Why have we started a personal training academy?
Good question – and one that has a multifaceted answer.
The personal training qualification field has become very muddy over the last 10 years.
Back in 2010, when I first donned my PT-in-training tracksuit, all PT courses were classroom-based.
They were six weeks long, ran 9am-5pm and there was a ton of interaction both with the tutor(s) and with fellow students.
At the time, I thought the course was well run. Looking back, it could have certainly been a lot better.
With that said, I enjoyed it and the fact I’m still pals with a few of my fellow students to this day speaks volumes for the in-person learning format.
Fast forward to today and you can sign up for a course on Groupon and basically qualify overnight for a few quid without having ever met a tutor.
Most courses are online these days and, whilst it certainly makes things convenient, we believe it’s massively diluting the quality of education required to make a GOOD personal trainer.
It’s all good and well having a piece of paper verifying the fact you’re qualified and having insurance to practise. But surely the goal is to carve out an enjoyable, fruitful career and make an impact?
The average lifecycle of a personal trainer is far too short. All you have to do is have a regular look at the PT board in your gym and you’ll notice there’s a revolving door.
The sad part is many trainers with huge potential end up leaving the industry before they even get close to realising it.
We want to change that.
With the experience we’ve gained over our decades of combined experience in commercial gyms, online coaching, bootcamps, and in our five-star Improve Glasgow facility over the past five years, we believe we are perfectly placed to teach, develop and nurture aspiring personal trainers to the point they are ready to achieve their goals within our industry.
As we’ve built Improve Glasgow, we’ve almost made it our recruitment strategy to hire newly qualified PT’s who have yet to pick up any bad habits and mould them into superstars in our gym.
However, we’ve always found that they’ve been behind where we’d have expected them to be for a ‘qualified personal trainer’ and it’s taken time to bring them up to the level required to perform in our gym.
We always get there in the end…
The fact we regularly host seminars for the owners and staff of some of the UK’s top independant gyms speaks to that.
Our goal, now, is to position ourselves at the first stage in the PT process to ensure aspiring PT’s in Glasgow are set off on the right track immediately.
See, back in 2015, when we first opened Improve, the mission was to help improve the health, fitness, and confidence of the city.
We feel we’ve done a decent job of that with the clients we’ve coached. But the years have taught us there’s an upper limit on the number of lives we can impact within our four walls.
The next step for us is to educate and empower the next generation of coaches to go on and change the lives of more people than we ever could on our own.
What makes us different from other course providers?
Most Level 3 PT courses are either delivered online with an assessment at the end.
Or they’re delivered in big box gyms by companies who pay to use the space.
They’re also often delivered by former trainers who are too far removed from the gym floor to be teaching relevant stuff. Or trainers who have never had anywhere close to a full diary.
Or those who fall into both categories, but let’s not even go there.
Our courses and seminars will be delivered in Improve Glasgow (one of scotland’s leading personal training gyms), which we happen to own.
And they will be delivered by our team who are all active personal trainers, delivering sessions on a daily basis and staying at the very top of their game.
The Improve Academy isn’t a case of:
“Here’s what we used to do and here’s how we think you should do it.”
Or:
“Here’s what we think you should do based on what we’ve been told to tell you.”
It’s a case of:
“Here’s what we’ve done. here’s what we’re currently doing. and here’s how you can skip past our mistakes to get on the path of least resistance for your own career success.”
We’ve been featured in national media (BBC Radio Scotland, Scotland Tonight and STV News) more times than we can count, we were the first gym in Scotland to earn a Gold Standard rating from the IFBA and I was the first personal trainer to win Lift The Bar’s ‘PT of the Year’ award.
If you live around the Glasgow area and you’re looking to embark upon a career in fitness – or just want to further develop your knowledge and understanding of fitness for your own personal gain – look no further than the Improve Academy’s Level 3 PT Diploma.
The first one kicks off in January and has just 15 spaces.
You can register your interest in our course here or download our prospectus by here.
