Continuing Education For Personal Trainers

There are plenty of opportunities for continuing education for personal trainers, and it’s important to keep developing your industry skills and knowledge to help clients in the best possible way.

To break down everything you need to know, this article will cover:

• What Are CECs For Personal Trainers?
• Continuing Your Education As A Personal Trainer With Level 4 Courses
• CPDs Are A Great Example Of Personal Trainer Continuing Education Courses
• Seminars & Workshops Offer Effective Continued Education For PTs
• Free Continuing Education For Personal Trainers

But before we get onto this, why not consider continuing your development as a PT with our Level 4 Sports Nutrition Course. By expanding your skills and knowledge, you’ll be able to provide clients with the highest level of training to reach their goals. Download our course prospectus to learn more.

What Are CECs For Personal Trainers?

Although more of an American concept, Continuing Education Credits (CECs) help advance your career by allowing you to develop your skills or learn new ones. The US differs from the UK, in that American PT courses require renewal and recertification every year or so.

You may have read Continuing Education Credits (CECs) or Continuing Education Units (CEUs) as terms used in education programmes to assist and enable professionals to maintain their licences in a particular profession. Whilst these are often mandatory in the US, this isn't the case in the UK.

Still, the general CECs term can refer to any professional development a PT undertakes, such as:

• Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Courses
• Workshops
• Seminars

The terms Continuing Education Credits and continuing education are synonymous. By completing any kind of course to develop your industry knowledge and skills, you’re furthering your education in the field.

This can help you branch off into other specialised areas, and expand both the number and type of clients you train.

Continuing education, or professional development, isn’t just common in the fitness industry but in professions such as:

• Teaching
• Engineering
• Nursing
• Social Work

Although CECs aren’t compulsory in the UK, and you won’t need to renew your PT certification, it’s still important to continue developing your skills and knowledge. By completing these personal development courses, you can market yourself much better to a wider range of clients.

This means you can charge more by offering niche services to lots of people. You can also apply for more advanced roles if you’re looking for further stable employment.

Let’s explore a few of the options available to you.

Continuing Your Education As A Personal Trainer With Level 4 Courses

There are various courses fitness professionals can undertake to further their education and develop their knowledge. 

This can lead to specialisms and finding a niche, allowing you to expand your client base and appeal to more people, helping you make money as a personal trainer.

It also means you’ll be able to call yourself a Level 4, or Master, Personal Trainer.

These Level 4 Personal Trainer Courses include:

• Advanced Sports Nutrition
• Lower Back Pain Management
• Obesity & Weight Management Control
• Diabetes Management Control

We’ll break these CECs for personal training down for you!

PT Continuing Education Courses: Advanced Sports Nutrition

This personal trainer continuing education course is ideal for those looking to help clients reach their goals through both training and how they fuel their body. 

You’ll build upon existing knowledge of how nutrition contributes to health and weight management, and tie that into the training programmes you create.

This includes learning how to write specialist nutrition plans and help clients reach specific exercise and sporting goals. 

Upon qualifying, personal trainers can become a nutrition coach, and advertise themselves as qualified nutrition advisors.

Having this knowledge means you’ll be able to combine your training programmes with nutrition and meal plans for clients, allowing your training and dietary advice to influence one another to help clients successfully reach their goals.

For example, Emma Grogan is a Liverpool-based personal trainer who is also a qualified nutritionist:

With these qualifications, she is able to appeal to a wider pool of clients and offer them more services, thereby increasing her income.

Find out more about advising clients with our article 'Can Personal Trainers Give Nutritional Advice?'

Personal Training Continuing Education Credits: Lower Back Pain Management

Helping those with debilitating issues such as lower back pain can be a rewarding experience. This issue can be incredibly difficult to live with and takes a long time to recover from, especially for those suffering after an injury.

By enrolling on this continuing education credit for personal trainers, you will play a crucial role in the recovery and pain management of your clients by helping them get back on track through creative and rewarding programmes.

