Personal Training Courses and Careers

REPs Registration and Insurance

Last week we spoke about the steps to becoming a personal trainer, I am now briefly going to look at joining REPs and getting insured. Thankfully this is the easiest step to becoming a personal trainer.

Why REPs?

Register of Exercise Professional

First of all I would like to discuss REPs and why I think it is a vital organization for a fitness professional. There is often discussion amongst personal trainers as to whether it is worth joining? I have one simple answer…

I go back a fair way in the fitness industry to a time before REPs, what some may call the good old days! Now back then each trainer was judged on their merits, more the inter personal skills rather than knowledge.  There were no standardized qualifications, or accepted minimum standards. There were some amazing personal trainers out there and unfortunately some shocking and more importantly dangerous ones.

No I hear you saying there still are… Well that is true but as a proportion of the industry they are a lot fewer in number!

What many people forget is that REPs will not make our industry perfect, and the organization is still learning. It’s main focus is that the fitness industry and more importantly each fit pro has a basic level of training that makes them safe and standardized.

What most fit pros forget is that their level 3 personal trainer qualification is a start point. It give you the basics, a foundation for you to build on.  In an ideal world each personal trainer would come out of their course and hold all the knowledge in the world but this unfortunately is not possible.

On a purely financial level my REPs membership had allowed me to convert a lot more leads into paying clients. Clients like the idea of an association they can complain to if things go wrong. In many cases self-employed trainers are often asking for relatively large sums of money after only a couple of meetings. Knowing you are registered gives them a much grater sense of security when handing over that cheque!

So how do I join REPs?

Joining REPs is easy all you need to do is register on-line, submit copies of your certificates and proof of insurance. They will then send you out a membership card and certificate of membership.

Where do I get insurance?

There are many suppliers of insurance, and which one you go with depends on your specific needs.  It is well worth checking out with your insurance provider that all the services you offer will be covered!

Next week I am going to look at the key things to do when setting up a personal training business.

TOM

PS Please feel free to leave comments below!

Tom has been involved in the fitness industry for nearly 20 years. He is a specialist in rehabilitation, exercise referral and helping other fitness professionals to improve their business. He is also involved with course development, teaching, assessing and IQA of a range of training courses. He is always willing to meet other professionals so please do contact him via social media with any questions or just to say hello.

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