Lifetime Training and English Institute of Sport team up to secure athletes’ future in fitness
The English Institute of Sport (EIS) is working with Lifetime Training to assist athletes to qualify and develop careers as Personal Trainers via their award winning courses.
Designed to provide qualifications that can potentially secure the athletes’ future, Lifetime Training is supporting all EIS athletes with access to discounted training.
The project currently includes around twenty athletes, who compete in a wide variety of sports.
Melanie Chowns, Senior Performance Lifestyle Adviser for Great Britain at the English Institute of Sport, explained: “For the full time athletes training on the World Class lottery funded programmes, the chance to represent their country at World Championships and Olympic/Paralympic Games is the primary focus. However, many also want to continue their education and prepare for a career for when they retire from sport but this can be a challenge as training and competition is seven days a week and hugely demanding.
“The opportunity for the EIS to work with Lifetime on this unique, online, fully accredited Personal Trainer Diploma was too good to miss as they understood perfectly the time constraints that our elite athletes are under, making it almost impossible to study for this course in the conventional way. By coming up with a course that was totally online, with tutor support, Lifetime has enabled us to offer all our full time athletes the opportunity to gain this excellent qualification, whilst still maintaining full focus on their training. Undoubtedly this has only been possible because of the extent of knowledge the elite athletes already have but the flexibility this course provides has been extremely well received by the GB athletes who have already signed up.”
Using Lifetime’s online social learning hub, ‘mylifetime’, athletes are now able to complete the course anywhere in the world. The community is managed by experienced tutors, providing ongoing support alongside Lifetime’s Learner Services Team. This means all course content and assessment can be completed online. Within mylifetime, course participants can also pose questions, ‘like’ and ‘share’ information files and participate in live feed and chat.
There are two online qualifications available to the athletes:
-Online Personal Training Diploma, which includes industry accredited professional training Level 2 Fitness Instructor certificate and the Level 3 Personal Training diploma as well as business, marketing and customer service skills.
-Personal Training Diploma plus Special Populations, which additionally provides Level 3 Diplomas in Exercise Referral, Adapting Exercise for Ante and Post Natal Participants and Adapting Exercise for Older Adults
2012 Paralympic Rowing Gold Medial Winner, Pamela Relph, said: “I love that the Lifetime’s PT diploma is all based online. It means I can continue to work on it wherever I am in the world and can fit it perfectly around my training.”
Zoe Shiperley, Hockey player and Commonwealth Silver Medalist, commented: “Training full time makes it very hard to try to add qualifications, so being able to enrol in Lifetime’s online PT Diploma has been great. Being online it is flexible and the support that I have from my mentor keeps me on track.”
Mike Jones, Commercial Director at Lifetime Training concluded: “Our online educational provision means we can facilitate quality training for top class athletes anywhere in the world, wherever their training and competitions take them. We are proud to be working with EIS to provide their athletes with highly experienced tutors, unrivalled course content and support for them at every stage of their career transition.”
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Editor’s notes:
Lifetime Training is one of the UK’s largest vocational training providers. Established in 1995, it now delivers innovative training programmes to more than 20,000 people a year. More than 250 Lifetime trainers and tutors work directly with learners at over 3,000 workplaces and educational centres in order to deliver on both educational and business needs. Lifetime Training is the 2014 Flame Awards Supplier of the Year.
www.lifetimetraining.co.uk
The English Institute of Sport (EIS)
The EIS helps elite athletes to improve performance through the delivery of science, medicine, technology and engineering. Over 350 EIS employees deliver in excess of 4,000 hours of service each week to nearly 1,700 athletes across more than 30 Olympic and Paralympic sports. The EIS worked with 86% of the GB athletes that won a medal at the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
For further information contact:
Amanda Baker at Big Fish Public Relations
Tel: 07976 757499
Email: amanda@bigfishpublicrelations.co.uk