You’ll help clients manage and overcome their lower back pain with safe and effective exercises, as well as understand their individual needs such as:

• Posture
• Muscle imbalance
• Movement range

As life expectancy is increasing, this means there are many suffering with mobility issues. By completing this course, you’ll be able to extend your services to special populations, such as personal training for the elderly, and for those with disabilities.

Corrina King from CorrFit works as a personal trainer specifically to help with the management of lower back pain:

Corrina trains men and women of all ages and, having been injured herself, understands the frustration about resuming training or injury rehabilitation. 

However, you don’t need to have experienced injury to become qualified in lower back pain management.

Obesity & Weight Management Control - Continuing Education For Personal Trainers

As many people who begin training do it for weight loss, this is a great course for continuing your education as a PT. 

You’ll learn how to deliver safe, tailored, and effective exercise programmes to assist overweight or obese clients.

This will have a focus on long-term weight loss and management to help them improve their quality of life. You will be provided with the knowledge to help obese clients create permanent lifestyle choices and implement positive habits.

With obesity and diabetes being among the most common health issues in the UK, there is a demand for weight loss specialists. However, these issues can be prevented or tackled with proper fitness education, exercise, and nutritional knowledge.

By understanding the causes and symptoms of obesity, you’ll be able to help clients manage their conditions much more successfully. 

Having the knowledge to understand these causes means you can help clients avoid triggers or behaviours that may affect their training.

If you have these qualifications, you can ensure overweight clients will trust you to help them achieve their weight loss goals such as with Molly Home Personal Training:

As you can see from her extensive list of qualifications, she has plenty of experience and expertise to assure clients she has the knowledge to help them successfully achieve their desired weight loss goals.

PT Continuing Education With Diabetes Management Control

According to Diabetes UK, there are over 3.9 million people who have been diagnosed with the condition in the UK. With this number growing each year, the need for preventive measures and treatment is clear. 

By enrolling on this kind of personal trainer CEU, you’ll be able to understand the causes of diabetes, the dietary guidelines and nutritional needs for those with type 1 and type 2 diabetes. 

You’ll also learn how to programme specific training routines and what precautions to take with diabetic clients.

This can then lead to enhancing your earning potential by working with both private and public medical practices through GP referral schemes. 

This can be to help both their physical and mental health as you will learn how to change their attitude towards a long-term healthy lifestyle, and create sustainable, lasting changes.

For example, Stefania Fabrizi from Fitness Dynamics has extensive qualifications and specialises in helping those who suffer from diabetes:

This means she can extend her services to not only those who are just looking for general training but also people who need extra support or care. 

With these continuing education credits for personal trainers, you can ensure all clients of different conditions can receive your help. 

It reduces the risk of eliminating certain groups of people. As a personal trainer, you should recognise your ability to help all kinds of clients, and complete personal development training to ensure you’re as inclusive as you can be.

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Continuing education for personal trainers is important for helping you progress onto different areas of fitness. Check out these articles to see where this personal development can lead you:

• Types Of Professional Development For Personal Trainers
• Train The Trainer Qualifications
• Top 7 Progression Opportunities For A Personal Trainer

CPDs Are A Great Example Of Personal Trainer Continuing Education Courses

Continuous Professional Development, or CPD Fitness Courses, are available for personal trainers to develop theoretical and practical knowledge, as well as experience to help them progress further in the industry.

Those in the fitness industry should always be looking to deepen their knowledge, and gain qualifications to expand their services to a wider group of clients. This can increase your employability as well as boost client prospects.

CECs for personal training in this area include:

• Kettlebells
• Circuit Training
• Suspension Training
• Boxing & Pad-work
• Strength & Conditioning
• Group Training

Many of these courses can be completed in a short amount of time and for a reduced price. This means you can expand your client base even quicker and increase your earnings potential straight after completing the courses. 

For example, OriGym offers these extensive CPDs as highlighted above at just £129 a course. However, all 6 can be taken for £488! Even better, all of these are single-day speciality courses, meaning you’ll be qualified after completion that same day.

Gaining CPDs is a great way to offer additional services and grow your business, check out our article on Additional Personal Training Revenue Streams to find out more. 

Now, let’s break these CPD courses down!

