Frequently Asked Questions
QUESTIONS ANSWERED
NHFA’s most asked questions related to Personal Training and FItness Instructor courses.
Anyone with a genuine passion for health, fitness, and helping others can become a personal trainer. You don’t need to be in perfect shape or have elite athletic ability: what matters most is your attitude and willingness to learn.
Personal trainers are approachable, supportive, and focused on helping clients reach their goals safely and effectively. Strong communication, empathy, and motivation are far more important than appearance.
To work as a qualified personal trainer in Australia, you’ll need to complete nationally recognised training, including a Certificate III (SIS30321) and Certificate IV (SIS40221) in Fitness.
A Personal Trainer works with clients to improve their health, fitness, and overall wellbeing through structured exercise programs. Their role includes assessing fitness levels, setting achievable goals, demonstrating correct techniques, and monitoring progress. Personal trainers also educate clients about safe training practices and healthy lifestyle habits. Each client is different, so trainers adapt programs to suit individual needs, abilities, and goals while maintaining motivation and accountability.
Qualified personal trainers in Australia can work across many environments, from commercial gyms and fitness studios to outdoor training spaces and private coaching. Many also run their own businesses, offering one-on-one or group sessions.
There are opportunities to work with children, athletes, older adults, and clients seeking general fitness. The industry provides both full-time and part-time roles, with flexibility to design a schedule that fits your lifestyle.
We will always do our absolute best to help you get started in your personal training career no matter what your budget or circumstances may be.
One of NHFA’s great Points of Difference. This is one of the main barriers stopping people getting started. When Dave started the organisation, one of the key focus points for him was to work out a solution for people in a tight financial situation and enable them to get started in their Personal Training career. He was in a similar position himself and does everything possible to work out a way to help you into a personal training career. We have different investment options and have payment plans in place to assist you in completing your program and start your new career as an elite Personal Trainer!
Course fees can vary depending on the qualification you choose, your study mode, and whether you have prior learning or credits that can be applied. Because NHFA offers flexible study bundles and payment options, the total investment is tailored to each student’s situation.
To get accurate information about pricing, speak with a Course Advisor. They can outline current offers, study combinations, and payment plans that best fit your goals.
A Personal Trainer must have a client attraction system in place to generate business and convert interested or potential clients into paying or investing clients in order to have a profitable business.
Many of the gyms and health clubs across the world have a formula to help their new members when they are first starting to turn them into Personal Training clients. Most gyms are selling introductory sessions to new members as a 3 session Personal Training pack when they first join the gym or health club. As an example, these 3 introductory PT sessions may be sold to the new member at $69-$89. This is fantastic for personal trainers as it’s a lead that may convert into a paying client. This system is extremely important to master for the growth of your own personal training business whether working in a gym, health club or working as an independent trainer in a gym or studio. Having a precise system for converting this 3 PT pack into an investing client through in depth consultations and individualised training sessions is extremely important for rapid business growth.
- Have a well structured, in depth initial consultation. You will learn what your potential clients problem is and how you can help them. It makes overcoming objections (areas of concern) easier because you have the answers. This is the key to helping them get started and the key to your business stability and growth.
- Have a system in place to convert as many leads as possible.
- Have professional paperwork. Professional paperwork equals a professional trainer.
- The better you are at your initial consultations and developing your sales skills the more clients you will convert. This means that you will get to help more people firstly and secondly you will be rewarded both emotionally and financially.
- The higher your conversion rate, the more you’ll look forward to these, as you will view them as a fantastic opportunity!!
- This is the real key to your business growth and success as a personal trainer.
The ultimate goal for a personal trainer is to help your clients gain their ultimate lifestyle which in return will supply you with both the income and time to enjoy yours.
The reason why most people become personal trainers is to enjoy a better lifestyle. You can choose your own hours, work around family, be your own boss or simply work in a positive, upbeat environment that you can enjoy every single day. When we help others reach their health and fitness goals and improve their lifestyle, in return they are helping us achieve our ultimate lifestyle goals. Brian Tracey says that if you help enough people reach their goals, they will help you reach yours. “I help people get out of a job that they are depressed over and hate and get into a career in personal training that they love and look forward to every single day. My mission is to help as many people that are in the position of hating their jobs and help them attain a great personal training career that can positively change as many peoples lives as possible, while making sure that they have their own ideal lifestyles.”
- Your quality of life is based around your emotions. Are your emotions caused by your job or career more positive or negative?
- We get what we focus on. Those that are happy are normally the people that love what they do, feel as though they are always making constant progress and excited about its long term prospects?
- Am I proud of what I do? Your work life makes up around 50% of your time and the time spent worrying or thinking about it makes up around 70%. To be happy it helps to enjoy what you are doing in that 70%!
- There is nothing better than the feeling of being appreciated for what you do which then gives you both an emotional and financial reward.
- Having a great lifestyle means that you get to do what you like, whenever you like, how you like with whomever you like.
The 3 Elements of a great Personal Training lifestyle.
- Choosing your own hours, not only how many hours that you would like to work but also the actual hours. Say 6:30am-10:30am daily.
- Having the ability to be able to generate the income needed to fund the lifestyle you desire. By having an uncapped income you can choose to train more clients to earn more income. You can then vary this based on your current circumstances.
- Filling the rest of your day with whatever it is that you most desire to do. Weather it’s your own training, shopping, the beach, surfing or spending quality time with friends and family. With this flexibility the options are now there for you to decide.
