Bodyguard certification courses are generally short. Most are five days, some can be as long as a couple weeks, while others are as short as two or three days. To verify which course is for you, you need to look at it a little closer. Determine what kind of bodyguarding you want to do, and then find out how the offered course meets those expectations.
For example, if you want to be a bodyguard for high-profile executives, you are going to need a lot more skills than someone who just wants to be a bouncer at a strip club. One of these skills is the ability to legally carry a weapon.
Concealed weapons are an important, sometimes crucial part of high-profile bodyguarding. This means you will need to be able to legally carry a weapon. You're no use to your client if you can't brandish your weapon without fear of arrest. So be sure that your bodyguard school offers CCW classes.
A multi-day bodyguard course will usually cost in the hundreds of dollars. Bodyguard Training International, for example, offers a two-day crash course for $575. Quintessentially Secure, by contrast, offers a 20-day course for $5,000. This is a respective per-day cost of $287.50 and $250. Using these figures, you can assume that your bodyguard course will cost between $250 and $300 per day, as of June 2010.
Bodyguard certification programs teach a wide variety of skills, not all of which are going to be expected. While a low-end course will teach just the basics of threat assessment, close quarters combat and the like, a higher-end course will teach advanced skills like advanced planning and contract negotiation. While these skills are not typically seen on television, they are just as important as those that are.
Like police or military work, bodyguarding is marked by hours and hours of mundane work. Indeed, you may never fight someone or fire your weapon once in your entire career. Instead, a bodyguard's responsibility's are generally in being proactive--making sure negative events won't happen rather than reacting to them when they do. To this end, you're going to spend a lot of time doing background checks and clearing rooms.
Once you finish your bodyguard certification, you're not done training for good. In fact, the contrary is true. A bodyguard, like a police officer, firefighter or soldier, needs to keep his skills constantly up to date.
This means that even if you're a retired police officer who's been working as a bodyguard for 10 years, certification may still be a reasonable option. The world is constantly changing, and if you don't constantly train and stay up to date, it is very easy to be left behind.
You can get on-the-job training, but it's not as good as certification. While the certificate may not be issued or recognized by a government, it is still a representative of the skills you've learned and of your ability to learn more. So if you're serious about bodyguarding, whatever your situation, go ahead and get a certificate. You won't be disappointed.