If you are reading this now, you are probably contemplating hiring a trainer or currently working with one. This is a good thing! Being that most people who are trying to improve their fitness typically fall out of their program when they do it alone, a trainer’s job is to motivate, inspire, and hold you accountable to health and fitness goals. How well do you know your trainer? Hopefully if you have already started a program with him/her, you have done your research on their credentials. If so, that’s great! Let’s discuss what those credentials are and what they mean.
Basic Certification:
One thing that you may or may not know about hiring a trainer is the fact that to become a trainer, a formal education is not required, but all trainers are required to hold a certification. The certification they have says a lot about the style and knowledge they possess. Once certified, the trainer may choose to add the CPT (Certified Personal Trainer) letters behind their name. Most, if not all, certifications will have some basic sections about the following areas of health and fitness:
-anatomy & physiology-exercise selection and program design
-nutrition
-exercise programming
When looking for a trainer, you may want to find one with a Nationally Accredited Certification. There are more, but this is a good list to start. The major certs in this category are:
-National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA)-American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM)
-America Counsel of Exercise (ACE)
-National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM)
-International Sports Science Association (ISSA)
Associates Degree:
Some trainers are fortunate enough to go through a formal education program that provides a two-year Associate’s degree upon completion. These programs are few and far between, but they do exist to give the trainer a better sense of the exercise science principals. Generally speaking, these two-year programs cover all of the things that a basic certification will cover, but they usually have an internship, externship, or dual component. Why is that important? Most trainers gaining a basic certification understand how the body moves and functions from a text book (and sometimes bias) perspective. As stated earlier, each certifying body will cover basic components but put their own flare to the method in which they teach their constituents to get clients there. Intern/externships give the trainer a chance to work with real clients under supervision of the professor. It may also give the trainer a chance to program design, write a business plan, or work with multiple clients at once in a group training environment.
Formally educated trainers usually have other classes taught by college professors who have been or currently still practitioners of exercise. Examples of some of these extra classes taught in classrooms are:
-business and risk management-special populations (the young, the old, the diseased, or athletes)
-psychology
-public speaking/communications
-CPR/AED training
-entrepreneurship courses
Bachelor’s of Science Degree:
A potential trainer may also choose to continue his/her education further to a bachelor’s degree. Bachelor’s degree in exercise science go by several names to include:
-BS Exercise Science-BS Exercise Physiology
-BS Kinesiology
-BS Human Movement and Performance
-BS Recreation, Health, and Fitness Resources
-BS Physical Education
While a name is a name, they do possess slightly different qualities and emphases areas. In general, these degrees will be more in-depth with the level of instruction, internships, and specialty focus. Many trainers at this level will choose to work more with the athletic population as a Strength and Conditioning coach or move more toward the medical side of fitness as a Certified Exercise Physiologist. Some trainers may even choose to do more research based training which requires higher level mathematics, statistics, and writing and oral speaking courses. Higher education trainers have also worked with more specialized equipment that most people have never used. Examples of these types of equipment are:
- VO2max-advanced bioelectrical impedance (BodyPod, Hydrostatic weighing, DEXA)
-Electrocardiogram (ECG/EKG)
-force plates
-motion capture imaging
-velocity based units/accelerometer units
Trainers at this level are now vested students of health and wellness, and have probably written at least 15-20 research based papers based on peer reviewed articles previously published. More importantly, a trainer with a BS degree can now sit for higher level certifications such as the ACSM’s Certified Exercise Physiologist (CEP) exam or the NSCA’s Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) or the Collegiate Strength and Conditioning Coaches Association Strength and Conditioning Coach Certification (SCCC).
Graduate Degrees
Advanced degree in exercise science are becoming more and more popular for trainers. By this time, a trainer has had years of vested time working with clients of all ages, demographics, conditions, and training backgrounds, and is now choosing to specialize in a specific field of the discipline. We are now the people writing your fitness blogs, articles, books, and research articles. We are the ones who are professional coaches for your favorite sports teams. We are now the ones that are working with public health officials to write the exercise prescriptions, fall prevention strategies for your grandparents, return to play protocols for athletes, and injury prevention strategies for the recreational average “Joe” in order to gain and maintain healthy standards of life. At times, we are the ones who are behind the scenes of your favorite Pelaton, YouTube, or DVD workouts.
If you are the type of client that needs the individualized and specialized type of training that someone in one of these categories falls under, do you research. Seek out what you need and what best fits your style. At the end of the day, you are hiring a professional to help you on some aspect of your fitness journey, so that person (at whatever level they are) should be pleasant to work with, an active listener, and have a proven track record for results. One also has to remember that no matter the trainer, it is truly up to YOU to put in the hard work, be disciplined, and consistent with your program.
Written by Federick Brooks Federick “Fed” Brooks is a Master’s of Science graduate from A.T. Still University, Certified Strength and Conditioning Coach, and USA Track and Field Coach with over 10 years in the fitness industry as an athlete, practitioner, and educator.
