What skills are needed to be a personal trainer in NZ?

• What a personal trainer does in NZ
• The skills you’ll need to work as a personal trainer in NZ
• What qualifications do you need to work as a personal trainer in NZ?
• What school subjects will help you become a personal trainer in NZ?
• The salary expectations for personal trainers in NZ?

Personal trainers typically help their clients to improve their fitness or reach specific physical goals. This could be training for an event or competition or simply getting back in shape after some time away from exercise.

It’s important not to confuse the role of a personal trainer with that of a physiotherapist. Physios are typically more involved in helping people with injuries, illnesses or disabilities through movement and exercise, while personal trainers are more focussed on the general benefits of muscle building or fitness.

As a personal trainer, you’ll likely find yourself doing many or all of the following:

• Designing exercise programs for your clients.
• Assessing your clients’ health.
• Demonstrating safe exercise and fitness techniques.
• Giving advice on nutrition.
• Discussing goals with clients and helping them reach those goals.
• Marketing your services to potential clients.
• Making bookings and keeping accounts.

You’ll probably find your clients coming to you for advice on what they should be eating to complement the work you’re putting in in the gym.

As well as the basics, you’ll need to be up-to-date on the latest research on nutritional health. However, it’s also important to understand the position of responsibility this puts you in. You can't just recommend the latest fad diet without fully understanding the research behind it – eating is such an important part of health, you need to be confident that what you’re recommending is right for the person seeking help.

People come to personal trainers for all sorts of reasons. Some of your clients might simply be looking for a leg up with their fitness goals, some may be trying to recover from injuries or illnesses that have been holding them back and impacting their mental health. Others may also be facing serious body confidence issues, which will require understanding and ultimate professionalism.

Another reason why it’s so important that personal trainers master emotional intelligence is that you’ll need to motivate people on a daily basis. Let’s face it, we’ve all had days where we’re not feeling like pushing ourselves as hard as we could, but, as a personal trainer, it’s your job to snap them out of that mindset and get them back on track. Crucially, not everyone responds to the same types of pep talk, so you’ll need to tailor your approach based on the individual client.

In some ways, this is the opposite to a lack of motivation. Some clients will be so amped up to start working towards their fitness goals that they’ll want to see results immediately. As a personal trainer, you’ll know this isn’t the way it works, and it means you’ll need to set expectations from the start. 

A big part of this is understanding your client’s individual goals, and communicating a clear timeframe for achieving them. A good tactic here is to set a number of smaller goals along the way to the overall objective so that your customer still feels a sense of achievement while they’re working through your program.

Many personal trainers work on an arrangement with a gym or workout space in which they’re responsible for bringing in their own clients, and then some of their takings go to the gym.

While this isn’t the only way to work as a personal trainer, if you do go down this route, you’ll need to know how to bring in new clients, retain those that you already have, and also be able to deal with the finances. When it comes to the marketing side of things, a lot of this today will be done through social media, so being savvy with tech will certainly help you here.

Given that you’ll be training multiple people a day, time management is another useful skill to include on a personal trainer’s CV. It’s very common for fitness conscious professionals to visit their personal trainer before work, or even on their lunch break – so they won’t thank you if you’re not running to schedule.

There are no mandatory qualifications that you need in order to work as a personal trainer in New Zealand. That said, it’s common for employers in this industry to have a preference for candidates who either already have or are working towards certificates.

Around New Zealand, there are several universities, polytechnics and specialist training facilities that can help you attain relevant qualifications. In addition, some employers that advertise through Trade Me Jobs have schemes where they will train you as you work for them.

Once you’re working, most employers will require that you join the Register of Exercise Professionals (REPs). This is an industry body that helps ensure that its members meet certain professional standards.

As before, there are no required subjects that you need to study at school in order to become a personal trainer in New Zealand. However, it’s definitely useful to have studied subjects like physical education, health education or biology to at least NCEA Level 2.