Let’s go through the health club staff that you will meet on your first visit to a health club.
The first person that you are going to meet at a health club is a receptionist that will introduce you to a salesman (who may also be one of the trainers). The job of the receptionist is to give any new visitors a introduction to the salesperson and to set the tone of the conversation that you are about to have with the salesperson you are about to meet. Remember the first priority of any health club staff is not to help you get in better shape but to sell you a membership, this only makes sense so remember this as you talk to health club staff in several gyms.
Health Club Staff Training
Health Club staff are usually cross trained and because of the type of work that there is in a health club it is probably OK to have trainers do membership sales as well. Remember that if the salespeople are doubling up as trainers you want to make sure that the trainers are really trainers and not just salespeople that took a weekend course in how to train people.
Besides sales staff every health club has some kind of training staff. Quite often with a smaller gym you will find the staff that does the selling is also the same staff that does the training. Other staff at the Health club may include a receptionist, juice bar staff, pro shop staff and equipment maintenance people.
When evaluating the staff at the health club, make sure that you are looking for credentials for the health club staff and the trainers. There are two types of certifications. Health Club staff trainer certifications are an important way to be able to judge whether the trainers have the skills to educate and show you how to eat and exercise. The following are the two most popular certifications.
NCCA certification – NCCA is a 3rd party governing body whose function it is to impose certification standards and identify quality programs to candidates and the public that are in strict compliance and produce valid, competent, and worthy personal fitness trainer graduates
ACE Certification – The ACE Personal Trainer Certification is designed for trainers providing any form of one-on-one instruction. Once you successfully pass the ACE Personal Trainer certification exam you will have demonstrated your knowledge of basic exercise science, nutrition, fitness assessment, exercise programming, and instructional and spotting techniques.
Looking For Health Club Staff Certifications
You should be asking about certifications and listening carefully to the answers that you get about these certifications from the health club staff. When I was younger certification was the first question that I was asked in applying for jobs at gyms so this should be important to you as a customer as well.
Lastly the health club staff that you will not see and should know about is the person that is doing maintenance on the equipment in the gym. I will cover this again but just be aware that if any equipment stops working in a health club or fitness center I have found that it will be fixed either in one day or in six months, the gym has to decide how important it is for equipment to be fixed. This will affect both the safety of the working equipment and also how much equipment that you can actually use.
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What about the ACSM and ISSA? Those are both good certification programs. Also, anyone with a bachelors in exercise science should be qualified to train. Physiology and kinesiology also help.