Any personal trainers here....

[kimandkathess]

Or someone in that general area of work?

I have always loved nutriton/weightloss/exercise, though I have not always followed through. I am bound and determined to this time.

Why I am askign is because In a couple years I am looking into doing something different and I just feel like this would be a good area for me. It really motivates me.

I was looking into getting into something along the lines of:
Personal trainer
Nutrition/wellness consultant
Weight Management Consultant
Cardio/kickboxing insturctor

Or a mix of a couple of those.

What I want to know is
Did you just get certifications? Or did you go to college for a degree and get a major or minor in athlectic training or exersice science. Any information or tips would be greatly apprecieated.

[kimandkathess]

bump

[abond0017]

I know this is old, but I wanted to answer anyway.

I have an Associates in Fitness and Nutrition cause like you I loved the subject...still do, but unfortunately it has not turned out to be as good of an opportunity for me cause I wanted to focus more on the nutrition side of things. With that, I would have to go back to school for a Bachelors to really get any kind of good paying job. Any titled job like "Nutritionist" or "Dietitian", or even sometimes "Nutrition Consultant" are usually regulated by the state licensing board and the only way you can call yourself one is to complete a Bachelors and go through the certification training that usually requires 100's of hours of internship in a clinical setting. You can sometimes get away with calling yourself a nutrition consultant, but then you basically have to go into business for yourself or work for some place like Weight Watchers. At Weight Watchers you might be pushing the services there as kind of a sales person as much as you would be required to actually help them loose weight...and even then, I'm pretty sure you would have to strictly follow their plans and guidelines for prescribing weight loss plans and not go with your own ideas.

As for the Fitness/personal trainer aspect of things...again, you would need to be certified (even as a group fitness kickboxing instructor I believe). Although the process isn't quite as rigorous as clinical certification for calling yourself a nutritionist and you can get away with not having a college degree, you still have to study the certifying companies material and take their exam. If you plan on training at a fitness club, you would need to see which company's certification the require for you to be hired. However, if take this route, you will most likely again be part sales person as you will be expected to try and sign people up for the club and sell products. If you instead want to start your own training business, I would highly suggest additional training/education to the required certification courses. If you injure someone, you will be solely responsible.

If you went at it on your own for either, you would have to be very proactive at getting clients. I wouldn't think it is ever easy to build a service based business...would take a lot of hard work.

As you can see, both fields are a bit more complex than you would first imagine. It is good you asked the questions though before...I didn't find all of this out till I was half way through my degree.

Also, neither of these fields are ones that are gonna produce a ton of income, you can look up the stats on the average income for each easily.

Don't get me wrong...I LOVED learning everything I did, and I still LOVE the ability to help people that ask me for it...but I was just not informed enough on everything before I started my education, so I had expectations that were not realistic.

I hope that gives you some perspective. Fell free to ask anything else and I'll be glad to help.