Awesome Tips for your Personal Trainer Course Practical Assessment

Made the decision to qualify as a Personal Trainer? Ready to enrol onto your course but wondering what’s required to pass your practical assessment? Here, we share the Academy of Fitness Professionals team’s top tips to ensure you sail through your assessment.

Know what to expect

Your practical involves running your very own Personal Trainer session. You’ll have prepared a suitable programme ahead for a gym-based workout that is aligned to your client’s goals. Expect the session to last about 45 minutes to an hour. Your Assessor will be with you every step of the way…yes their job is to ensure you’re ready to practice but they want you to succeed and are committed to helping you get there.

Be (just a little bit) nervous

Nervous energy can empower us to achieve far more than we thought was possible. Put to positive use it can help us achieve our goals so being a little bit nervous is a good thing – use it to your advantage.

Find a fab friend

Have a ‘dress rehearsal’ by heading down to your local gym with a friend and taking them through the paces of their very own personal training session. Think about introductions to the session, explaining the programme, the warm up, main event and cool-down phases. Ask your friend to prepare a few questions for you so that you get to think on your feet and test out all the great knowledge and skills you’ve acquired from your Personal Trainer course so far.

It’s your time to shine

You’ve now nearly completed your course and your practical assessment gives you a chance to show off all your wonderful personal training skills. Remember, this involves running a personal training session and once you’ve passed you will be able to quickly progress to running PT sessions day in and day out with your very own clients.

Keep time on your side

Simple steps such as planning your journey, arriving with plenty of time to spare and making sure you bring copies of work you’ve prepared ahead keep everything on an even keel. This helps maximise your self-confidence ensuring you deliver your very best.

Keep it real

Your practical assessment is focused on your ability to run a real life personal training session. Be warm, friendly, helpful, health and safety conscious and demonstrate your knowledge. Be able to explain your designed programme with knowledge of the human body. But don’t feel you have to recite a whole chunk of course theory that simply wouldn’t be relevant to your Personal Trainer sessions in everyday life!

The Academy of Fitness Professionals provide the gold standard in accredited personal training courses with state of the art training fully endorsed by REPs, Skills Active and the NCFE. Their specialist knowledge features in the UK health and fitness media including the Mirror, BBC2 and Women’s Running. This is the ultimate learning destination for those serious about their fitness industry education and long term career as a Personal Trainer.