Whether you’re new to the industry or looking for a new role, having a well-written and professional Fitness Instructor CV is the essential first step towards landing your dream role.
In this article, we’ll teach you how to write the perfect Gym Instructor CV. From tips and tricks for applicants with no prior experience to professionally-written examples, this article has everything you need.
Step-by-Step Guide to Fitness CV Writing
6 Top Tips for Formatting & Presentation
Expert Written Gym Instructor CV Example
Active Careers has hundreds of Fitness Instructing Jobs at some of the UK's largest Health Club Operators
In this section, we’re going to walk you through the process of writing your own CV, outlining what sections to include, what to write in each section, and in what order!
The sections below form the perfect Gym Instructor CV template, with plenty of examples of how you can put our guidance into practice.
Every CV should start with your basic contact information, so be sure to include your name, phone number and email address. This ensures employers can immediately see how to reach you to schedule an interview and progress your application.
You don’t necessarily need to include your address but it is best practice to include the name of the city or town you live in. This is especially important for a Fitness Instructor CV as the role requires you to be at the venue every day, so employers will want to see that you live within reasonable commuting distance.
Here’s an example of how that might look:
Contact Information
Name: Your Name
Phone Number: 07123456789
Email Address: yourname@email.com
City: Hometown, UK
Next, you’ll want to include a Personal Summary. This is essentially a short statement (3-5 lines) where you highlight your relevant skills, qualifications, and experience, and outline your career goals.
Tip: To really help your CV standout, amend your personal summary for each individual job. For example, if you're applying for the role of a Group Fitness Instructor, you can use this section of your CV to reference any experience you have leading group classes.
Making this simple change to your Fitness Instructor CV template is a quick and easy way to grab the attention of the hiring manager and show them why you’re the right candidate for that specific role.
Here’s an example of a good personal statement for a Group Fitness Instructor CV:
“Level 2 qualified Gym Instructor with over 3 years experience in the fitness industry, fulfilling a range of roles including leading group classes. Skilled in motivating individuals and maintaining a positive and energetic environment, with a proven track record of helping members achieve their fitness goals. Seeking to apply my expertise and passion for fitness to contribute to the success of Fake Gym.
As you can see, our example specifically mentions experience leading group classes, and therefore demonstrates that the candidate is suitable for the role.
Tailoring your CV to each job is one of the easiest ways to guarantee you get an interview. Even for general fitness instructor jobs, the process is simple. Find the job description and write your personal summary accordingly.
For example, if you were applying to this job advertised on Active Careers, you could mention that you’re flexible, reference any experience you have working with older clients, or talk about your outgoing personality!
As you can see, there are tons of ways to amend your personal summary based on this one job advert alone!
If you’re in the process of writing a CV and applying for jobs, you’ll already know that having a Level 2 Certificate in Fitness Instructing is essential to work as a Fitness or Gym Instructor in any capacity.
Simply put, if you don’t state that you hold a regulated Level 2 qualification on your Fitness Instructor CV, UK employers won’t even consider you for an interview.
For that reason, it’s essential that you clearly display your qualifications.
When it comes to writing this section, include the full name of your qualification as well as any accreditations or additional recognition, such as CIMSPA endorsement.
Here’s a clear and simple way to present a qualification while still including all the key points that the employer will want to know:
Level 2 Certificate in Fitness Instructing (CIMSPA Endorsed)
Ofqual, Focus Awards - May 2024
If you’ve completed any additional fitness continuous professional development courses (CPDs), definitely include the name of the course and a brief overview of what was covered.
You can include any academic qualifications you hold, especially if they are relevant to the role, for example, an A Level in Physical Education or Degree in Sports Science.
Currently working towards a further fitness qualification? Many Fitness Instructors follow up their Level 2 qualification with a Level 3 Personal Training course. Even if you’re yet to complete your PT course, it’s still worth including this on your Gym Instructor CV!
The next section is arguably the most important one, as it’s your chance to show the employer your work history and draw on past experiences to demonstrate that you’re the right candidate for the role.
This section can also be the hardest part to write, especially if this is your first time filling out a CV template for a fitness industry job and you don’t have any experience. Fortunately, we’ve got you covered.
Exactly what work experience to include is different for everyone. If you’ve worked in the industry for a while now, it might not be relevant to include jobs you had before you qualified as a Gym Instructor.
If you’re newly qualified and don’t have any experience yet, it’s absolutely worth mentioning your work history as we can guarantee there are transferable skills that you can draw on.
Now that you have an idea of what to include, let’s get into how to talk about your work experience and structure the section effectively.
