Online Personal Trainer Certification: 5 Tips to Get Certified in 2 Months
Today I’ll show you what the shortcuts are and exactly how you can get a real personal trainer certification, all online, and in as little as two months.
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You’d probably agree with me when I say:
There are no shortcuts to fast and credible personal trainer certifications.
Or, are there?
As it turns out, there are some great ways to get a personal trainer certification, fast. And I’m not talking about those crappy, fake certifications you may have come across from the vast stretches of the interwebs.
I’m talking about a real, accredited, personal trainer certification that will get you a job at most gyms and into a personal training career that you love.
1
Get Your Prerequisites in Order
Before you can tap into the personal training field you’ll need to get some things in order that most online personal trainer certification bodies require. For most of these agencies, you’ll need to check off the following three things:
- 18 years or older
- High school diploma or GED
- CPR/AED certification
More companies are requiring the Automated External Defibrillator (AED) Certification along with the Emergency Cardiac Care (CPR), but these certifications are usually given together. American Red Cross is one of the primary providers of these courses and you can find a CPR/AED class near you to satisfy this necessary requirement.
Note that you don’t always have to have CPR/AED certifications to purchase most online personal trainer packages (to start your studies), you’ll just need it to become official once you do sit for the final exam.
2
Choose the Best Online Personal Trainer Certification for You
In a previous post of mine on the “best personal trainer certification” I conclude the blog post with a note that the decision is very subjective and there are certain certifications that may be better-suited for certain individuals. The major factors I find that influence which online personal training certification you go with includes:
- Accreditation
- Price
- CEU requirements
- Pass rate
- Average income of trainers
At the time I wrote that post, there was one option that I did not include because it did not yet exist. That option is the Fitness Mentors’ Online Personal Trainer Certification. As you’ll learn, it is actually the only truly and fully online, accredited online personal trainer cert. More on why this is important in tip three.
3
Choose a Course that is Truly Available Online from Start to Finish
If you have begun to look at your available options for a CPT, you probably understand that you can begin to order study materials and start gaining the knowledge you need to pass the final exam with the swipe of your credit card.
What you may not be aware of, however, is that once you are ready to schedule the exam, you have to take the following, sometimes inconvenient, steps:
- Register for an exam
- Wait for the next available exam slot
- Drive to the physical exam location
This is not even taking into consideration what happens if you try to reschedule an exam, if you are an international student, or if you fail the exam.
The long and short of understanding all the above is this:
You want the fastest, most convenient route to becoming a certified personal trainer.
Anything that detracts from that — such as having to attend anything away from the comfort of your home — can significantly delay how quickly you are able to become certified. This is partly why the Fitness Mentors Online CPT was created; the fitness industry needed an accredited, purely online option for aspiring trainers to get certified with.
4
Ensure You are Fully Prepared with Appropriate Study Guides, Practice Exams, and other Study Aids
If you are going to go through the trouble of getting a CPR/AED and buying personal trainer certification books or study materials, you might as well ensure that you pass the exam the first time around (some personal training certs charge as much as $435 to retake an exam).
For example, Fitness Mentors has created a wealth of study materials ranging from free study guides, premium study guides, audio lectures, and even practice tests to help students prepare themselves the best way possible for their exams.
Study materials that are created by previous exam takers are always helpful. There are usually a wealth of blogs online that feature stories of how people prepared for their personal trainer exam and what questions threw them into a frenzy. I encourage you to read up on these types of blogs and to look into some premium study materials that make studying and learning the material easier, and most importantly, quicker to digest.
5
Set Up a Study Schedule to Retain as Much Information as Possible as Quickly as Possible
If you are setting out to study, take, and pass your online personal trainer certification course in two months, be honest with yourself in terms of how much time you can actually give yourself to studying each day.
Personal trainer certs are not made to be walks in the park; there is a lot of complex biological, programming, and business application information to learn. Truth be told, it can be pretty hard but only if you don’t study and prepare yourself the right way.
But you’re not going to have that problem are you?
As a former college professor who helped students study and prepare for their CPT, I’ve found that a dedicated student can begin studying and be prepared to take (and pass) the CPT in as little as two months.
Here is a basic outline of the strategy you can use to accomplish the same.
How to get a CPT in 2 months:
- Dedicate yourself to reading 1-2 hours per day
- Create your own chapter-by-chapter notes from the book/coursework
- Use study guides to review hand-picked topics for reference
- Use audio lectures to review the information (while driving/working out/during down time)
- Take practice tests of each chapter
- Quiz yourself on 5-10 chapters of the book at a time every few weeks
- Reread study guides as you get deeper into the book
- Quiz yourself and document the questions you miss; revisit the sections of the book of the topics you’ve missed
- Quiz yourself lots leading up to the final week of study
- Take a entire practice exam and write down questions you missed; revisit topics you’ve missed
- Take official certification exam once you consistently get 85% passing score on practice exams
Get Your Online Personal Trainer Certification Started Today
There is no better time than now to get started on your personal training career. Personal trainers are consistently marked as professionals with exceptional work/life balance, with jobs that have flexible working hours, have growth potential of 13% by 2022, and just generally are more fun careers to begin with.
If you have any questions about the best online personal trainer certification option for you, your experience studying online, or anything else related to online CPTs, please let me know in the comments.
Eddie Lester
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