Training the Trainers of Tomorrow: Insurance 101 for Teachers

A personal trainer has many demanding responsibilities. They must learn their clients’ fitness level and health history before taking account of these to determine short- and long-term goals which the client can realistically work towards. The trainer must then help the client to keep on track, says UCAS.

It’s easy to look at the career of a personal trainer (PT) and perceive only benefits, like how the trainer is supposedly being paid to keep in shape. However, PTs are required to update their knowledge regularly – and that’s where the importance of thorough education for PTs comes in.

If you are already a PT, you might be considering training future PTs and preparing them for some of the shocks that could have taken you by surprise in your own personal training endeavours. However, when teaching inexperienced people, risks abound, so don’t pay scant regard to insurance.

What education does a personal trainer need?

The short answer: a surprisingly large amount! We do, however, have a much longer answer that considers not only the entry requirements but also how PTs need to keep refining their prowess.

You might recall, from your time as a PT in training, picking up a level two certificate in fitness instruction before a level three diploma in personal training. These are two qualifications required for personal training, says the Startups.co.uk website.

You might even have spent some time leading gym-based classes as a means of progressing between those levels. You might have fitted those responsibilities in-between sessions of study. After all, it’s possible to stretch out those sessions right over a few weeks or months, even on a single course.

Though there are options for both in-person and distance-based learning, course content tends to be delivered online for some components and in-person for others. Therefore, getting to grips with delivering content through both types of teaching method can feel daunting.

Naturally, the higher the demands for teachers, the higher the risks for them, too. However, a PT’s learning remains far from over even once that level three diploma is in the bag. Don’t overlook that the PT would need the cardiopulmonary resuscitation certificate (CPR) from first aid training.

Mark Briant, director of PT provider MobFit, can attest to PTs’ needs for ongoing, rather than simply one-off, training. He has told Startups.co.uk: “The personal training qualification is a great stepping stone into training clients but in my opinion it’s just the first step – the real learning starts after!”

You could help with a personal trainer’s ongoing development

Contrary to common perceptions, personal trainers are not exactly “paid to work out”. That’s because, for the trainer, the focus is on helping other people to pursue a worthwhile fitness regime for meeting their own goals; becoming a trainer can leave you with less time for your own workout.

Furthermore, there’s a much more academic element to personal training than you might have realised. With some desk jobs, the induction period could teach you much of what you ever need to know to do the job effectively. The same doesn’t apply to the job of a personal trainer…

With exercise science constantly evolving, as Shape makes clear, PTs must keep themselves updated on this field to ensure that they can continue informing students how to work out as safely and effectively as possible. These PTs can refresh their fitness knowledge by attending the likes of workshops, online courses, conference sessions and webinars.

Who could teach some or all of those? You, that’s who. If you find learning about the most recent research and training methods fascinating, you could revel in imparting this knowledge to other PTs. However, you mustn’t underestimate the enormity of the task ahead of you.

What insurance would you need as a trainer of trainers?

If you are sufficiently interested in personal training to consider teaching future trainers, then you might already hold public liability insurance picked up from your own time as a personal trainer. Indeed, public liability cover is a practical necessity for PTs to work with future clients.

Don’t already have this cover? It’s included automatically – with a £3 million indemnity limit per claim – in personal trainer insurance policies provided by Fitness Gold. Public liability cover can help PTs to financially battle against legal claims that they were responsible for a client’s illness or injury.

Still, you should carefully consider what the insurance implications would be if you switched from working as a personal trainer to teaching personal trainers. Fortunately, at Fitness Gold, we offer teacher insurance that would let you replace or modify your coverage if either would be crucial.

What can go wrong when you teach personal trainers?

Teaching aspiring PTs can feel exhausting; you have paperwork to organise, classes to take and a body and mind to be generally pushed to their limits. Therefore, as you finally settle down to enjoy a well-deserved break, you don’t want to learn that someone is suing you for compensation.

Perhaps a personal trainer provided instructions or advice that led one of their clients to suffer an illness or injury – and that trainer now thinks that you were ultimately at fault for failing to teach them to the right standard. That’s where your insurance could save you.

In teacher insurance policies, we offer malpractice cover which combines public liability and professional indemnity insurance. Therefore, whether the claimant is blaming a physical procedure, advice or a mix of both for the issue at hand, you can remain financially shielded.

Other covers offered in teacher insurance policies from our company include kit cover, which would make it easier for you to replace items and accessories essential to your teaching, and legal expenses cover. That would cover you for tax and VAT investigations launched by HM Revenue & Customs.

For further insight into what our teacher insurance policies include, please phone 020 8655 0444. Rest assured that, as soon as you buy insurance from us, you’ll be covered for your teaching responsibilities and so can spare yourself financial anguish.