Personal trainers today are often much more than fitness instructors. They know about health, nutrition, biomechanics, psychology, and much more. Such complexity needs to be properly highlighted on a personal trainer resume when applying for a job.
If you’re looking for work, one of your best bets is to create a striking resume that showcases your passion and expertise in a brief and easy-to-digest manner. That’s why we put together this comprehensive guide—to teach you how to write an outstanding document, even if you’ve never done so before.
So, let’s put on our thinking t-shirts, warm up our resume-writing muscles, and dive right in!
Key Takeaways
The most commonly used format for a personal trainer resume is the chronological one.
A catchy resume objective or summary can help you grab the recruiter’s attention before you impress them with your work history.
In addition to listing relevant skills in a dedicated section, scatter them throughout the resume, next to relevant accomplishments in your resume summary or work experience sections.
Optional sections are perfect for helping you stand out among the competition. However, they need to provide relevant information and only be added after all the mandatory sections.
How to Format a Personal Trainer Resume
Before you get into the nitty-gritty of adding intricate details to your personal trainer resume, you should determine its format first. This refers to the arrangement of sections and information in the document. In general, most personal trainers should go with the chronological resume format.
It’s the most common method of distributing content in a resume, which works by putting your latest accomplishments first and listing the rest in reverse-chronological order. The prevalence of the chronological format also contributes to it being a recruiters’ favorite. Plus, most applicant tracking systems (ATS) are configured with this format in mind.
Two other popular options include:
Common Resume Formats
Functional resume format. This one makes your skills the main section and is suitable for entry-level personal trainers who don’t have work experience.
Combination (hybrid) resume format. This format is ideal for those with an extensive work history or candidates with employment gaps. It mixes the previous two formats to highlight skills backed up with relevant accomplishments.
Personal Trainer Resume Layout
A strong personal trainer resume layout will make your document visually appealing and pleasant to read. Here are the key pointers that can help you achieve that:
Personal Trainer Resume Layout Tips
Condense your resume to one page. Many recruiters skim through resumes, so they are even less likely to go through those that are too long.
Choose a suitable font for your resume that is easy to read. Good examples include Arial, Helvetica, and Calibri.
Set the font size between 10 and 12 pt with section headings being 2–4 pt bigger.
Adjust margins to at least one inch on all sides.
Use 1.0 or 1.15 line spacing.
5 Important Personal Trainer Resume Sections
Every personal trainer resume needs to feature five must-have sections, which are:
Mandatory Resume Sections
Contact information
Resume summary or objective
Work experience
Education
Skills
After including these, you can add several optional sections to highlight your qualifications further. Which sections you should add depends on your skills and experience, as well as the job ad. Some of them may include:
Optional Resume Sections
Certifications
Volunteer work
Languages
Hobbies & interests
If you’re unsure where to start with all these sections, you’re welcome to use our resume builder. It’s a sophisticated software solution that features pre-built templates you can modify and adjust to your liking. Fill in the blanks with your information, effortlessly change the layout with one click, and have your fitness resume downloaded in minutes!
Personal Trainer Resume Template
Here’s a personal trainer resume template to help you visualize the complete document and see what you’ll find if you use our resume builder:
Personal Trainer Resume Template
Name and Surname
Phone number: 000-000-0000 | Email: namesurname@gmail.com | Location: City, State
[Adjective] [your job title] with [years of experience, if applicable] in [your area of expertise, if applicable] looking for a [position] job at [company name]. Eager to apply [relevant skills] gained through [work/volunteer/other experience] to help [company name] [mention what you can do for the company].
Work Experience
Most Recent/Current Job Title Company City, State
[Start date] — [End date]
For recent jobs, use 5-6 bullet points to list your top achievements and responsibilities
Use action verbs to make your responsibilities and achievements stand out
Add numbers to quantify your achievements
Previous Job Title Company City, State
[Start date] — [End date]
For recent jobs, use 5-6 bullet points to list your top achievements and responsibilities
Use action verbs to make your responsibilities and achievements stand out
Add numbers to quantify your achievements
Oldest Job Title Company City, State
[Start date] — [End date]
For older jobs, use 2-3 bullet points to list your top achievements and responsibilities
Use action verbs to make your responsibilities and achievements stand out
Add numbers to quantify your achievements
Education
[Degree] in [Major] [University/college name]
[Start date] - [Graduation date]
Skills
Soft Skills
Skill #1
Skill #2
Skill #3
Skill #4
Skill #5
Hard Skills
Skill #1
Skill #2
Skill #3
Skill #4
Skill #5
Additional Sections
Add any relevant additional sections (languages, licenses, publications, hobbies, etc.)
How to Add Contact Information to Your Personal Trainer Resume
Contact information is a standard section that goes in the header of your personal trainer resume. Its purpose is to be simple and straightforward and display the following details accurately:
Mandatory Contact Information
Your name
Job title
Phone number
Email address
Optionally, you can also include:
Optional Contact Information
Your location (city and state only)
Relevant social media pages
Personal website or portfolio
In practice, that looks like this:
Contact Information Section Example
Jessica Sweeney Personal Trainer + 734 764 4781 jessica.sweeney@example.com Ann Arbor, MI linkedin.com/in/jessicasweeney
Finally, here are a couple of tips to help you perfect this section:
Contact Information Guidelines
Your job title should match the one posted in the job ad since it acts as a keyword for the ATS.