Strength & Conditioning CEUs For Personal Trainers

Strength and conditioning training helps athletes push their bodies further and improves their performance. It’s also used to decrease the risk of injury during strenuous activity.

If you’re looking to expand your portfolio past general fitness enthusiasts and into more serious work, this is an ideal personal trainer continuing education course. By learning how to design and deliver programmes for athletes of a range of abilities, you can increase your earnings.

Building your level of experience with both professional and amateur athletes means you’ll also increase employability prospects. 

Kettlebell Courses For PTs Continuing Education

Kettlebells are a fun and versatile method of exercise, offering a highly effective workout for people of all shapes, sizes, and abilities. 

This is ideal for increasing cardiovascular fitness and strength, allowing you to add a more intense and creative workout to help clients reach their goals.

By becoming an expert in conducting kettlebell training sessions, you’ll be able to effectively deliver different sessions for a range of clients with varying abilities. 

This can be completed in a 1 day face-to-face CPD workshop, meaning you can incorporate this into your client workouts, and even offer lucrative classes or group sessions.

Suspension Training CECs For Personal Trainers

As suspension training helps improve balance, strength, and flexibility, its popularity has greatly increased in recent years. Although it engages the core and creates a greater range of motion when performing exercises than using machines, it’s a safer way to activate muscle fibres.

The demand for instructors is also high due to the rise of suspended movement becoming increasingly popular. 

However, this means you will need plenty of knowledge on how to plan sessions, lead clients, and provide effective demonstrations.

This course will help you keep sessions interesting and allow you to offer something to clients they may not have considered before. It will teach you the benefits of suspended movement as a training exercise and the practical applications of it.

Personal Trainer Continuing Education With Circuit Training Courses

This challenging training method is one of the most effective for getting clients results. A course like this covers the central elements of a balanced circuit training session for groups, strengthening your knowledge and building your reputation as a master personal trainer.

You will be equipped with the skills to instruct challenging and engaging circuit training sessions helping clients build their endurance and strength through different aerobic and resistance training.

As circuit training allows personal trainers to get effective client results and add a creative edge to their workouts, this is an area of continuing education all personal trainers should consider. 

Group Training For Personal Training CEUs

As a personal trainer, being able to offer group training to clients is ideal as they can gain all the benefits of training while having the choice to socialise with like minded people who may share their goals.

This particular CPD also allows you to learn more in-depth information about periodisation and creating effective workouts.

The greater number of clients also makes this a lucrative endeavour. Group personal training results in more people returning to use your service, and more of a social experience that people can get family and friends involved in.

Boxing & Padwork Continuing Education Credits For Personal Trainers

Another increasingly popular method of fitness training for casual gym goers and fitness enthusiasts is padwork. This is great for building stamina and losing weight, allowing you to offer a fun service people may not have tried before.

An ideal area of continuing education for PTs, the low equipment cost and flexibility lets you provide a less common service without having to spend a large amount of money. 

This makes it great for aspiring personal trainers or those who have recently completed a Level 3 Personal Trainer Course.

This CPD covers the fundamentals of an actual boxer’s training programme, including improving speed and cardiovascular fitness. 

By gaining an understanding of the use of pads and developing a punching technique, this not only boosts your employability prospects but also allows you to help clients pickup a new hobby.

Medicine Ball CPD for Personal Trainers

Medicine balls are effective gym equipment that helps people improve their muscular strength, power and coordination.

Enrolling on a Medicine Ball CPD course will teach you how to perform medicine ball exercises for different areas of the body.

When you become a Medicine Ball expert, you can incorporate medicine ball workouts that target different muscle groups of your clients to help them achieve their fitness goals. 

You could even run Medicine Ball group classes if you're looking to offer additional services as a PT and increase the number of clients you can train.

Seminars & Workshops Offer Effective Continued Education For PTs

Personal training continuing education credits can involve workshops and seminars. These can be effective for furthering your educational experience, as well as developing new skills and expertise.

Seminars and workshops differ from accredited courses as they don’t provide qualifications for those who attend. Workshops give people a ‘taste’ of what a specific practice involves.

