About a month ago now I qualified as a Studio Cycling Instructor thanks to a super-fun, one-day course* with The Training Room. The Training Room don't usually provide individual CPD courses, but for a group of lovely fitness bloggers they made an exception in order to give us a taste of what they have to offer as part of their personal training course.

'Love what you do'

The Training Room believe that you should 'love what you do', and I'm inclined to agree. So, they're dedicated to helping people find their way into an industry that they are passionate about. They offer beauty therapy courses and will soon be offering training for catering and hospitality, but I'm most fascinated by why The Training Room was born: personal training.

Rather than offering a large variety of fitness industry courses, TTR specialise in personal training and ensuring that their students are industry-ready. Essentially, they are a careers provider. At first, I wondered why they were keen to include a Certificate in Studio Cycling in their PT course, as well as other speciality certifications such as Circuit Training and Gym Based Boxing, but once I got to grips with TTR's ethos, it all made sense. The mix of qualifications that they provide means that their graduates can apply for virtually any role within the industry, and ensures that newly qualified PTs have maximum earning potential while they build a client base. TTR are also uniquely positioned to promise all of their graduates an interview with one of their many industry partners including David Lloyd and Pure Gym. Now that's pretty cool, right?

Our day of Studio Cycling with The Training Room

Our day with The Training Room started bright and early at 9am at the Oasis Sports Centre with a 45-minute studio cycling class with our instructor for the day, David, which thoroughly woke us up! I loved that we started the day with an incredibly well-taught class as it gave us a strong, practical point of reference for everything that we learnt on the course. The agenda for the day included health and safety and bike set-up information (until this point, getting my seat into the right position in spin classes had involved lots of trial and error, every time!), learning the teaching techniques of different manoeuvres, and learning how to structure a class catering to everyone's learning styles. Of course, we also experienced a few different formative assessments including the planning and delivery of our own session to the rest of the group, which was actually a lot of fun and not nearly as nerve-wracking as we had all predicted. Plus, we all passed with flying colours!

As always, I was really curious and would have loved to have learned more about the physiology side of a cycling class, but I know that that would be covered elsewhere in the personal training course, and that level 2 gym instructors would usually have some prior knowledge too. However, I think it's always good to have things reinforced and that all fitness instructors should be encouraged to take more interest in that side of things. 

If you'd like to hear a little more about our one-day event, check out The Training Room's blog posts, here and here, for more details including a Q&A with David who gives pointers for aspiring Personal Trainers, and thoughts from my fellow fitness bloggers on the experience. And, if you're interested in finding a career that you love, be sure to get in touch with the brilliant team at TTR. All details are on the website, here.