Firstly, you’ll want to ensure that for every job you include the following key details:
Job Title: Clearly state your role (e.g. Gym Instructor)
Company Name: Include the name of the gym or workplace
Location: City and town you worked in
Dates of Employment: Use the month and year format (e.g. June 2022 - Present)
Next, provide a 2-3 line overview of what you did in the role, and any significant achievements or impact you had during your time there.
For example:
"Led group classes with up to 30 members and improved attendance at fitness classes by 15% by motivating individuals and creating a positive community environment.”
Finally, for each job include a concise list of the tasks you performed. There’s no need to go into great depth about the day-to-day of each job, instead include 3-5 bullet points per role, prioritising the most relevant responsibilities.
Top tip: Tailor your CV for specific jobs by matching your skills and past experience with specific points mentioned in the job description.
Active Careers has hundreds of Fitness Instructing Jobs at some of the UK's largest Health Club Operators
If you’re newly qualified, knowing what to include on a fitness CV can be daunting. Fortunately, the role of a Fitness Instructor is one that requires a range of skills, many of which are transferable from other jobs.
Say you work in retail, you might think serving customers on the till or stocking shelves has little to do with working on the gym floor, but there are plenty of ways you can use your experience to show why you’re right for the job!
For example, working in retail requires a blend of great teamwork, communication and customer service skills - all of which are also essential qualities of a good Gym Instructor.
If you’re applying for your first job, there are still plenty of ways to demonstrate that you have what it takes to succeed in the role.
If you took part in any sort of volunteering or extra curricular scheme such as the Duke of Edinburgh award, add this in place of traditional work experience and fill out the section in the same way as any other job.
Think back to any other experiences you might have had, for example, many schools have ‘sports leaders’, who run sports days for younger years. There are plenty of tasks and skills associated with having such a responsibility that can be presented in the same way as paid employment.
Including a short list of skills on your CV is a great way to provide the employer with a little bit more information about who you are and what kind of employee you’d be, without them having to read long paragraphs or blocks of text.
Most skills are pretty self-explanatory, so a simple bullet point list will do. Save the examples and ‘evidence’ of how you meet the job description for the experience section, and keep this section short and sweet.
Include a mixture of hard and soft skills, and most importantly, only mention those that are relevant to the role!
For a Fitness Instructor CV, examples of hard skills (i.e. skills that are more job specific) to include are:
First Aid Trained
Programme Design
Proficiency in Selling Memberships
In terms of soft skills (more personal skills, such as those that describe how you are as a person), good examples for the fitness industry include:
Motivating
Approachable
Adaptable
Struggling to decide what skills are relevant to the role? Use fitness instructor job adverts to identify exactly what skills employers are looking for!
Check out this example below, By Active Aims where they list tons of hard and soft skills that you can reference in this section:
This section isn’t essential, but if you do have any achievements or awards, you should absolutely shout about them!
Whether it’s a notable accomplishment relevant to the fitness industry or a recognition you’ve received that's relevant to your career, a quick mention of what the award was and when you achieved it will only help your fitness CV to stand out.
Let’s say you're David Muir, and you’ve recently been shortlisted for ‘Best Fitness Presenter’ by the British Fitness Awards:
Mentioning this kind of achievement is something that is guaranteed to get a hiring manager interested, and so definitely worth including on your CV.
An award like this acts as ‘evidence’, supporting what you’ve already included in the skills and experience sections included earlier in this CV template for a Fitness Instructor.
If the title of the award is as self-explanatory as this example, you don’t even need to elaborate on your achievement. Simply listing it in a short and clear format, similar to your qualification section, is enough.
Awards and achievements don’t need to be strictly career related, if you’ve achieved something relevant to fitness like running a marathon or winning a bodybuilding competition, including that on your CV can only improve it!
Not only do both of these kinds of awards help you stand out, they also offer a great talking point during your interview (which you’re guaranteed to land if you gave something like this on your CV!)
Having a ‘Hobbies and Interests’ section in your CV is definitely optional, but if you do have something relevant to the role or fitness industry to include, doing so can give you that slight edge over other candidates.
If you have a hobby that demonstrates your suitability for the role, for example on a CV for a Gym Instructor that might be that you run a local running group, that’s definitely something that will impress an employer - so include it!
As a general rule, we recommend sticking to hobbies or interests that require skills that you’re able to transfer to the fitness instructing role, or, show your passion for fitness and/or the industry.
This doesn’t need to be an overly detailed section. Simply outline what the hobby or interest is and how it demonstrates that you’re the right candidate for the role.
Active Careers has hundreds of Fitness Instructing Jobs at some of the UK's largest Health Club Operators
Now that you know exactly what to include on your CV, the next step is ensuring it’s well-presented. Here are our top tips for formatting your CV for a Fitness Instructor role:
Following this best practice ensures your CV is easy to read and keeps it looking clean. Some great examples of fonts that match this criteria include Arial, Calibri, and Times New Roman.
