want to stay on the cutting edge of that, continuing education allows teams to do so. Continuing Education changes each year and focus on the newest trends in the industry, incorporate new research, and help trainers keep their fingers on the pulse of everything that’s happening in the world of personal training.
- Offering specialized focuses. Continuing Education excels for its ability to help trainers specialize and drill down into a given niche. For example, say a trainer wants to spend more time with the 50+. Active aging population. There are CECs that would allow the trainer to do just that. There are also CECs for trainers who want to work with pregnant women, people with injuries, or people who want to focus on certain movements or exercises. IIn short, Continuing Education is an excellent way for trainers to specialize in their areas of interest and work with the clients they want to work with, across the board.
- Partnering with local health establishments. Again, personal training is available virtually everywhere, and the one primary thing that separates one trainer from the next is experience. Trainers with the most experience stand out for gyms and franchises and are easily the most marketable and in-demand trainers out there. They’re also the trainers who focus the most on CECs and ensure that their education is always as current and up-to-date as possible. These trainers have more chances to further their careers and are better equipped to participate in a challenging, competitive, and rapidly-changing industry.
- Credibility. Trainers who commit to Continuing Education are the most credible and reliable trainers in the industry. They add a level of professionalism to the gyms they work with and can even draw in customers who want to work with the best in the business. If you take a look at the level of trainers gyms hire, you’ll see high-quality gyms onboard ACE-certified trainers, while lower-quality gyms have less experienced trainers, as a general rule.
Alloy Personal Training: ACE-Certified, Credible Trainers
If you’re looking for a personal training fitness franchise that goes above and beyond where credibility is concerned, Alloy is here to deliver. Hiring ACE-certified personal trainers, we pride ourselves on the expertise and experience of everyone we work with.
In addition to providing cutting-edge services for our customers, these trainers help move the fitness industry forward and keep us a competitive and groundbreaking force in the industry.
Ready to learn more? Contact us today to speak with our team or to request your free information packet.
Rick Mayo is an accomplished fitness business entrepreneur and founder and CEO of the Alloy Personal Training Franchise system.
Rick’s business journey began with his original personal training studio in 1992 and is still going strong, having delivered exceptional fitness experiences to tens of thousands of clients in the Roswell, Georgia area. In 2010, as a result of his success, Rick started Alloy, a personal training business platform. As a result of Alloy’s combination of customized client programs, business systems, and technology tools, some of the leading health club and gym brands adopted the Alloy model, which rapidly grew to serve over 1,000 licensed fitness facilities worldwide. With years of experience deploying the Alloy systems under their belt Mayo and his team took the next logical step by launching the Alloy Personal Training franchise in 2019 to deliver a turnkey franchise opportunity encompassing the entire personal training business model from build-out design through equipment, business systems, technology platforms, marketing, and more.
Rick has delivered keynotes on personal training and fitness business trends to audiences around the world. He has also been an advisor to organizations like the Gold’s Gym Franchise Association and the American Council on Exercise, among others. Rick’s views have been featured in numerous reports, articles, books, and many podcasts on fitness business trends worldwide.
In 2019 he was named Fitness Business of the Year by the Association of Fitness Studios. The award recognizes the leading fitness studio concept that excels, creates unsurpassed customer experiences, offers a dedicated staff, motivates clients, and demonstrates leadership in their community.
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