PTs, Athletic Trainers, and Personal Trainers
Don’t PTs, athletic trainers, and personal trainers all just teach people how to exercise?
Well, they are all exercise focused careers but the types of clients are going to be very different. Physical therapists can, and often do, work with athletes in sports settings but they also work with people whose goals are centered around basic funtioning. You still need exercises to relearn how to walk or to improve your ability to grab and turn a doorknob after a stroke but they’re very different exercises from what a professional pole-vaulter needs. Athletic trainers will mostly be found working with sports teams at the educational (K-12 & college) and professional levels. They will often work with coaches to develop exercise plans that improve the athelete’s performance while also preventing injury. If an unfortunate circumstance occurs and an athlete does become injured, athletic trainers have the knowledge and where-with-all to make a call on the field about what to do next and they work with the emergency responders to deliver care. Personal trainers will mostly be found working at gyms or making home visits to work with clients one-on-one. They focus on helping people improve their general health and fitness and work with individuals at all points in their fitness journey.
"Missa Culver Athletic Trainer" by James and Deb's WVU Tech Photos is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0
Are they really that different?
Yes! This is the perfect place for a chart, don’t you think?
Overall, these are very different backgrounds and roles within the healthcare and fitness fields but people are not restricted by these minimums. You can be an athletic trainer with a master’s degree or a personal trainer with a bachelor’s who is committed to continuing education or a PT who’s also an athletic trainer. The best part is, individuals in each of these roles can work together to provide comprehensive care for their clients, students, and patients.
Do personal trainers call themselves PTs?
In short, some do but they shouldn’t. PT as an abbreviation for both physical therapy and physical therapist is a protected term. This means that someone who is not a physical therapist should not be using the term PT to label themselves and in some states, this is actually illegal. In addition, saying you offer physical therapy services means providing services that are supervised by a licensed physical therapist. There are facilities out there that claim to offer physical therapy services even though they don’t have a licensed PT on site. While they may be using some of the same techniques (like TENS units, stretching, strength training, etc), it’s not PT services and is illegal in some states.
This might sound like a small, nitpicky thing to take a stand on but it’s done to protect consumers (you!) and healthcare professions. When you go somewhere for PT services, you should be getting care from someone with the right background and skills.
If you want to know more about PTs, Athletic Trainers (this can be abbreviated to AT!), or personal trainers, check out these sites:
https://www.nata.org/sites/default/files/ATs_vs_PTs.pdf
https://www.nfpt.com/the-role-of-a-personal-trainer
https://blog.nasm.org/certified-personal-trainer/why-personal-trainer-certification-is-important
