Paul Mciver and his successful journey from personal trainer apprentice to elite strength & conditioning coach

Back in 2016 Paul enrolled onto an Apprenticeship programme in Gym Instructing and Personal Training with FITUK and has never looked back. Here is Paul story to his success.

I have been into my fitness personally since I can remember, every sport you can think of I had a go, basketball, football, golf, you name it, I’ve done it. Age 15 upwards I started getting into Typical gym & bodybuilding training. After 3 years I felt I peaked at that so around age 19 I moved my focus onto other areas of fitness. Obviously, I couldn’t just train as and when I wanted, I had to support myself financially & started working in a few jobs, one of them being on the Railways, and another Marks and Spencer.

Around age 23 I discovered CrossFit, I was already Strong after bodybuilding & felt I had a solid knowledge on it all. CrossFit opened a whole new body of knowledge for me to learn, it’s exciting, tough & within 18 months got me in the best shape of my life. I was told to enter a competition based in Manchester City’s ground called the Rainhill Trials, representing myself, I got a load of support from my close family & friends, and ended up finishing top 3 in an experienced category out of 50 other athletes

At this time, I was working in a small strength and conditioning gym in Liverpool getting some experience & gained confidence in my abilities to coach. Around March 2016 I was getting a lot of interest for private coaching of more than 20 clients & approached Matt a FIT UK Training Consultant

He gave me all the Tools and knowledge to get through my Level 2 Gym & Level 3 personal training Apprenticeship qualifications which was challenging, but I knew would allow me to work and progress in the fitness industry I’d hoped for.  Whilst doing the Apprenticeship over the course of 12 months, FIT UK got me through my qualifications in theory & visited me regularly for practical evaluations in the gym I was assistant coaching in. At this point I was fully involved in the Strength and Conditioning / CrossFit community & began to coach my own Circuits to test my abilities. Starting in Liverpool I approached 3 gyms and coaches my own S&C circuits out of them, which were very successful. Got some great feedback and felt brilliant getting to see clients stripping weight & gaining strength. I done this for another 9 months & with the support from FIT UK, I become fully qualified as a Personal Trainer.

Working up until March 2017 in the UK, I sent a few emails to Gyms abroad and decided to get more Industry experience.  I left the UK for 3 months and flew over to Phuket, where I stayed for 1 month. Week 1 I was just training myself with my friend. By the end of the first week, Tiger Muay Thai, offered me to take a class, for free of course, which more than 10 people turned up for. I was confident in my abilities by then & nervous at the same time. All the people in the class, from every part of the world, gave me a lot of praise for how challenging it was and fresh it felt. I coached there weekly for 3 more weeks and moved onto Cambodia, which I visited 2 more Cross-fit Gyms. In the shirt time I was there (10 days), I was asked to run an Ooen class, just like in Thailand which I repeated my previous model, which went flawlessly.

The second gym, Cross-fit Yiqi, based in Phnom Penh, I was interested in training there, so me and my friend done a few classes there. 2 days in I was asked by the owner if I could do an open class demonstrating Gymnastics movements to their clients. I was more than happy to demonstrate to the locals & was humbled to be asked to do the open classes for him, giving me more confidence in my coaching & experience along the way.

Moving on I flew over to South Korea, already planned out the Gyms I would be visiting. Cross-fit & the general Strength & Conditioning game is starting to explode over there, & I was amazed by how he people from young to old are focused on their Health.   Starting from the south Coast, I trained in 6 gyms in Total, taking in some sites along the way from Geoje Island, Busan, Ulsan & finally driving up to Seoul, where there were gyms everywhere.  Meeting countless people in the coaching game, I got some solid feedback & advice on how to perfect my own coaching, from gym owners, instructors and athletes from all over the world.

After 3 months away and a body of knowledge behind me, I came home geared up, ready to coach with what I believe to be the best type of experience I could have gained.  I started coaching PT’s out of Cross-fit Faction.

Teaching my clients all the invaluable things I had learned from first, FIT UK, & all the hands-on experience I had whilst travelling.

Within a month of coaching there, I was approached by Burnley FC’s Joey Barton in August of this year (2017), to be the head coach in his Documentary on his return to Premier League Football.

Left – Paul McIver and Joey Barton