Personal Trainer Resume: Complete Guide with Tips

Then comes the interviews and waiting for the response from the hiring managers with decision. The anxiety of waiting for the answer can be very stressful.

However, if you manage to be reassured that you have written a really good resume and you were confident in your interview, you might feel less anxious for the answer because you know you will get the job deserve.

What makes a good personal trainer resume that lands jobs easily? You need to follow some standard guidelines of writing a resume for a first. Next, you might need some extra tips to make sure your resume stands out in the pool of thousands of applicants.

This article will guide you with all your questions and concerns regarding personal trainer resume.

In 2021, there were 306,400 fitness trainer and instructor jobs were recorded in across the USA.

(Source: https://www.bls.gov/ooh/personal-care-and-service/fitness-trainers-and-instructors.htm)

Let's talk about some of the personal trainer responsibilities first; along with it we will tell you how to include them in your resume.👇

What does a personal trainer do?

Personal trainer jobs are often found in gymnasiums, or with athletes or any individual clients. In every role, they are responsible for certain things that are important for the client base.

These are not just communication skills but in-depth knowledge for healthy lifestyles, physical fitness and everything related. Let's discuss.

Train personally

As a personal trainer you are responsible for training your client personally which means you have to pay them attention and be available during the work out and help them throughout.

This includes telling them how much work out they need to do, how to do the workout programs, being there constantly to ensure their form and method are accurate and helpful rather than harmful.

It also includes motivating them to finish sets and meet their daily goals of workout.

When you mention it in your resume, you can mention the number of people you have personally trained. You can describe how you were patient and how your training programs were effective and bore desired results for the clients.

As a personal trainer you need to understand the physique and advise the client accordingly on which exercises they need. You need to understand the needs of client- whether they want to gain weight in muscles or build muscles or lose weight or work on strength training programs and so on.

Your knowledge of exercise science, human anatomy and various health needs are crucial as a personal trainer and should be reflected in your personal trainer resume.

Motivate

Clients hire the personal trainers because they need someone who pays attention closely and also helps them stay motivated until they finish the last set. This requires personal trainers to be really good at motivating.

There are various ways of motivating clients such as positive reinforcement or negative reinforcement or such which are effective for the client. You need to understand every client to decide which is the effective way to motivate them.

Being able to motivate someone else requires patience, understanding, positivity and believing in the client. You can reflect such traits of yours in your resume under skills section to showcase how capable you are as personal trainers.

Diet advise

Human body is complex, especially when it comes to health. You need to exercise properly or it can hurt you, you need to have a proper diet or you'll cause more damage instead of getting healthy.

Food plays a huge part when it comes to physical fitness. You could run an hour everyday and still not get any results because your diet is not properly planned. As a personal trainer you are often responsible for client's diet plans.

This means you need the knowledge of nutrition plans, food and physical needs of vitamins, protein and carbohydrates.

Your knowledge of nutrition and human body should be described in your resume. You can include it in your experience section or education section or skills section.

Most fitness centers provide clients with diet plans along with the personal training and you will need the in-depth dieting knowledge.

Keep track of client's health

A client may injure themselves with a gym equipment or suffer from unhealthy weight loss or mental illnesses during the workout or in the duration of being your client.

As a personal trainer you are supposed to track your client's health and make sure everything is okay-physically as well as mentally.

Client's physical health and mental health are connected and cannot be separated, while you are not expect to counsel them or give therapy, you do need to be aware of the effects of workout and training sessions along with client's state of mind that they come in with.

Most personal trainers understand how workout has positive effects on physical fitness along with mental health. Few understand that wrong manner of motivation or language could affect the client's mental health in subtle ways.

Which is why it is important to keep track of client's health and try to understand them well before charting out their dietary and workout plans.

First aid

Workouts can be tricky, one wrong movement could cause serios injuries. It could be an equipment with wrong weights or just a wrong form of body and the client would be injured.

Sometimes the clients overdo the workout or do not realize that they need a break and end up with an emergency situation!

As a personal trainer present, you are no less than a first responder and you need to take the necessary immediate steps.

This is why you need to know all about the first aid- it could be applying band-aid and also giving CPR! You need to be trained with the basic training for emergencies.

All of these skills should be reflected throughout your personal trainer resumes in profile summary, experience, education, skills and extra sections. Hiring managers will look for all the crucial skills and knowledge along with the experience.

Now let's talk about how to write your personal trainer resume!👇

How write a personal trainer resume?

Writing personal trainer resume comes with some questions- which format to choose, which details to include and how to present your personal trainer profile. And we will answer all those questions and some more!

Format

When you are writing a resume, you need to decide on the format of the resume because it will help you get an idea of which details should be included and how. The outline gives you various sections for your information.

There are many formats for writing a professional resume, resume builder portals offer you a number of formats however not all formats are suitable for every professional resume.

Some of the preferred formats for professional resumes are functional, reverse-chronological and combination. If you have significant relevant experience you should go for the reverse-chronological resume format.

If you are changing careers, combination is your right resume format and if you are a fresher you should choose the functional resume format.