If you don’t have a professional email address, make a new one and include it in your resume.
Any links and social media pages that you include need to be relevant to the position that you’re applying for.
How to Write a Personal Trainer Resume Objective/Summary
An objective or summary is an introductory paragraph to your personal trainer resume. As such, it should be short (2–4 sentences long) and packed full of valuable details about your qualifications.
If you’re new to the field and don’t have enough work history, write a personal trainer resume objective to highlight your skills, motivation, and career goals.
Conversely, as an experienced professional, you can leverage a resume summary to emphasize your most prominent accomplishments and grab the reader’s attention that way.
Personal Trainer Resume Objective
Let’s start with a good resume objective written by a new personal trainer:
Good Example
Recent graduate with a Bachelor’s degree in Exercise Science looking for an entry-level position at Gold Gym. Proficient in exercise physiology and biomechanics of movement. Eager to join your dynamic team and help your clients reach their fitness and well-being goals while continuously expanding my knowledge.
Now let’s see a poorly written example stripped of any valuable information about the candidate:
Bad Example
Recent graduate looking for their first job in the industry. I have plenty of theoretical knowledge and look forward to getting practical experience.
Certified Fitness Trainer Resume Summary
If you have years of experience, mention that in your personal trainer resume summary and then highlight some key accomplishments. Here’s a good example:
Certified Fitness Trainer Resume Summary Example
NSCA-certified personal trainer with more than 5 years of experience looking for a position at Iron Weights Gym. Adept at creating personalized HIIT programs that helped improve clients’ cardiorespiratory endurance by 29% on average. Proficient in using DEXA Scan Machines and Garmin Forerunner Series instruments to improve results and elevate experiences.
Compare that to the following bad example that lacks any concrete details about the candidate’s competence:
Bad Example
Certified personal trainer with years of experience in the field looking for a new job. Able to create new programs and use fitness apps.
Personal Trainer Resume Professional Experience
A work experience section can make or break your application. It’s the one part of your personal trainer resume that recruiters and potential employers usually spend the most time examining. Let’s learn how to get the most out of it.
General Tips
Let’s start with the basic form that you should follow when listing past jobs. For each previous role, you want to include:
Professional Experience Mandatory Details
Job title
Company
Dates of employment in a month/year format
List of achievements
Since the space on your resume is valuable, you don’t want to clutter it with every job you ever had. Instead, focus on relevant employment, which means recent jobs and those that require similar skills and qualifications to personal training take precedence.
The most important parts of your work experience section are the lists of achievements that describe your past endeavors. To get the most out of them, you should focus on exceptional results instead of everyday tasks and assignments.
Here are some tips on how to make your accomplishments stand out:
Personal Trainer Resume Professional Experience Section Tips
Use bullet points instead of blocks of text, as they are more concise and easy to read.
In general, you should have between 3 and 6 bullet points per job.
Include statistics and numbers to add measurable value and credibility to the results obtained.
Make the section impactful and memorable by including potent action verbs and power words instead of overused terminology that blends with the rest of the writing.
Personal Trainer No Experience
When writing a personal trainer resume with no experience, you should still create a section dedicated to your professional history. You can leverage internships, volunteer work, and other jobs that have taught you skills relevant to the role that you’re applying for.
Here’s an example of an entry-level personal trainer highlighting their past job as a receptionist to showcase their interpersonal skills, which are highly valuable for fitness professionals:
Personal Trainer No Experience Example
Work Experience Receptionist
Onsen Wellness Center Ann Arbor, MI
May 2022–July 2023
Managed front desk operations during peak hours, handling up to 100 client interactions per day in a polite and professional manner.
Performed the duties of the main coordinator for wellness events and challenges that helped increase client engagement by 23%.
Utilized organizational skills to implement an efficient filing and documentation system that reduced information storing and retrieval times by 15%.
Experienced Personal Trainer
As an experienced professional, you can use this section to highlight that you’re more than just a gym trainer. Emphasize additional valuable skills and accomplishments that your employers can benefit from. This includes the ability to mentor new employers, lead teams, retain customers, and more.
Experienced Personal Trainer Example
Work Experience Certified Personal Trainer
Max Fitness Chicago, IL
June 2022–Present
Designed and implemented personalized individual training programs for more than 350 clients, helping them lose weight by up to 15 lbs or gain strength increase of up to 45%.
Promoted affiliated nutritional supplements and app subscriptions to clients to increase the company’s revenue by 11%.
Oversaw the onboarding process of 5 new personal trainers before mentoring them on client management and training techniques.
