Personal Trainer Courses: All UK Qualifications with Cost & Location

What personal trainer qualifications do I need?

We’ve written about this in more detail elsewhere, but basically the education requirements are that you need a recognised Level 3 qualification in Personal Training.

The different companies all call their qualifications different names like “Certificate in Personal Training” or “Master Personal Training Diploma”. The important thing is whether it is Level 2 or Level 3.

In order to study a Level 3 qualification, you’ll need to already have an appropriate Level 2 qualification. This is usually a Level 2 Fitness Instructor Certificate, although it might be called Level 2 Gym-Based Fitness or something similar.

It’s important to know that some Level 3 courses include a prerequisite Level 2 course within them, and some don’t. As opposed to Certificates, for example, Diplomas tend to roll up required courses into one. You might already have a Level 2 certification as a fitness trainer, or maybe not. So we’ve included information on both Level 2 and 3 courses. In the table, the cost for Level 2-plus-Level 3 is the cost for taking a combined course, where available, or the cost for taking both courses separately, if not. If there are different locations for Level 2 and Level 3 courses, only the Level 3 locations are shown. Where there are multiple options for Level 3 Personal Trainer qualification, the information given relates to the simplest/cheapest one.

And then once you’ve qualified, and have started your personal training career, you’ll want to improve your salary potential as best you can by taking CPD (Continued Professional Development) courses. These are specialised units of education for personal trainers that build on your existing knowledge and skills by going deep in one area, such as for example Exercise for Diabetes and Obesity Management. These courses are called out as Level 4 or CPD.

Which courses are good quality?

The exact names of the courses differ, but the important thing is it must be certified. Having many different certifying bodies, and several organisations that look like industry standards bodies or official registers but are really just private companies, can make it quite confusing to know which courses are “approved”, “official”, or “recognised”.

CIMSPA (the Chartered Institute for the Management of Sport and Physical Activity) is the body chartered by the government to regulate the industry. Some providers are registered directly with CIMSPA, meaning that they have been inspected for quality by CIMSPA themselves.

Other organisations are indirectly registered with CIMSPA by having their qualifications approved by one of the approving bodies recognised by CIMSPA. Of those, here the ones that deal with PT qualifications:

• 1st4sport Qualifications
• ActiveIQ
• Focus Awards
• Innovate Awarding
• NCFE
• OCR
• Pearson
• Transcend
• VTCT
• YMCA Awards

If a provider is registered directly with CIMSPA, that’s the best guarantee of quality. If they’re approved by one of the above bodies, that should also ensure that they keep a good standard. But if you find a qualification that is not endorsed by these bodies – do not take it. It’s probably not very good.

We only list providers who are directly or indirectly endorsed by CIMSPA. Your choice can then be based on other factors such as location, price, and topic, which we include here.

This article is (as far as we know) the only way to compare all quality personal training courses in the UK by their attributes.

Cheap and free personal training courses

Many courses at universities are completely free for young people. The terms and conditions vary, but being under 19 years of age is often enough to get a participating qualification for nothing. Young people who don’t qualify for a free course can still often get them pretty cheap. For those who don’t qualify for a free course, the best option may be 0% finance from a private training company. The course is free at the point you take the training, and you repay the cost in monthly instalments.

About the providers of personal training qualifications

Both private companies and universities put on fitness instructor and personal trainer courses. But the qualifications are often quite different. Higher education institutions often run longer courses, up to a year or more, which can lead to or form part of degrees, as well as shorter qualifications.

Personal training courses at universities are more likely to be in-person only, with little or no online component, making them best for young people who can dedicate themselves wholly to study. Companies offering personal trainer certifications almost always have a blended offer, meaning that the course is partly online/distance learning and partly in-person, or a fully online course with in-person exams, meaning they’re likely to be the best choice for those who are transitioning between careers.

Private schools often have very flexible options, such as the same course part time or full time, or taking a flexible length of time to complete, as opposed to a fixed duration of course length at a higher education provider. HE providers have just a handful of courses for personal trainers, but some training companies have really large numbers of Level 2, Level 3, or CPD courses. In some cases we didn’t list everything here – just a representative sample. For every training provider there’s a link to their website, where you can find their full list of courses and lots of other information we didn’t have space for.

Last thing about course providers – we think we got all the relevant ones, but those that didn’t have working email addresses or whose websites were difficult to make sense of and extract the data we needed, didn’t make the cut. If you think your company or institution should be included, or have other information you think would be helpful, just contact us. We are actively updating this resource.

How to use the course information

This is a big list with lots of information, gleaned from surveying the companies themselves as well as researching their offerings. Try to decide what the important features are for you personally. Is it mainly cost? Location? Are you looking for something in particular, like a nutrition and personal training course in one? Then you can narrow down your search.

Each column is sortable, so, for example, you can sort by the length of time that it would take to get a Level 3 qualification. There’s also a search function at the top of the table which will show you only those results that contain your search query.

The table, by default, is in alphabetical order, with those organisations that replied to our industry survey, as a group, at the top.