Our Level 3 personal trainer course costs £2,000, or £1,750 if you pay the whole amount up front. You can also spread it across four monthly payments of £500, which adds up to the same £2,000 with nothing on top. That price covers tuition, learning materials, assessment and certification, and it includes the Level 2 gym instructing units, so there is no second course to buy before you start.
Prices for a Level 3 vary a lot from one provider to the next, which makes the headline figure a poor way to compare them. The bigger question is what sits inside each price. CIMSPA says a Level 3 in personal training comes after a Level 2 gym instructor certificate unless a course combines the two, so a Level 3 on its own only looks cheaper until you add the Level 2 you still need.
What the £2,000 covers
The Level 3 Diploma Practitioner in Personal Training is one qualification with one price. It includes all of the following.
- All ten units. Five at Level 2 and five at Level 3, worth 51 credits between them, so you qualify at both levels.
- Tuition from the people who assess you. Daniel and Clinton teach and assess the course themselves, and both are working personal trainers.
- Learning materials for the written units, which you work through in your own time.
- Assessment, both of your written work and of your practical.
- Certification when you pass.
- A re-assessment if you need one. We do not charge for it.
There is no VAT to add to the fee. Nothing extra is added later, and we do not sell bundles you did not ask for.
How paying works
You reserve your place on the website, and no payment is taken there. We then email you with the amount and the ways to pay, which are bank transfer, invoice or the payment plan. Paying is what confirms your place on the cohort.
If you pay the whole amount at once, we take £250 off the £2,000 price, so you pay £1,750, a saving of 12.5 per cent. If you would rather spread it, the plan is four monthly payments of £500, £2,000 in total, which is the same course paid for as you go. If neither option suits you, ask. Other arrangements may be possible, and we will see what we can do.
The payment terms and your cancellation rights are set out in writing before you pay, so you can read them before you commit. If anything in them is unclear, ask us first.
What to check when you compare prices
A lower price is only a saving if it buys the same thing. These are the questions that show you what a price includes.
- Is the Level 2 included? If a course expects you to hold a Level 2 already, add the cost of that course to its price. Our post on doing Level 3 without Level 2 explains why it matters and how to check.
- How much of the practical is in person, and who assesses it? Ours is 1 to 2 practical days in person, assessed by a qualified assessor who works as a trainer.
- Are assessment, certification and any re-assessment in the price? Ours are.
- Is the qualification regulated? Every regulated qualification is on Ofqual's register. Ours is the Focus Awards Level 3 Diploma Practitioner in Personal Training (RQF), number 603/5233/4.
- What else is being bundled in? Extras sold alongside a course can make two prices hard to compare. Ours is the diploma and nothing else.
Working out what a payment plan really costs
A monthly figure is easy to compare and easy to be misled by. Multiply it by the number of payments, then set the total against the price for paying in full. Our plan is four payments of £500, which comes to £2,000, the course price, and paying in full brings that down to £1,750. A plan with a lower monthly figure is not cheaper if it runs for longer. Say a course is advertised at £100 a month for 24 months, which comes to £2,400. Check as well whether a plan adds anything on top of the course price, such as interest or an admin fee, because the monthly figure will not show it.
Why the practical is worth paying for
In our experience, comparing courses by their practical assessment works better than comparing headline prices, because the practical is where you prove you can coach a real person, and it is the part employers and insurers take seriously. A written qualification can prove you know what a hip hinge is. Only a live session can prove you can teach one.
Plenty of providers will sell you a Level 3 for less than we do. What they will not give you is a cohort small enough that your practical is properly watched, or an assessor who has trained paying clients this week. The people who answer your email are the people who mark your work and stand next to you on assessment day.
The assessor on our practical days checks whether the session you wrote is the session you deliver, whether you adapt when the person cannot do what your plan says, and whether they would come back. From working with clients, we know that last question is the one every paying client answers after a first session. Daniel and Clinton have each worked with more than 400 of them.
If you cannot travel to the practical days, each intake holds five places for learners who complete the same practical assessment on film. There are only five per intake, so mention it when you reserve.
What the price does not include
Continued learning after you qualify is a separate service, and optional. It is a community with a weekly call and resources, for trainers who want support with the parts no awarding body examines you on. It costs £30 a month if you qualified with us and £50 a month if you qualified elsewhere, so our own graduates pay £20 a month less. You can read what it covers on the continued learning page, and you can take it or leave it once you have your certificate.
Getting to the practical days is yours to arrange if you are attending in person, so allow for travel when you budget.
Insurance comes after the course. Once you are qualified, you will want cover before you train paying clients, and a regulated qualification is what insurers want to see before they provide it.
Seeing the dates and reserving
The dates page shows the next intakes and both ways to pay. When you are ready, reserve your place. Reserving costs nothing, we email you to arrange payment, and your place is confirmed when you pay.