However, the biggest benefit is learning from someone who’s an expert in that particular niche or area of fitness. Attending these workshops also allows you to build meaningful industry connections.

Although these workshops don’t provide formal certifications at the end of completion, they’re a great way to further your knowledge and learn from industry experts.

For example, Integra Education has an Exercise Lab which provides personal trainers with practical workshops. This involves applying the principles of exercise mechanics and improve exercise delivery techniques:

These workshops are most suitable for exercise professionals looking to move away from pre-determined protocols towards a more tailored approach to exercise.

Once enrolled, established PTs are granted life-long access to online lesions and quizzes, allowing them to continue renewing and consolidating their knowledge.

As you'll see from the reviews below, these workshops are used for people to try out different areas of fitness and learn more about their benefits. This is great for personal trainers looking to expand the services they offer and want to venture out into areas they haven’t tried before.

While workshops are most often done in-person, PT continuing education seminars can be attended both in-person or virtually. Websites such as Eventbrite have different seminars available for people to attend, many of which are free:

With seminars like this one, all users have to do is reserve a spot and turn up on the day! These events are great for building meaningful business relationships, allowing you to network with others to recommend and promote one another’s services.

These events are also more budget friendly than workshops as many of them are free or offered at a lower cost. This makes it a great option for those who may have limited finances yet are looking to develop their expertise and industry knowledge.

Free Continuing Education For Personal Trainers

Although gaining qualifications is the best way to deepen your knowledge and expand your clientbase, there are plenty of options for online PT continuing education. 

Most of these are free and while they should be used to complement knowledge learned through personal training courses, they can be effective for building on this foundation.

Free continuing education for personal trainers can include resources such as:

• Research Papers
• Online Blogs
• Videos
• Social Media Trends

You can find research papers on websites such as Core. This is the world’s largest aggregator of open access research papers from journals and repositories:

As opposed to tools such as Google Scholar, which restricts many articles with a paywall, Core provides free articles available for anyone to use. However, while one of the benefits of these articles is that they’re free, it may take some searching for ones relevant to you.

Online blogs are a great resource for finding out more information on a certain topic. This can be a good way to understand something in simpler terms as most articles will be written with general users in mind.

For example, OriGym’s blog has plenty of articles intended for a broad audience of varying fitness and industry knowledge. This makes it more accessible to general readers as research papers can have a lot of scientific jargon the average reader might not be familiar with.

For instance, if you're interested in training clients with diabetes, OriGym has blog articles specifically dedicated to advice for personal training clients with diabetes. This can be used for background reading and to consolidate information:

Fitness videos can also be very useful for personal trainers who are more visual learners. This is great if you’re trying to understand particular movements as written instructions can only get you so far, especially if you’re trying to understand the best way to teach it.

Videos on sites such as YouTube also put a more human face to the industry and can help you learn much easier as you’re essentially being taught something as you would by a virtual coach.

You can also use these video sharing platforms for more academic purposes. For example, this video below is a free one you can use to build upon existing knowledge or learn something completely new:

As this continuing education online seminar video comes from Harvard University, you can also be assured the information being discussed is credible.

Video sharing websites such as YouTube are great for finding useful information and video essays. However, if you intend to share certain advice and guidance picked up from videos, always be sure you’re receiving it from professional sources.

Social media is also a great tool for learning new tips and tricks to implement in your own training or to use for teaching clients. For example, you could follow Instagram accounts that look like this one, providing quick, helpful tips to their followers:

Personal trainer social media on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram can also help you reach a wider audience and offer your services to more people once you gain a following.

Aside from using online materials to advance your education, have you also thought about taking these services online? Find out more about this with our article 'A Complete Guide to Personal Training Over Zoom'.

Before You Go!

In the fitness industry, you should never stop improving and developing your knowledge. Now you’re aware of the importance regarding continuing education for personal trainers, you can find the most suitable courses for you.

Continue broadening your skills and knowledge with our Level 4 Sports Nutrition Course to give your clients the best level of advice and training you can offer.

To find out how to continue developing your skills and knowledge, download our course prospectus here.