What is more needed in a fitness trainer: education, certification, degrees, or a combination?

Remember people like Arnold Schwarzenegger dosen't have a certificate but proved to have  had one  the greatest physiques ever. His exercise and nutritional knowledge is at expert level. Experience in knowing the human anatomy, knowledge of exercising, trial and error with nutrition can lead to expert levels as a trainer.

In reality, the degrees and certificates are mostly useless. They certify you got suckered into buying some training.

If you know what you are doing and do it well for your clients, you will succeed. Their testimonials are like gold in your marketing efforts. Their referrals can eliminate your need for marketing.

Treat 'em right and they'll love ya forever :)

John Gilger

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I think a combination.  You can have all the certificates you want but if you can't put it together for your clients then what are they getting from you?  Some of the best trainer/coaches I've come into contact weren't certified!  But they've had years of experience and got the best out of their clients.  It's like I've was in the medical field at one time and experienced a number of doctors who really weren't very good.  They could pass a test, but applying what they learned...well not good. So don't just go by education, certs and degrees.

Generally the certifications and degrees are tied directly to education so I would say that the most important thing is the relevance of the education to the demographic that is you have chosen to be your target audience. Know the quality of the certification and degree providers, not all programs are created equal. In my field I only accept Pilates instructors who have gone through extensive programs that I am familiar with, there are many weekend certifications that are meaningless in my setting. I agree with James that experience is an extremely important factor however experience alone does not make up for critical knowledge gaps. The personality and the maturity of the individual has to be considered in evaluating their ability to work with the varied personalities that they will have to manage. 

Experience. Education is certainly important. But there is a big gap between theory and practice. Any great trainer that has been doing this for more than just a few years will probably tell you they learned more through experience (in their own training as well as working with clients) than they did through any certification. 

One other thing needs to be said...to be a great trainer one should be energetic, have a great work ethic, and be personable. The technical stuff behind training can be taught/learned, these other traits are a harder to instill if they don't already exist.

In my experience clients/people don't care about degrees, or certifications. Some will ask for some level of experience. What they want is to know what you can do for them. If you can provide proof that you can make their goals a reality they could care less about how you learned or who accredited your piece of paper. Is that to say the education and certification is useless? Not at all, you must be the best you can be to give the client the very best service and continuous improvement on the trainers part is necessary to make sure of the highest level of service 

An "expert" might be someone with an advanced degree (M.S.  degree for example) in exercise science, exercise physiology, kinesiology, athletic training, etc. along with personal trainer certification from a reputable certifying organization that requires continuing education credits.   Expertise also comes from experience. "People" skills, areas of specialization, and creativity along with education and certifications are important. 

Actually, the question should be certification vs. education? Why, because education is involved in both certification and degrees. Now, mind you, a degree signifies that you have gone through more of a curriculum than a certificate. However, education tends to focus a lot more on theoretical fitness and in many cases, may be akin to overtraining. A certification from a nationally respected and recognized organization is more focused on practical knowledge that can be applied directly towards fitness training. The most important requirement, in my opinion, is that the fitness trainer actually cares for his/her clients. The complete fitness trainer will understand the clients' fitness goals and physical attributes and custom fits the training sessions. There should be no cookie cutter type workouts. Every individual is different. 

Always learning they all are important yet keepong up with certifications is critical to keep up in advancements and specialization

Over the past 7 or 8 years, I have had several fitness trainers at 3 different gyms. I think that education, certification and degrees are all necessary, but the best trainers also have a true passion for helping others, a keen eye for observing each individual as a body, mind, and personality with specific desires and needs, and of making others feel that they are getting quality time and the full attention of their trainer during each session. This means that the trainer knows how to modify each exercise for the individual's needs and knows how to combine movements in a variety of ways so that the client never feels bored or wonders why they are paying someone to have them do the exact same routine over and over.