Honestly the fitness field has become an utter joke.
Many fitness corporations are hiring individuals with only a high school degree and are predicating their entire search criteria on sales experience and communication skills. Individuals who accrue a single personal training certification are calling themselves fitness professionals which is mind boggling to say the least. I also find that many managers have an overtly biased outlook on personal training certifications and place an emphasis on hiring individuals who are certified with the same organization.
Urban,
The fitness industry is growing at such a fast pace and there is more demand for it than there are for people with adequate qualifications. Yes, there are many gyms out there who require the bare minimum to be a trainer such as an online certification course; however, when you open up your eyes and dive deeper into the professional world, you will begin to see that it is no joke. Professionals are professionals for a reason–they went to school, attended a college or university to gain a bachelors in kinesiology, moved on to grad school, gained a masters and some even moved on to acquire a PHD. You are only saying it is a joke because of the lack of statistics that you are gaining from your subjective experience and quite possibly the articles you read that lack sufficient data and research, and probably are written by people who only write about their own experiences without sufficient testing by a researcher.
There are PLENTY of true professionals out there who have worked hard at universities to follow a specific curriculum to gain the knowledge and credit that they need in order to become professional. Obviously, people can develop a modest level of competency in almost any profession without mastering the total body of knowledge and these people can muddle on through but of course, it comes with many consequences. There’s a saying that goes, “He who chooses to represent himself in court has a fool for a client”.
But like I said before, there are a ton of true professionals in the industry, especially in the area of kinesiology, with such a vast variety of disciplines and at such a high rate of growth. You are only looking at a small amount of data, which are the managers who are hiring trainers with only a certification under their belt–the reason being because the industry is growing at too fast of a rate than the people who are trying to go to college to become these professionals with adequate knowledge. It will only be a matter of years before the opposite is true since the industry is so young and so new. Have faith. The fitness industry will soon be filled with highly trained professionals–they’re just in college right now studying their butts off! 🙂