I spent three years as a director at CIMSPA. Here is what the badge on every course page actually means, what level you really need, and how to tell a genuinely endorsed course from one that just sounds like it.
If you have spent any time looking at personal training courses, you will have seen the CIMSPA logo on almost all of them. Most people nod at it and move on. Very few could tell you what a CIMSPA personal training qualification actually is, or what changes if they choose a course without one.
I spent three years as a director at CIMSPA and over a decade working in this sector. This is the explanation I wish every learner got before they handed over their money.
CIMSPA is the Chartered Institute for the Management of Sport and Physical Activity. It is the professional development body for the UK’s sport and physical activity sector, and a registered charity. Most established sectors have a body that plays a comparable role, whether that is teaching, accountancy or physiotherapy.
The formal version is that it exists to support, develop and enable professionals and organisations across the sector to succeed, and in doing so help get the nation more active. Part of how it does that is giving anyone working in sport or physical activity a way to be recognised as a safe, competent and skilled professional. That is still quite wordy, so here is the version that actually lands.
You would not let someone operate on you unless you were confident they were a qualified surgeon. In the same way, we should not hand over our body to a personal trainer, or our children to a football coach, without being able to see that they are properly qualified. I know there is a difference between going under the knife and pulling a muscle because a coach got your squat technique wrong. The principle is the same. Teachers, electricians, plumbers, doctors and physios all have a way of proving they are qualified. CIMSPA is that way in sport and physical activity.
The professional development body for the UK's sport and physical activity sector, and a registered charity. It writes the professional standards for each job role, endorses the training that meets them, and awards professional status to individuals.
CIMSPA is not an awarding organisation. It does not write your exam, set your assessments or issue your certificate. That is done by a regulated awarding organisation. CIMSPA's job is to confirm that what you are being taught, and who is teaching it, meets the standard the industry expects.
Several separate jobs, which is part of why it confuses people.
If you are outside the sector, the closest comparison is Ofsted. Ofsted checks that schools, colleges and childcare providers are delivering a decent education, then publishes a rating so parents and the public can see what they are choosing.
CIMSPA works in a similar way, although it is a professional development body and a charity rather than a government inspectorate. It reviews its education partners against the professional standards, audits them, and awards training providers a quality rating of up to three stars.
That partnership and rating is what training providers use to show learners they are genuinely recognised to deliver courses the industry accepts. It works the other way round too. For an employer, an endorsed qualification takes the guesswork out of a CV.
A good fitness qualification is a four figure purchase. Think about the last thing you spent over a thousand pounds on. A car, a holiday, a laptop. You almost certainly read reviews, compared options and looked for some kind of independent verdict before you committed.
That is why organisations like Which? exist. We look for a stamp of approval from a third party who has assessed the thing properly. CIMSPA is that stamp in sport and physical activity, and it publishes a directory of endorsed training providers listing the specific courses each one is endorsed to deliver.
A very low price is usually a signal that the support behind it is thin. Remember what you are buying. This is your career, not a pair of jeans you can resell on Vinted. The provider you train with, and the depth and quality of what they teach you, stays with you throughout your career, and it shows when you start applying for work.
Three practical things change when your qualification is endorsed and delivered by a recognised provider.
Employment. CIMSPA employer partners have committed to recognising endorsed qualifications for direct entry into relevant roles. An endorsed certificate is a credential a gym already understands, rather than something a manager has to take a view on.
Insurance. Insurers want to see a recognised qualification from a recognised provider before they will cover you to train paying clients.
Professional status. The qualification is what you earn. Professional status is what you then hold with CIMSPA, and it is what you show to employers and to the public. Related, but not the same thing, and worth understanding before you buy.
Recognition also travels better. A qualification from an endorsed provider is far easier to have accepted if you want to work abroad.
This is the question I get asked more than any other, and the answer is simpler than the course pages make it look.
| Level | What it lets you do | The role it maps to |
|---|---|---|
| Level 2 | Work on the gym floor. Inductions, showing members how to use the equipment, supervising the gym environment. It does not cover designing and progressing programmes for individual clients | Gym instructor |
| Level 3 | Work one to one with clients, design and progress their training programmes, and charge for personal training | Personal trainer |
| Level 4 | Specialise. Advanced training in areas such as strength and conditioning, or nutrition, on top of an existing Level 3 | Specialist coach |
Level 3 is the working answer. It is the qualification that lets you take on your own clients, write their programmes and charge for it, and most gyms now recruit at Level 3 even for roles a Level 2 would once have covered. That is why the combined Level 2 and 3 route is what most people take, rather than doing Level 2 and stopping.
Level 4 is a different thing again. It is not a better version of Level 3, it is what you add once you know where you want to specialise, whether that is strength and conditioning or another area. There is no single Level 4 that makes you a better personal trainer across the board.
Whichever level you are looking at, there is a CIMSPA professional standard sitting behind it that defines what a person in that role should be able to do. That standard is what our training is built to.
This takes about a minute and it is the single most useful thing you can do before you enrol.
Search the provider's name in the CIMSPA endorsed training directory.
Check the exact course you are being sold appears against them, at the level you are being sold.
Check which CIMSPA professional standard the course maps to.
Ask the provider which awarding organisation issues the certificate.
Ask what membership category and professional status the qualification gives you on completion.
Being a CIMSPA endorsed training provider and having an endorsed course are two different things. Every course has to be assessed by CIMSPA individually to carry endorsement. A provider can hold partner status and still sell courses that have never been through that process, and plenty describe their whole range as endorsed on the strength of the partner badge alone. It is technically true and completely misleading. This is exactly why step two matters: look for the course, not just the logo.
Create is a CIMSPA endorsed training provider and our qualifications are mapped to CIMSPA professional standards. You do not have to take our word for any of that, which is the whole point of the directory. Look us up, and look up the specific course you are considering.
I have spoken to thousands of aspiring fitness professionals, and career changers almost always fall into one of two camps.
The first are moving away from something. They are unhappy, there is no progression where they are, they feel underpaid, or the passion has simply gone.
The second are moving towards something. They have had a life changing experience of their own, or made a real transformation in their own health, and they can see themselves helping other people do the same.
Whichever camp you are in, this is a big decision. A career change sits alongside buying a house or getting married in most people’s lives. Your career defines a lot of your days, so you need to enjoy it, and you need to do your research before you commit. If you want the fuller picture, we have written up how to become a personal trainer step by step.
The market is growing. Close to one in five people aged 16 and over in the UK now hold a gym or fitness club membership, a record high, and there is no shortage of people looking for someone to help them reach a goal.
What people want is changing too. It is no longer fit people going to the gym to get fitter. Younger generations are swapping alcohol for activity, older ones are investing in longevity, and wellbeing is becoming a priority spend rather than a luxury one. Wearables have made the public far better informed about their own health data than they were a few years ago, when that kind of insight belonged to elite athletes.
And the alternatives look less certain than they used to. A degree no longer guarantees a well paid job. I did sports coaching at university and the only role available to me afterwards was the same minimum wage part time coaching job I had before I started. A vocational qualification costs a fraction of a three year degree and points at an actual job. That maths is not lost on people.
Ollie Bell
Managing Director
Ollie has spent 15 years across sport, physical activity and education. He is a published author with leadership certification from Harvard and emerging technology certification from Oxford, and writes about where fitness qualifications are heading.