For font size, stick to between 10 and 12 pt for body text. For headings, e.g. ‘Contact Information’ and ‘Qualifications’, use the same font but in bold and a slightly larger font size, such as 14 - 16 pt.
In terms of design, less is more. Stick to a simple and consistent layout, using standard fonts and clear headings. There’s nothing wrong with creating a simple Gym Instructor CV format in word, as your priority should be showcasing why you are the ideal candidate for the role.
When it comes to including your qualifications and work experience on your fitness CV, opt for a reverse chronological order. Simply put, you should start with the most recent qualifications/ experience as shown in our Gym Instructor CV sample below.
Exactly how long your CV should be depends on a number of factors, mainly how much relevant work experience you have. That said, we’d always recommend keeping your CV for any fitness industry job to a maximum of 2 pages.
If you’re writing your Gym Instructor CV with no experience, just one page is absolutely fine. It can be tempting to try to pad your CV out to make it appear longer, but the truth is most employers do prefer to see information that is relevant to the role you’re applying for.
If you have the opposite problem, and are struggling to keep your CV under 2 pages, we recommend that you consider cutting out optional sections, such as hobbies and interests, in favour of more critical sections like qualifications and work experience.
This isn’t necessarily a fitness CV writing tip, but it’s definitely a step you don’t want to skip. After all the effort you’ve put into creating your CV, the last thing you want is to apply for a job and then spot an error in your spelling or grammar.
We recommend asking a friend or family member to have a quick proofread of your CV. Alternatively, you can proofread your CV yourself but we’d recommend taking some time away from it and coming back with fresh eyes. This will make it much easier for you to notice things like typos, formatting issues, or spelling mistakes.
Our final tip might seem like an obvious one, but saving your CV as ‘*Your Name* CV’ is a simple but effective tip that you don’t want to forget about.
Not only does this look much more professional than ‘Untitled Document’, saving the document to include your name also makes it much easier for the hiring manager to find your CV should they want to come back to it.
For the final section of our article, we’re going to show you how our Fitness Instructor CV sample looks once you populate each section. Here it is!
Contact Information
Name: Jane Doe
Phone Number: 07123456789
Email Address: janedoe@example.com
City: London, UK
Level 2 CIMSPA Gym Instructor with over 3 years of experience across independent and large chain gyms. Skilled in motivating individuals with a proven track record of hitting KPIs.. Eager to leverage my expertise and enthusiasm to contribute to the success of Pretend Gym.
Level 3 Certificate in Personal Training (CIMSPA Endorsed)
Ofqual, Focus Awards - July 2024-present
Level 2 Certificate in Fitness Instructing (CIMSPA Endorsed)
Ofqual, Focus Awards - May 2024
OriGym CPD in Kettlebell Training
OriGym Centre of Excellence - May 2024
OriGym CPD in Medicine Ball Training
OriGym Centre of Excellence - May 2024
5 GCSE’s A*-C including English and Maths
My Local High School - June 2021
Gym Instructor
Made up Gym, London
June 2023 - Present
Led gym inductions for new members, ensuring they were able to use all equipment safely. Conducted engaging group classes and created a community environment, which in turn boosted class attendance.
Tasks included:
Carried out gym inductions for new members
Led group fitness classes, focusing on HIIT and circuit training
Conducted fitness assessments and provided nutritional advice
Ensured the gym environment was clean, tidy and safe for members
Barista
Fake Coffee Shop, London
July 2021 - May 2023
As part of this fast-paced role, I was responsible for delivering exceptional customer service to ensure a friendly and welcoming atmosphere. Regularly hit and surpassed KPI targets for 5 star reviews.
Tasks included:
Greeting customers in a friendly and efficient manner
Implemented upselling strategies to promote premium drinks and add-on items
Maintaining cleanliness and organisation of the shopfront
Leadership
First Aid Trained
Team Player
Client Screening
Proficiency in Selling
Customer Service
Motivating
Approachable
Winner in the ‘Best Physique’ category at the National Bodybuilding Championships, 2023.
As a committed player on a local football team, I thrive in a team-oriented environment where collaboration and teamwork are essential. In my voluntary role as a youth coach at the club, I guide young players to develop their skills and sportsmanship. These experiences not only highlight my ability to work as part of a team but also showcase my leadership skills.
That concludes our article on how to write a Fitness Instructor CV! We hope that we’ve helped you get one step closer to landing your dream role in the industry.
Now that you’ve got our free gym CV example to hand, what’s stopping you? Explore fitness instructing jobs with the industry’s leading employers now!
Active Careers has hundreds of Fitness Instructing Jobs at some of the UK's largest Health Club Operators