Personal Trainer Resume Education Section
While you don’t need a degree to be a personal trainer, the education section can help supplement your skills and qualifications. It’s another straightforward section where you should simply list the following details:
Education Section Mandatory Details
Your degree
The institution that issued it
Years of attendance
In practice, that looks like this:
Personal Trainer Resume Education Section Example
Bachelor of Science in Exercise Science University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 2016–2020
If you have a modest work history section, you can expand your education section by including additional information in the form of a bullet list. This includes:
Personal Trainer Resume Education Section Additional Information
High GPA (3.5 or higher)
Relevant coursework
Abroad studies
Projects
Awards
You can even include multiple degrees (e.g., a Master’s and a Bachelor’s degree). However, avoid including your high school diploma unless it’s your highest one.
Personal Trainer Resume Skills
Skills are a core section of your resume and the one recruiters will often focus on after checking out your work history. The premise is simple: you just list your personal trainer skills in a dedicated section and call it a day.
Still, there’s a way to make this section outstanding, and it involves these few steps:
Personal Trainer Resume Skills Tips
Research the company and the job ad to find out precisely what skills the recruiters are looking for before adding them to your resume.
List hard and soft skills separately, as they are quite different in nature.
Prove your skills by adding them throughout the resume. Apart from creating a list, you can include a skill or two in your resume objective, summary, and work experience section. Link them to relevant accomplishments and make them more concrete.
Personal Trainer Hard Skills
Hard skills are specific to your job as a personal trainer. They are taught and learned and generally provable with degrees and certifications. Some of the hard skills that you can add to your personal trainer resume include:
Personal Trainer Hard Skills Example
Nutrition
Crossfit
Strength training
Yoga
Pilates
Zumba
Exercise program design
Personal Trainer Soft Skills
Soft skills are transferable between professions and generally help you better collaborate with colleagues and work with clients. That makes them invaluable in the workplace, which is why you should highlight a couple of key ones, like:
Personal Trainer Soft Skills Example
Time management
Flexibility
Attention to detail
What Other Sections Can You Include in Your Personal Trainer Resume?
Optional sections can add tremendous value to your resume as long as the information provided is relevant to the position that you’re applying for. Let’s check out some of the most notable optional sections that you can include.
Certifications
Certifications such as NSCA or NASM vastly increase your employability. For some positions, they can even be mandatory. If your certifications are tightly related to your academic career, you can list them in the education section of your resume, right underneath your degree.
On the other hand, you can create a dedicated section for certifications where you should list the name of the certification, the issuing body, the issuing date, and the expiration date, if applicable.
Volunteer Work
Volunteer work demonstrates devotion and willingness to help others, which are some of the key qualities of personal trainers. If volunteering is related to health and fitness, it can also demonstrate both soft and hard skills, including teamwork, leadership, and organization. For entry-level candidates, volunteer work can also work as a substitute for professional history.
Languages
Most of the work personal trainers do involves some form of communication. Being multilingual allows these professionals to reach a wider user base and improve their communication with clients who might not be fluent in the country’s primary language.
In some areas, language skills can even be a prerequisite for applying for a job. That’s why you should list them in their own section, starting with the language you’re most competent in.
Hobbies & Interests
Sharing hobbies and interests can help you catch the attention of recruiters and create a stronger personal connection with them during interviews. It shows who you are as a person and paints a more complete picture of your life outside work, all of which can help you stand out among countless other equally skilled job-seekers.
Do I Need a Cover Letter as a Professional in the Fitness Industry?
A cover letter is usually not a mandatory document, but submitting it can vastly improve your odds of landing an interview. Simply taking the time to write and submit a personal trainer cover letter already shows vigor and commitment. You’ll be signaling recruiters and potential employers that you’re someone who goes the extra mile.
Furthermore, you get a chance to build rapport with the recipient by addressing them personally. Finally, to maximize the likelihood of standing out among the competition, write a tailored document for each new position that you’re applying for.
3 Best Practices for Crafting a Personal Trainer Resume
Here are three professional tips that can help you elevate your personal trainer resume from great to incredible:
Personal Trainer Resume Tips
A cover letter is not meant to be a copy of your personal trainer resume in a different format. Instead, the two documents should complement one another. Use the extra space the cover letter gives you to expand on your accomplishments and point out those skills that you didn’t manage to include in your resume.
You should meticulously proofread your resume before submitting it. Even a simple typo can draw the wrong kind of attention. You can also ask a friend or a relative to give it another look and help you spot places that need polishing.
You should shift the focus from you to the employer. Instead of listing your skills and achievements to portray yourself as a competent professional, do so to highlight how they can benefit from your abilities. You can do that by omitting personal pronouns from your objective or summary and by tailoring your resume to the specific job.
To end this extensive guide with a bang, here is a pro-grade personal trainer resume example that you can use as learning material or for inspiration.
Closing Thoughts
Adequately showcasing your skills and experience is essential to grabbing the recruiters’ attention and landing an interview. But, as you can see, writing a resume is not just about putting the data on a piece of paper; it’s about having your entire professional and academic journey condensed into a concise document.
As you show off your past endeavors and prominent abilities, don’t forget to infuse a bit of personality into your resume. Highlight your soft skills, point out some niche expertise, and mention a hobby or interest. That’ll help you leave a lasting impression on your next employer and get the job in no time!
