1. Which company did you use to receive your certification?
Where I live (Australia), you need a formal tertiary education qualification to become a PT, not just a test from a company with a 3-4 letter acronym for a name. Specifically, you need a Certificate IV in Fitness, which you can get from TAFE (basically, government funded community college) or private colleges. I did my Cert IV through Southabnk Institute of Technology, which is a glorified TAFE.
2. How long did it take you to complete it?
Cert III was 1 semester, Cert IV was 1 semester, Diploma was 2 semesters.
3. How hard was it to recruit new clients starting out?
The next best thing to impossible. I'd have a lot more ease recruiting new clients now that I've had a lot more experience and have upped my customer service and leadership skills.
4. Did you start out working in a gym or free lance?
In a gym.
5. What type of workload should I expect – ex: How many clients and how often do you see them within a weeks’ time?
That's far too open-ended to answer. But, in saying that, you should be able to get the majority of your clients in multiple times a week. You'll have some people who'll want PT every day, and some who'll only want it once a week, or even less often than that.
I think most PTs should aim to be doing about 20 hours of training sessions per week. Given that you generally won't get much work in off-peak times, it's usually best just to pick your shifts and work them, or else to get proper full-time hours you'll be starting work at sunrise, finishing work about 10min before your bedtime, and all your spare time will be when you can't share it with anyone.
6. What type of pay should I expect in the beginning from a gym or free lance?
From a gym, about $20/hr for gym floor shifts (just looking after the gym floor, keeping it presentable, policing gym rules/etiquette, doing induction sessions/reprogramming, etc), and $20-40/hr for PT and group fitness sessions, if it's a half-decent gym.
Free lance, whatever you charge, by whatever hours you do. But you probably won't be getting many hours up front. The average cost of a PT is $60-100/hr.
7. What is the most challenging part of your job?
It's been 3 months since I've been working. When I was working, sales was definitely the hardest part, largely due to the internal politics within the gym, along with a really poor education on how to actually open and close a sale.
8. Any tips on starting this new journey?
Learn your exercise physiology and practical exercise programming. Learn customer service. Learn that PT's serve much more purpose than just thrashing clients. Learn about marketing. Learn what you're worth as a PT and learn to accept money from people.
