Like my nutrition case study, I needed 80% or more to pass. I got 86%, which means I passed with a “credit”, which is better than passing with a “pass” but not as good as a “distinction”, but who cares…? I Passed??

So what now? well I’m going on holiday today for a week, so I’ll have a think about what I want to do, i.e. work in a gym? set up my own business or a bit of both.

I have my Brother working hard on my new website: www.trainerchrisspring.comwhich advertises my services, so that’s a start.

Am well chuffed. Now its time I take a well earned rest for a week and get a nice tan to show some definition

Thanks for reading.

I’ve been looking into Venue hire, and contacted my old school, which rents out one of there gymnasiums. £25 an hour, a bit steep, and could probably get some space for cheaper than that, think Church Halls, Village Halls etc. But as its my first outing, I think id like to stick with some where I know, and after spending 5 years of my childhood at the place, I know the school pretty well. I can also use there equipment, like mats, which will save me buying a few, for now. Also, they offer a 10% discount if I book for 12 weeks. So its only £22.50 a week.

Next up was Insurance, I mentioned a while back that any Trainer working independently of a Gym needs their own Insurance. REP’s can sought you out with this, for £80 a year, with a £5,000,000 limit for injuries and death (god, I hope I don’t kill anyone). Just go on the REP’s website and follow the links.

I found out on my Circuit course I did through Future Fit, that you also need a Music Licence if your doing your own classes. This is to allow you to play CD’s you buy or to play music from an MP3 player. There are different licences out there depending on what it is you will be doing. For the use of up to 1000 songs to be played in a Fitness Class the Fee is £100. The question is, will anyone actually check up on you to make sure you have a licence? I doubt it, but I don’t fancy taking the risk, knowing my luck they would.

Finally, equipment. It is possible to set up a Circuit Class with next to know equipment really. Just have your participants do Body Weight exercise. But who would want to keep going back to a class like that? I wouldn’t. I’ve come up with a small list of essential equipment that I could use to make a pretty okay class to begin with. The list includes, 2 Gym Balls, 2 Steps, Resistance Bands, Dumbbells and a skipping rope.

I was thinking I’d need a few dumbbells, but then I thought of Resistance Bands, which can easily be used for several exercise and are far cheaper than weights.

So total cost for my first 12 weeks, I reckon, will be £600. The only ongoing Fee will be the Venue Hire. Everything else is either payable annually, or as and when I want to add/replace equipment.

Oops, I just remembered about advertising, that’s probably the most important thing. Obviously I have my website, and I can use the services of Facebook and Twitter to get the message out to my friends, but to get the word out to the masses, id need a lot of flyers and make sure a lot of people see them. Apparently 10% of the people who see your flyers will attend your class, or was it 1%? Will have to check that. That’s what my instructor said on my course.

The good thing about a lot of these costs is that they aren’t need every month etc. Once I start getting a fair amount of people along each week I don’t need to advertise the class, word of mouth is pretty powerful.

Not that I’m really that bothered anyway, as the job sounded pretty crummy, and has made me decide that I don’t think I really want to work for a large gym chain in one of there gyms. First of, the pay was minimum wage and the job involved me having to clean the gym. I’m worth more than minimum wage surely. People in McDonald’s earn minimum wage. Ive just spent £2500 learning how the body works, different muscle names and how they function, how to advise people to look after themselves, and LA fitness think im worth the same as some school drop out who serves burgers for a living. Fcuk that.

So im going to go it alone. After speaking to a few guys in the office, they have really motivated me to use my Circuit Instructor Qualificationand set up my own local Circuit Class, which could earn me between £60 – £100 an hour. That’s more like it. Not that I’m in this industry solely to earn money. I want to help people. And by teaching my own class I can certainly help more people that I could if I was cleaning floors.

What do I need to do to set up my own Circuit Class? So far i have this on my to do list;

• Find Venue
• Adverise it – Leafets, Website, Social Networking etc
• Create a Circuit
• Buy some simple equipment

Any thing else I missed?

Going to aim to get this all set up so i can hit the “New Year Resolution” market in January.

Will try my best to document it all on this blog, right here!!

So a while back I sent my CV out to a few gyms around London looking for some part time experience, well surprisingly, yesterday I got a call from LA Fitness, about a Part Time position with them as an “LA Coach”, which is just basically a Fitness Instructor with some reception work thrown in when required.

We had a 5-10 minute chat on the phone, where they asked me a few “interviewy” questions and explained a bit about the role. I must have passed the initial test as they invited me to an Interview with them on Friday and if successful, I will be offered the position.

Whilst on the phone she mentioned that as a level 2 instructor the pay is 14k (annual for full time) so would be pro-rata’d to part time etc, which isn’t much at all, but as its only a Part Time job to work around my current office job, im not concerned at all about the pay, I just want to get some experience and get in the industry.

She also mentioned that as I’d mostly be working of an evening I’d have to take some classes which they would provide training for, would that be ok? Err, yeah. Free Training and experience doing classes, right result.

Will let you know tomorrow how I got on, fingers crossed.

Im not actually that bothered about getting a Part Time job in the Industry, yes, it will give me some experience and see how things are done, but im going to be so busy over the next few months I don’t think im going to have time to work a full time job, work out, study and work a part time job.

