Your Personal Training partners with Switch the Play Foundation / Your Personal Training

Your Personal Training has partnered with Switch the Play Foundation, the UK's only charity dedicated to supporting athletes through career transition, to create a structured, supported pathway into professional personal training. Through this collaboration, eligible athletes can access a recognised Level 3 Personal Training qualification, dedicated bursary funding, mentoring, and a genuine career within the Your PT model.

Why is athlete career transition into fitness such a natural fit?

For many athletes across the UK, retirement from sport isn't simply a career change but an identity shift. After years of structured training, high performance, and singular purpose, stepping away from elite sport can feel disorienting and isolating. Yet the qualities that define a great athlete are precisely the qualities that make an outstanding coach.

The challenge has always been making the pathway into that industry clear, supported, and financially accessible, which is what this partnership sets out to solve.

What is the Switch the Play Foundation?

Switch the Play Foundation is the UK's only charity dedicated entirely to supporting sportspeople as they prepare for and navigate life beyond competitive sport. Through education, mental wellbeing resources, and career development programmes, the Foundation helps athletes build identities and livelihoods that extend beyond their sport.

“Partnerships are powerful when values align. When you have the right people in your corner, you create real opportunities for athletes beyond sport.” Imelda Phillips, athlete engagement manager, Switch the Play Foundation

Their expertise in athlete transition, combined with Your PT's experience in building successful personal training careers, creates a partnership grounded in shared purpose and real, practical outcomes.

What does the Your PT and Switch the Play partnership offer athletes?

This collaboration provides athletes with a complete, end-to-end pathway into a sustainable personal training career. Through the programme, athletes receive access to a recognised Level 3 Personal Training qualification, delivered within a framework designed for long-term career success. Alongside that, Switch the Play's athlete transition specialists provide mentoring and guidance that considers the whole person, not just their professional development.

Wellbeing support is embedded throughout the programme, recognising that transition is as much an emotional process as a practical one. Crucially, this isn't a theoretical pathway. It's a genuine opportunity to build a business within the Your PT model, with gym access, ongoing CPD, mentoring, and a scalable career ahead.

How does the Your PT bursary work for athletes?

Career transition often coincides with a period of financial uncertainty, and cost should never be the reason a talented individual can't retrain. As part of this partnership, Your PT is offering a dedicated bursary to eligible athletes progressing through the programme. The bursary is designed to reduce, and in some cases entirely remove, the financial barriers associated with gaining a Level 3 Personal Training qualification. Eligibility is assessed through the Switch the Play Foundation pathway, ensuring support reaches those who need it most.

What makes athletes well-suited to a personal training career?

Athletes already understand what it means to perform consistently, to push through adversity, and to help others reach their potential. When those attributes are channelled into coaching, the impact can be transformational, both for clients and for communities. A career in personal training allows former athletes to remain connected to the world of performance, to apply their experience in a meaningful way, and to build something of genuine long-term value.

At Your PT, we've always believed that great coaches aren't just trained but shaped by experience, resilience, and purpose. This partnership is an opportunity to ensure that the UK's retiring athletes don't simply fall into their next chapter. They step into it with clarity, confidence, and the right support behind them.