Blog
By PT Hut
To become a personal trainer in the UK, you need a Level 3 qualification in personal training, with the Level 2 gym instructing qualification underneath it. You can take them as two courses, one after the other, or as a single diploma that includes both. Once you are qualified, most trainers also hold a first aid certificate with CPR, take out insurance and pass a background check, then either join a gym or start working for themselves.
You do not need a degree, and you do not need to have worked in a gym. Our Level 3 Diploma Practitioner in Personal Training is the combined kind, open to anyone who is 16 or over on the start date with no previous fitness qualification. It is studied mostly online, with 1 to 2 practical days in person, and you finish qualified at both levels.
No. The National Careers Service lists several ways in, including a college course, an apprenticeship, a specialist course with a private training provider, and applying straight to an employer. Only that last route expects you to have qualifications and experience as a gym instructor already.
Focus Awards, who award our diploma, set no specific entry requirements beyond a minimum age of 16. They do note that learners under 18 may need to be supervised in the workplace once they qualify, which is worth knowing if you are coming straight from school.
What helps more than experience is knowing what the job asks of you. The National Careers Service puts a personal trainer's typical hours at 32 to 34 a week, variable, with evenings, weekends and bank holidays when clients want them. It describes the pay as variable rather than quoting a salary, because a trainer's income depends on how many clients they train, what they charge and whether they are employed or self-employed.
CIMSPA, the professional development body for sport and physical activity in the UK, sets out the order. You complete a Level 2 gym or fitness instructor certificate first, then a Level 3 in personal training, and many providers combine the two into one course. CIMSPA also says you can study online, in person or in a mix of both.
Before you pay for any course, check three things.
If the two levels are new to you, our post on the difference between a Level 2 and a Level 3 sets out the job each one qualifies you for.
An apprenticeship is a paid job with the training built in. The Level 3 personal trainer apprenticeship typically runs for 15 to 18 months. Its standard recommends that applicants already hold a Level 2 fitness instructing qualification and have relevant, active experience in the fitness sector, so it tends to suit people already working in a gym rather than people starting from scratch. Employers set their own entry requirements, and you apply to them for the role.
A personal training qualification has two halves, what you know and how you coach. On our diploma, the five Level 3 units cover anatomy and physiology, nutrition, programme design, delivering sessions and the business side, worth 33 credits between them. The five Level 2 units cover the gym instructing foundations, worth 18. All ten are listed with their Ofqual references on the course page.
The written work is evidenced through workbooks you complete in your own time, so there is no exam hall and no timed paper. The coaching is assessed on a practical day, where you deliver a full session to a real person while a qualified assessor watches. Our post on what happens at the practical assessment walks through the day, and the assessment page has the rest.
The theory is a lot to take in if you have never studied the body before, from how muscles and joints work to how a programme progresses over weeks. On our course, the anatomy, screening and programming units are taught by Daniel, who holds a BSc in Sport Therapy and Rehabilitation and has carried out more than 1,500 injury assessments, so there is someone to ask who does that work every week.
The coaching is the part a workbook cannot teach you. The largest unit in the diploma is the one where you deliver personal training sessions, worth 9 of its 51 credits, and the practical is where you show you can do it with a person in front of you. A written qualification proves you know what a movement is. Only a live session proves you can teach it. Clinton, who has more than 20 years in the industry, teaches that side the way he coaches, getting the movement right first and then loading it.
Then there is the work after you qualify. The National Careers Service lists promoting your services and doing the business admin among a self-employed trainer's day-to-day tasks, alongside the training itself, and that is the side that brings clients in.
These sit alongside the qualification, and employers and clients will expect them.
Level 3 is the standard UK gyms and health clubs ask for when they hire personal trainers, so a gym is one place to start. Other trainers work for themselves, at a fitness centre or in clients' homes. If you go self-employed, GOV.UK says you must register for Self Assessment as a sole trader once you earn more than £1,000 in a tax year, and then send Self Assessment tax returns. It explains how to set up as a sole trader and how to register for Self Assessment.
Our diploma has a business unit for exactly this, Business Acumen and the Use of Information Technology for a Personal Trainer, worth 5 credits. It covers getting clients, getting paid and running yourself as a business. Once you have your certificate, our optional continued learning community, with a weekly call and resources, is there if you want to keep learning. It costs £30 a month if you qualified with us and £50 a month if you qualified elsewhere.
Our diploma costs £2,000, with £250 off if you pay in full, so £1,750. You can also spread it across four monthly payments of £500, with nothing added on top. The price covers tuition, materials, assessment, certification and a re-assessment if you need one, and our breakdown of what a Level 3 personal trainer course costs shows what to compare when you look at other providers.
Daniel and Clinton teach and assess the course themselves, and each has worked with more than 400 clients. Most learners come to 1 to 2 practical days in person, at the venue published with their intake, and each intake holds five places for learners who cannot travel, who are assessed on film instead. The dates page shows the next intakes. When you are ready, reserve your place, or use the same form to ask us anything first. Nothing is paid on the website, and we will reply by email.
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CIMSPA is the Chartered Institute for the Management of Sport and Physical Activity, the professional development body for the UK's sport and physical activity sector. For a Level 3 personal trainer it matters in two ways. It writes the professional standard that sets out what a personal trainer must know and be able to do, and it endorses the qualifications that meet that standard.
At a Level 3 personal trainer practical assessment, you deliver a real personal training session while a qualified assessor watches you and assesses you against criteria you have seen in advance. The assessor is checking that you can coach a real person safely and well, which is something no written test can show. The written side of the qualification is assessed separately, through coursework.
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Tell us which intake you want. Nothing is charged here: we email you to arrange payment, and paying is what confirms your place.
Rather talk it through first? Email pthutuk@gmail.com.