So what’s happening in the next few months? Well next week im starting my 8 week Nutrition and Weight management course, which will be completed Online. That is followed by a 8 week case study, in which I will need to apply my newly found knowledge on foods etc to a Guinea Pig… my Brother.

Whilst doing that Case study, I will be attending a 5 day work shop in January for Personal Trainer and Advanced Instructor, which is also followed by a Case Study, a 12 week one. And then once I have completed that, I can start my final part of my Course, Which is more Nutrition stuff.

So pretty busy, but am looking forward to it.

In the meantime I have sent my CV out to a few gyms in London looking for a part time Gym Instructor Job. Here is a copy of my e-mail, to which i have not yet received a reply:

Hi there,

I hope you are well today

I’m currently training to become a personal trainer and would like to know if you have any part-time Gym Instructor positions available, which will allow me to work around my current 9-5 office job?

I am really eager to learn more and gain experience working in a gym. This will help me complete the remainder of my Personal Training Diploma with Future Fit.

To date I have completed:
Level 2 Gym Instructor qualification
Circuit Training (one day course)
Core Stability & Torso Training (one day course)
 
I have a very strong interest in free weights and good nutrition. My personal goal is to achieve that shredded muscular look seen on the covers of Men’s Health

I am passionate about looking after my body and want to help other people achieve their goals too.

My CV is attached which I hope is of interest.

Thank you
Chris

Its only been a week, but would have thought I’d have received a reply by now. Will keep you informed if i hear anything.

Will right another post this week (promise) about my new diet i started 2 weeks ago. Watch this space.

As I mentioned, a couple weeks ago I had 2 1 day courses, 1 day was Circuit Training, which was fun and exciting, allowed us to get a good insight to how Circuit Classes are set up and the financial benefits involved. The “teacher” for the day, David Bland, a guy who has been in the industry for 20 odd years, was like a walking encyclopaedia. He knew everything about everything when it come to Fitness.

One thing he advised us about Circuits that has stuck in my mind is that you can make more money doing Circuit classes than you can Personal Training. He said its possible to charge between £6 – £25 an hour per class. With classes attaching between 4 – 12 people, that’s a lot of money for an hours work of shouting at people.

As well as going through how to set up Circuits for a class, he touched on Marketing. Creating different Circuit courses through out the year, targeting different seasons. I.e. Ski season, do a 12 week Ski Circuit, advertise it in Travel agents as a good way to get fit and ready for Skiing. Create the Circuits so they focus on muscles that are used whilst Skiing. Or do a Beach Body Circuit in the summer… who doesn’t want to get a 6 Pac for the Summer? So target all them people with good marketing and get them in your classes. The possibilities really are endless.

The second day, the more boring day, was Core Stability and Torso Training. Having no experience yet in the industry I didn’t really find this course beneficial, a lot of the theory went over my head. I think the course was more for people that have been doing Personal Training for a year or 2 and want to increase there understanding of the Core. For me, it was far to much info to soon.

Neither of the courses required any assessment, just turn up and you get your Certificate and REP’s points for your CPD (Continuous Professional Development).

So that’s me done now till November, when I start my Nutrition and Weigh Management course, which is an 8 week home study followed by an 8 week case study, which will tie in with my 12 week Personal Trainer Case Study. A lot of hard work.

Now, I’m going to get my CV sorted and start looking for a Part Time job as a Gym Instructor. I’m really starting to get fed up with my 9-5 office job. Role on Next March.

Sorry for the late notification, but have been a tad busy with my new workout plan to post the good news. Sunday was the day of my Level 2 Gym Instructor Assessment with Future Fit, in which I had to show an Assessor that I was able to deliver a successful induction to a new gym member (my girlfriend).

The whole thing probably lasted about 30 minutes. A lot quicker than I was expecting, probably because I was so good

As previous mentioned, I had to get my “client” to do a warm up, stretches, main CV workout, Fixed resistance machines, cool down, more stretches and then some free weight exercises.

All though the complete programme was an hours worth, once the assessor had seen enough of one machine, he’d get me to move on to the next. So instead of dong 10 minutes on the Bike, my Girlfriend was only on there for about 2 minutes. Some machines she didn’t even need to get on to as I had demonstrated enough for the assessor to see in my instructions.

So combined with my Portfolio, which have a couple of errors, I was deemed capable of being a Gym Instructor.

Now with this qualification under my belt, I can start looking for a Part time job as a Gym Instructor which will help me with my Level 3 Personal Trainer qualification that I am hoping to achieve.

This weekend, im off on a 2 day course which is for my Circuit Training and Core Stability and Torso Training. Will post more on this tomorrow

After thinking I had completed my Portfolio last night (a requirement to pass the assessment), I read that we are not allowed to just copy the instructions from the manual into each of our Session Plans – I need to complete a Session Plan for each exercise and write instructions on how to use that machine.

Silly me, for not reading the Assesment guidlines before I started my Portfolio, but all this morning I have had to “re-write” all my instructions for 47 Session Plans.

That aside, I’m confident that I will do well on Sunday, but really crapping it, hoping i don’t mess up on something easy, or get a stretch wrong.

I wish it was over with now… making us wait 4 weeks is torture. If we had done is 1 day after our 3 day work shop I would have been fine!

Wish me Luck!