A Personal Traning Certification Was My Life's Calling!

by Mesfin Felleke
(Bakersfield, California)

After a formal college education and a career that lasted for a little over ten years in International Relations, I decided to become a personal trainer.

It took two years of "soul" searching and I finally found what was always in front of me. I have always been athletic...playing soccer since the age of five, cross country runner, and weight lifting, on and off, since the age of eighteen.

After two years of dropping out of society and traveling around the world, it was a simple moment of introspection that revealed it all.

The moment of realization was almost comical but highly spiritual. None of the complicated rational considerations of future financial earnings or the difficult journey it will take to become a certified personal trainer, that would normally come to the fore front of my thought processes occurred.

I just knew "IT WAS IT". That is what I wanted to do with the rest of my life and there was not a shred of doubt in my mind. I knew I had just figured out my "life calling". As they say the rest is history.

After a thorough research for personal training schools, I decided to attend The National Personal Training Institute of Colorado in Lakewood, Colorado. By far one of the best school in the nation and the best education in personal training that money can buy. After seven months of intense and rigorous theoretical and practical course work in all aspects of personal training, I graduated with a diploma in personal training and a certificate in sports nutrition.

This quality of education prepared me for one of the toughest certification exam conducted in the country and in the industry, given by the National Sports Conditioning Association (NSCA). I am now a proud member and holder of the NSCA-CPT certificate.

Currently, I am working on getting my CSCS certification from NSCA - a certification for those who want to train strength and conditioning fitness for current and aspiring athletes.

As a new comer to the field, I am further strengthening both my knowledge base and real world practical experiences. Like any other endeavor, I don't expect a six figure salary for I have not earned it yet. At the moment, I am working for a locally owned club in the Bakersfield area.

Being in a small town, the earnings are very small but the future is brighter than ever and the potential for both emotional and financial satisfaction is boundless.

In time, I intend to take my practice sole and develop my own clients both in group training and personal training. Even at this foundational level, I have never been professionally content as I am today.

Word of advise for those who are on the fence...if your overwhelming motivation to become a personal trainer is money, I encourage you to please consider another profession for you will be sorely disappointed on that account. To be a professionally content personal trainer, you must be a person who has faith in the human potential to overcome any and all obstacles and must possess the capacity to motivate the most defeated soul before you.

If I can sum up the core value of a personal training job in a phrase, it would be, that it is the designing and constructing of a plan of action for a sustainable development of the human body, mind and soul.

This is my story and thank you for allowing me to share it with you.

Mesfin Felleke
NSCA-CPT