Introduction
A trainer with no knowledge, registration, and certification is the same as a mechanic with no idea about what comprises an engine! Imagine such a fellow messing about under your car’s hood. The repairs may work by pure luck, or things could go horribly wrong. We’re leaning towards the latter, and we bet you’d agree too.
This is the reason why you go to authorized service centers. You wouldn’t choose just any mechanic off the streets, would you? So, you should be as selective when it comes to choosing a personal trainer who will manage the most important aspect of life: physical well-being. Here is where hiring a trainer who’s K11-certified and Register for Exercise Professionals India Foundation (REPS) registered becomes of paramount importance. It’s the wisest decision you can make for your health, and here’s how you can easily make that choice.
The Checklist: The Questions You Must Ask
The first thing you should check for in a trainer is whether he or she is certified and registered. In our case, we’ll be dealing with REPS. Any other registration won’t do. That’s why, the kind of registration you should know about and look for is a registration that requires one to clear practical exams, for example, your trainer should be able to flawlessly squat and deadlift before he or she even begins coaching you. For starters, you should pose the following questions to your trainer:
- Are you a Registered Exercise Professional with REPS India?
- Where’d you study from?
- How long was the course?
- Was your course face to face?
- Did your course have a practical module, wherein you were taught form and technique by a Master Trainer?
- If “yes,” how long were the practical sessions for?
- Were you able to interact with the teacher in real time or was it just one-way learning?
Assess Face to Face versus Online Learning
Face-to-face learning trumps online learning any hour of the day. Live interaction is matchless. There can be no learning without the ability to ask questions. Online, sadly, doesn’t give you any other option other than staring at the screen. If you have questions, you must forever hold your silence…or Google, but then, what’s the point?
Circling back, once the restrictions are lifted, learning how to grip a dumbbell in real life, performing the Valsalva maneuver, and executing a live dumbbell bent over pull will never be the same as watching it being done. When it’s all about creating muscle memory, how can an aspiring fitness professional develop it sitting in a chair at home?
And the list goes on to drive the point home: would you prefer undergoing surgery by a surgeon who never operated and who learned everything from an online course? Similarly, would you feel comfortable riding shotgun with a driver, knowing fully well that the driver learned how to drive online, without actually steering a car on the road? So, would you hire a trainer who never practiced what he or she preaches or would you select one who took exams (practical and theoretical) to qualify as a fitness professional?
Compare live learning with any online course, the soon-to-be trainer will be slouching in a chair by the end of the first hour of staring at a recording. Also, this trainer will not have learned how to squat, pull up, dead lift…the works, because there is no practical training! The professional himself wouldn’t be tested for form and technique. We’d say that’s a classic case of the blind leading the blind when such a trainer trains his or her client.
From the point of view of a customer, it’d be prudent to lookout for trainers who’re registered and certified. As the smarter move, you, as a client, should hire registered fitness professionals, because registration gives the fitness industry credibility. Right now, a certificate is simply not enough. Trainers need to establish their credentials.
What better way to check whether your trainer is actually a trainer with the help of a register that has the names of all the trainers on it? Enter REPS: its website displays information such as membership ID, validity, status, and much more. It’s where you can look up your trainer! The following are the countries where the register is proudly recognized.
Now, more countries are following suit, toward REPS and the practicality and portability it offers.
A Registered Fitness Professional: The Wiser Choice
How REPS Works for Trainers So That You Benefit the Most
- It ensures trainers adhere to internationally benchmarked standards.
- It ensures skills and competencies meet the national standards, which are in turn shaped by international standards. For you, this means you are prescribed globally validated exercise regimens.
- You can conduct a background check on your trainer.
- The REPS portability gives trainers a higher professional status because of all the formal education they go through to not just be K11 certified but also REPS registered.
- Recruiters will be able to find a trainer on the REPS website with ease. This check validates the status as registered or not.
- REPS-certified professionals have to keep learning to hold on to their registration. They need to accumulate Continuing Professional Development (CPD) points to do so. Simply, trainers have to constantly upskill to remain relevant in the eyes of REPS. That’s good news for any client.
At the end of the day, REPS provides protocols and procedures for trainers, all to meet global health and fitness industry–agreed standards. With a personal trainer who’s K11 certified and REPS registered, you can rest assured knowing that your personal trainer possesses all the relevant and reputed credentials.
Registering is now the next step in an aspiring fitness professional’s journey. Why? Like lawyers have their Bar Council, fitness professionals now have REPS registration: you can have access to a register with the details of every fitness professional. Such checks modulate the fitness industry. Rightfully so, there needs to be documentation for accountability and transparency, which ultimately benefits you, the client. You’ll know the exact status of your trainer on the REPS website.
Earning the Badge of Distinction: K11 School of Fitness Sciences
The K11 certification and REPS registration are earned through intense classroom studying. Even for REPS, every student-turned-professional learns about the why before the how, both in the classroom and practical training lab. For example, students first undergo a series of lectures in which they study the REPS process: from formal consent and signing physical activity readiness questionnaires to training program delivery. Then, the students view live demonstrations of the entire process. After that, it’s time for them to execute the flow under the guidance of Master Trainers.
For us to become the only training providers for REPS and to give our students access to international markets, we had to undergo stringent quality checks to ensure our dispersion of education met the highest standards. We were accredited as a Centre of Excellence with an Outstanding Grade by a third-party, external auditing body PD: Approval, which is appointed by REPS India. Once PD: Approval performs the checks of quality, study material, and content, and gives a go-ahead to REPS India, only then do we become a REPS India recognized training provider. This is not easy to attain, and it isn’t even mandatory. But we, at K11, ran the extra mile. As things stand, we’re the only members who hold the proud status of Outstanding as the Centre of Excellence.
Conclusions
You’ve read how rigorous the entire process of balances and checks is at K11. Such procedures are in place to make sure that you hire qualified personal trainers. With K11, you get a qualified and certified trainer from a school that ensures every criterion is met, not meeting even a single criterion is not an option. It doesn’t get more on the up and up than this. We hope that you, as the consumer, now know the fine line between a theoretically and practically certified and registered fitness professional and an online certified one.
Author
Rahul Chitrakar: K11 School of Fitness Sciences
