Many Americans are becoming increasingly aware of the need for better health and personal fitness’s role in this process. This is very apparent when it comes to young people who can have their health outcomes affected by poor diet and a lack of personal fitness.
With parents increasingly concerned about the health of their children, there are increasing opportunities for youth personal trainers. If you are interested in pursuing a youth personal training certification, here is what you need to know.
Why Certification Matters
If you are wondering why it’s important to get specialized training for youth fitness, there are important factors to understand when it comes to working with young people.
One mistake that fitness professionals make is to assume that working with young people is simply a scaled-down version of working with adults. However, teenagers and young people are often still growing. For this reason, their skeletal systems are still vulnerable to certain types of injuries. Going for training helps you, as a personal trainer working with young people, to understand this and help keep your exercise regime as safe as possible for your clients.
Another reason to consider getting a youth fitness certification is the fact that you can tailor your fitness process in a way that you can understand the limits that you can push your clients. This matters because if you push your young clients too much, it will make it hard for them to adhere to the exercise routines that you need them to. Ultimately, this can make your fitness program a lot less effective than it could be.
Apart from the knowledge and skills that you will acquire, the youth personal training certification will make it easier for you to get clients. This is because parents and guardians of these youths want a trainer who can prove that they are qualified to handle their children. Certification acts as this proof. It indicates to them that you have the right skills and knowledge that they are looking for.
Areas Covered Under Youth Personal Training Certifications
In the United States, there are several youth personal fitness training certifications that you can pursue. Many of these are offered by training institutions such as National Personal Training Institute of Florida.
With most of these certifications, you are going to learn the following:
- Child and Adolescent Development
This is a topic that helps you understand the cognitive, physical, emotional and social changes that young people go through as they grow. Understanding this helps you craft personal training programs that are in harmony with the development milestones of your clients, making adherence to the program seamless.
- Exercise Physiology
Under this topic, you are going to learn everything you need to know about the physical aspects of young people and how their bodies respond to exercise. Under this, you will get the knowledge you need to help you tailor training programs that minimize the risk of injuries and achieve the best results.
- Kinesiology for Youth
Kinesiology is the study of body movement and the overall mechanics of the body. As you can imagine, this is important to a personal trainer as it helps mitigate the risk of injuries.
- Age-related Exercise Programming
As the name suggests, this area will help you to understand how to design training programs that are safe for different age groups. Since the term youth is a broad umbrella, knowing specific personal training programs for different age groups will make it easy for you to maximize the impact of your training.
- Nutrition
As someone interested in personal fitness, you may already be aware that nutrition plays an important role in fitness training outcomes. This area of study will equip you with the knowledge that you need to guide your clients through the ins and outs of proper nutrition for your clients. In turn, this increases the chances of success and therefore greater client satisfaction.
- Injury Prevention
Here, you are going to learn everything you need to know about how to mitigate the risk of injuries among your youthful clients. Specifically, you get to learn what the common injuries among young people undertaking personal fitness are and how you can tailor your program to reduce the risk of injury.
- Motivation and Communication
Personal fitness is a journey, and sometimes, your clients may lack the motivation they need to keep going. This area of study helps you to keep your clients motivated and makes the chances of success a lot more likely.
You also learn how to communicate effectively with them. This will enable you to be effective at delivering the fitness outcomes that they are looking for.
- Ethical and Legal Considerations
The impact of this lies in making the fitness training program as smooth as possible. Under this, you get to learn issues such as confidentiality, reporting procedures, and other legal elements of youth fitness.
Factors to Consider
When you are going about choosing the right youth fitness certification, there are several things that you need to keep in mind. Youth fitness training certification represents a significant investment of time and money on your part, and this means that you must make this decision with care.
Here are some of the things to keep in mind during this selection process.
Accreditation and Recognition
A youth fitness training certification is only as good as how recognizable it is. If you intend to use it as a tool to attract clients or to get employment, this factor becomes even more important.
You should make sure that you research extensively to learn about the particular accreditation that you seek. You can do this by checking with third-party accreditation bodies such as the National Commission for Certifying Agencies (NCCA).
Review Content
Understanding the content that you will be learning under a particular certification program will give you insights into its quality. What you would be looking for here is to see if the curriculum is comprehensive enough. This also means that it must align with your career goals and must equip you with the skills you need to achieve these.
Eligibility
Another important aspect when it comes to choosing the right certification program is your eligibility. Many certification programs have minimum requirements as far as education or experience is concerned. Learning about these makes it easy for you to decide on which certification program to go for. This is because there is no need to waste time with a certification program that you do not qualify for.
Youth personal training certification is a great path to a lucrative and rewarding career. Working with young people and helping them achieve positive health outcomes, you get to impact their lives positively and in a lasting way. At NPTI Florida, we work with aspiring youth fitness trainers to give them the skills that they need.
Our personal fitness training courses come with hands-on experience, which helps to improve your career prospects. We are a veteran-owned and staffed institution with years of experience in personal fitness training. Give us a call today and let us help you launch your youth personal fitness training career.
