Did You Know?
At the Falmouth Road Race in Massachusetts, medical teams treated 180 runners for heat stroke over eight years by plunging them into tubs of ice water. All 180 survived.
The Numbers Behind the Career
There were about 35,200 athletic trainer jobs in the U.S. in 2025.
About 2,400 athletic trainer job openings are projected each year over the next decade.
The median salary for athletic trainers in the U.S. in 2025 was $62,520.
Where This Career Is Headed
Over the next ten years, athletic trainers may use a personal injury forecast for each athlete, built from their movement, sleep, and training data, so care starts before pain does. Rehab could blend human coaching with robotic and virtual reality tools that adjust to how an athlete's body is healing each day. Treatments that help the body repair itself, like lab-grown cartilage and biologic injections, could shorten some recoveries and change what a return-to-play plan looks like. Training will likely expand to include data skills alongside anatomy and emergency care, so tomorrow's athletic trainers can read a dashboard as well as an ankle. As more adults stay active well into later life, athletic trainers will likely care for a much wider range of people than teen and pro athletes.
Athletic trainers who can read an injury forecast and explain it to an athlete in plain words could become the person teams trust to turn data into a plan.
As people stay active longer, athletic trainers may work with older adults, public safety crews, and workers in physically demanding jobs, expanding who they serve beyond sports.
New recovery tools could let athletic trainers design rehab that mixes in-person coaching with home programs, so athletes in smaller communities can recover without long drives.
Education & Certification
Athletic trainers need a master's degree from an accredited athletic training program. Most students first earn a bachelor's degree in science and health before starting the master's program. Graduate programs combine classroom learning in topics like injury prevention, emergency care, and rehabilitation with hands-on clinical experience alongside working athletic trainers. After graduating, they pass a national exam from the Board of Certification (BOC) to become certified, and nearly all states also require athletic trainers to be licensed or certified. Certified athletic trainers keep learning through continuing education and must maintain current emergency cardiac care certification, including CPR and AED use. The path takes years, but you can start building the foundation right now with science classes, first aid training, and time spent around teams.
To Prepare...
Take anatomy, physiology, physics, and biology classes to build a strong science foundation for college athletic training programs.
Sign up for a CPR and first aid course through the American Red Cross or a local organization, because certified athletic trainers must keep their CPR and AED training current.
Ask your school's athletic trainer if you can shadow them or help as a student assistant or team manager, so you can see the job up close.