Once you have chosen the format, you can start writing your resume. The reverse chronological format of resume has the sections discussed below:

Header

On the top of the resume, you will have the Contact details section. In that, first you need to mention your name in a slightly bigger fonts. Follow it up with your contact number with area code, make sure to write it in formal way.

Next, you need to mention your email address and make sure it your professional email with formal address. Avoid your personal address which might be informal.

Adding your professional headshot at the top is optional but if you do it, make sure the photo is taken in your formal attire. Your home address is also not mandatory but if you are applying for a job out of state or country, you can mention your location briefly in the end of the contact details section.

Profile Summary

Once you are done with the contact information section, you will write the profile summary. The resume summary is the summary of your professional resume or the profile as a personal trainer.

The resume summary talks about your resume objective briefly, along with the highlights of your accomplishments and key skills.

Begin the section, with the job title you hold- personal trainer. Follow up with the total years of experience and little background.

Next, mention your the key skills and highlights of your career. Try to quantify as much as you can with numbers.

At last, mention what kind of opportunity you are looking for and what you will bring to the table i.e. your experience, knowledge, skills.

Always keep in mind that resume summary should be written in bullet points. It should be crisp, concise and short so the hiring managers don't get bored.

Throughout your resume, avoid lengthy and wordy sentences and unnecessary jargons. You need to be professional and formal but a lot of pretense is not necessary.

Experience

Next in your personal trainer resume or the fitness trainer resume, would be the experience section. Experience section should be written in the bullet points as well.

First, note your job title and the full name of employer. Mention the period of time you worked in that position for.

Next, describe the details of your work experience. the responsibilities you performed well with and the results you achieved with your client base. The skills you utilized to perform well and help your clients.

Again, try to quantify the details with numbers as much as possible. You can include details such as the fitness goals you helped the clients achieve, fitness programs you developed, clients you helped for weight loss, strength training sessions you conducted, exercise routines you created along with exercise programs, excellent customer service you provided, how you tracked fitness goals, fitness levels and proper nutrition plans for clients along with one on one training.

These details are important and also include the keywords that are important for your personal trainer resume.

You can also mention unique instances such as sports injuries that you handled, muscle building goals you planned and helped the client achieve them, number of satisfied clients and their feedback, your experience with various age groups and everything else that may be relevant.

Your experience section is important and including the usual responsibilities may seem unnecessary however it is important because it reflects your knowledge and expertise in detailed manner which increases your credibility.

Education

The education section of your resume should have the details of your relevant highest education.

Mention the name of the education institute and the degree with full name.

You can mention any special courses and programs you have completed along with the trainings you have had for the profession of personal trainer.

Skills

📌 As a personal trainer you need some of the soft skills for the interaction with the clients such as:

• Interpersonal skills
• Communication skills
• Positive attitude
• Motivation skills

📌 And there are some hard skills that you need as well. Here are some of them that you can include in your resume:

• Training clients
• Diet-Nutrition plans
• First aid
• Creating fitness programs

Fitness industry has a lot of interconnected areas such as mental health, diet and nutrition plans, physical injuries, sports and so on. Your knowledge of all of these relevant areas are important and your relevant skills are crucial.

Certifications

As a certified personal trainer you must have some of the certifications and perhaps licenses. The details of these are important.

In your resume under certifications section, you need to mention all your license and certifications along with details of the year when you acquired them and where did you acquire from. Mention the certificate as well.

Tips to write exceptional resume

Keywords

Keywords are important to beat the Applicant Tracking System because hiring managers do not scan every resume manually.

Such keywords are crucial in your personal trainer resume and should be used throughout the resume in most sections.

Some of these keywords are listed here and you might want to do some research to include more.

• Weight loss
• Fitness goals
• Certified personal trainer
• Personal trainer experience
• Safe and effective workouts
• Educating clients
• Exercise physiology
• Fitness enthusiast
• Fitness level
• Human anatomy
• Muscle imbalances
• Free weights

These are few of the keywords that are noted after research of the role, usual job description of a personal trainer job and the industry. You need to include more of such keywords throughout your personal trainer resume.

Customization

Your resume for a personal trainer job may differ depending on the job description. Whether you are applying to a gymnasium or for a job with an individual client, your personal trainer resume will change depending on the specifics of the job description.

You need to mention your many skills, first job, bachelor's degree, experience of record keeping, previous employers, work history, personal fitness knowledge, personal training experience in all of the personal trainer resumes.

However, with every role you might need to make some small changes in your personal trainer resume so that your personal trainer resume is specific and targeted well for the personal trainer job you are applying for.

Key Takeaways

Now you know all about writing a personal trainer resume. You can also refer to our resume examples and templates.

Here are some of the key takeaways:

• Choose the right format
• Quantify the details
• Use bullet points
• Include the keywords

Apart from these, you should also keep in mind to go through some sample resume, examples of professional summary, various personal training resume and personal trainer resume examples.

Keep in mind above points and you are good to go! Make sure you proofread the personal trainer resume once you are done. Good luck with the job hunting!

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)