There is nothing better then earning a fantastic income from providing a quality service that helps people everyday to improve themselves, their lives and the people around them.
We are very lucky in our industry to earn great money from doing something that we absolutely love! Our incomes are always capable of growing depending on how much time that we are prepared to put into our business and the amount of income that we would like to make to enjoy the lifestyle that we are wanting to lead. If you are wanting to help and train more clients by completing more sessions per week your income will follow. Some trainers have the attitude that they just want to work to live so that they spend minimal time at work and because they can choose their own hours they are spending more time enjoying themselves with whatever it is that they love to do. If you are wanting to increase your income you can choose to devote more time to your clients and complete more sessions to boost your income to what you want it to be. We can also add more value to our sessions to earn more in each individual session to earn more again.
- For many reasons people stay in jobs that they don’t like and are sick of, or sometimes don’t believe that they could have a job that they enjoy or even worst still believe that they don’t deserve it.
- For some people it’s finding a strategy or way to be able to leave what they are doing now and make the changes to start doing something else that they enjoy. This is why our part time courses are so popular!!
- Loving what you do every single day and getting paid for it is a dream for most people. It just 3 months it can be a reality with a decision by moving forward with the program and with constant follow through and dedication.
Dave Burgis who is the founder and director of the National Health & Fitness Academy is well know as one of the countries personal training and health and fitness experts.
He has a mass of knowledge and still teachers over 80% of the program. You will receive special guest teachers if they are the absolute experts in their field, such a nutritionists etc. Dave has been a personal trainer and a fitness presenter teaching for almost a decade right across the country. In that time has had multiple companies within the fitness industry, personal training studios as well as educating over 5000 personal trainers. Dave and his expert team are extremely well respected and sought after for their educational programs. The information, the mentors or coaches and the education that you receive when becoming a personal trainer is the chokehold on the initial success of any personal trainer entering the industry.
The qualifications that you receive may be the same, however the important skills, knowledge and the quality of the education and information will be very different. It’s extremely important to make sure that the education you receive is of the highest quality if you’re wanting to be a personal trainer of the highest quality. Just because an organisation markets itself heavily does not mean that they have a great educational program providing the highest level of education. The coaches, the facility, and the learning techniques for both the theory and practical components are extremely important to the success and development while in the course and of course once you have completed. The aim of the organisation should be that the education you receive should be putting you in front of any other provider. That is our constant goal, to have our graduating students head and shoulders above any other trainer even when first entering the industry.
Absolutely, This is one of our biggest points of difference!
There is so much information that will be given when you are progressing through your personal training course, however there are many things that will still need to be learnt and having ongoing mentoring when first starting in the industry is extremely important in any personal trainers success. We have our mentor program that is just one night per week that we have had massive success with and I believe it to be just as important as the original personal training course. You may be a great trainer but that does not necessarily convert over to having a great personal training business and this is a big mistake that is easy for a lot of new trainers to make.
- Having ongoing coaching by a proven mentor will help you to rapidly grow your business.
- To help produce skilled, confident and knowledgeable personal trainers who have the expertise to guarantee and create life changing results for their clients.
- To ensure that you as a trainer are making a terrific living from delivering a fantastic service that they can be proud of while living their ultimate lifestyle.
- Guidance and direction,
- Positive reinforcement and constructive feedback,
- Accountability, which is lacking in a lot of cases when personal trainers go into the industry. This is the key to your real growth.
- Strategies to gain clients & keep them and create more,
- Your own blue print and business plan for your business,
- Marketing strategies,
- Both professional and personal growth
11 Strategies that your mentor should be sharing with you in your ongoing training and development:
- Your personalised business plan, Simple & effective.
- Developing your success mindset, most important skill!
- Business set up and development,
- How to create a client base and grow it,
- How to create credibility & your own brand,
- Marketing and sales strategies & techniques,
- Value adding and creating more value,
- Various advanced training techniques,
- Health information to assist in your clients’ well being not just fitness.
- Money management and creating more through wealth creation!
Just like we would advise to a client wanting to make changes the best time is right now and there has never been a better time to enter the fitness industry as a personal trainer!
We are constantly hearing from new students that are finally getting started in their course “I should have done this ages ago! I don’t know why I left it so long.” There will always be things that may pop up from time to time but we will always do our absolute best to help work around this to allow you the opportunity. There is a huge emphasis being put on health and fitness especially with the alarming figures of our countries obesity levels. Most of the population hates or at least would rather not be doing what they currently are. Please don’t hesitate if this is something that you really want to do. There are often challenges that may pop up but this is the case in life in general. Take action and get started now in your new career and I’ll look forward to meeting you soon!
- There are often challenges that will pop up and that may prevent people taking action. All challenges have solutions. It’s about being creative and being able to work around these. If you really want to do something, you’ll always be able to work out a way, and if you can’t let us help. Two brains are better than one.
- People who are not where they want to be often play the victim, make excuses for why they are not where they want to be or will justify.
- Successful people take responsibility for their lives, it’s direction and always find a way when things get hard or when challenges arise.
- You must develop and maintain an “I’ll do what ever it takes” attitude!
- Remember the 4 D’s and always maintain Massive FOCUS! Drive, Discipline, Determination & Dedication.
Indecision and procrastination are vicious! It’s the single thing that stops people becoming successful.
