Toes are peeking over the edge of the diving board at the deep end which is full-time employment

Oh boy oh boy oh boy.  SO MUCH is happening in my little life right now I can barely wrap my head around it.

For anyone who DIDN'T feel like checking my facebook after my exam last week (OMG that was just LAST WEEK?) I PASSED! Hooray.  I am now officially a 100% certified NASM personal trainer.  I got my fancy calligraphied certificate in the mail and everything.  The exam was actually a LOT harder than I thought it would be (harder than the practice exams).  I went over and over every question a million times before I finally clicked the "finished" button and took the long walk to the trinidadian lady at the front desk of the testing facility to get my print-out. I honestly was not sure I had passed until she came around from the back office scanner with a smile on her face.  They are lame and won't tell you your exact score, but I know it was better that 70%!

So ok, that was last Monday,  last Wednesday I started my work study at TeamiFit.  I work 3 hours on Wednesday nights checking people in for classes in exchange for a membership.  The membership is nice because they offer a ton of awesome classes which gives me a nice variety of workouts to add to my repertoire and after a week of running it's super nice to be able to take a dance or boxing class on my cross-training day.  Everyone who works there is super cool and it's really nice to finally meet some people in the industry.  HOWEVER it is not a training job at all.  All their trainer positions are pretty much booked up, though I may be able to sub-in every so often.  Also the obvious downside, I am making no money there.

Then TODAY I had an interview at World Gym Uptown for a traditional large gym full-time personal trainer job.  I was on my game during the interview.   He put me on the spot, asking me all kinds of specific questions about exercise assessment, nutrition, program design...I felt like I was back in my NASM exam! Good thing it was all so fresh in my mind.  The guy was pretty hard on me, but he must have liked what I had to say because he offered me the job! They're going to call me next week to finalize and I'm going to have to ask a few more questions after I get some opinions from some people in the industry...but it's pretty much really happening.

To be honest, thinking about going from my current life of unemployment to working 5 days a week is kinda freaking me out right now.  I have NEVER been employed full time for an extended period and the few times that I've worked for 8 hours a day I HATED it.  Of course those jobs were totally miserable and mindless and I sat behind a desk all day doing something that, in my opinion, was meaningless.  At this job I will be spending a majority of my time doing something I LOVE.  I will be on my feet the whole time.  I will be exercising.  I will be interacting with real people all day long and making a huge difference in people's lives.  Training with me will be the hour that some of these people look forward to all week long.  If you're doing something you love you should feel LUCKY to get to work 5 days a week and the whole reason I got this cert was so that I could do something I love and not have to wait another table again.

I've learned that this is pretty much the kind of job that every personal trainer has to have to get started in the industry.  A lot of the job will be prowling the gym floor, meeting members and doing the sales-pitch thing.  Eventually, yes, I'd love to have my own in-home clients or train clients that are handed to me at a hotel, corporate office, or boutique personal training studio.  Eventually I want to have clients that I can schedule as much or as little as I want because eventually I want to be able to do theatre again.  BUT to do that I have to get experience working something like this.  A lot of it is very sales-y and a lot of people hate that part of it, BUT the awesome thing about this particular gym is that there are only about 10 full-time trainers (some gyms of the same size have up to 30) and there is only ONE other female trainer (who is apparently booked solid all the time), so the numbers work out a lot better than they might at some other place.  Also, it is franchised, not corporate, so trainers get to train and do assessments the way they want to, the owners and managers know and care about their employees and it seems like a really nice place to work.

I do have to say, I went with the slightly harder, slightly more expensive NASM as my cert as opposed to the very popular ACE or some of the other certs.  I did this because from everything I read/heard it carries the most weight in the industry by far.  The fitness director said they received 150 resumes from their classified ad, he picked 5 candidates to interview and my interview ended with a job offer.  Let me remind you that I have absolutely no training experience what-so-ever.  How's that for weight in the industry?  Thanks NASM!!!

Ok, once again I've written for over an hour and only scratched the surface.  Hopefully in a couple days I'll write another entry about how SUCKY I've been running lately and about the race this weekend.  Until then, nighty night!