Can Personal Trainers Give Nutritional Advice?

There’s an awful lot of information out there on dieting and nutrition these days and from lifestyle coaches to the Kardashians, not all of it is useful. We advise caution when reading internet searches and instead seek face to face professional advice. In this article we look at what personal trainers should or shouldn’t be telling their clients.

Nutrition is an essential part of any fitness regime. Many argue that what you eat is significantly more important than the exercise itself as exercising with a poor or unfocused diet is unlikely to lead to significant change. If your aim is to greatly improve your strength and fitness, grow muscle or even just improve long term health, then you need a strategy for exercise and eating.

While a lot of PTs are able to give advice around diet, more specific dietary advice and instruction is not the role of a personal trainer. Instead, they can put together a general meal plan that helps their clients reach certain targets or fitness goals such as losing weight or building muscle. Prescribing dietary advice is very conditional and has the potential to seriously change how someone lives their life. That’s why in the UK to be qualified as a ‘dietician’ you need a degree.

There are courses that cover nutrition and healthy eating basics that can provide the information that most PT’s would need. The approach you take will depend on your current level of qualification. At Sportsability we offer several courses for people wanting to become personal trainers or people wanting to expand their offering. One is the Level 3 award in nutrition for exercise and health , which should give you a good grounding for delivering nutrition and healthy eating advice to clients.

To sign up or find out more, visit Sportsability.