Personal Training Certifications

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name's Amy Kistler, and I'm going to talk to you about certifications. Do personal trainers need a certification to work in a gym and train somebody? Well, the answer should be yes. At some gyms, however, there are trainers that are not certified, but are in the process of getting certified, and are normally attending college and having background and knowledge in science exercise. Certifications. What certifications are good? There's all different kinds of certifications out there. If you can just go on line and take a test and all of a sudden become a personal trainer, most likely that's not a very good certification. Most certifications that are accredited, you're going to have to go to a place and actually take a test. And those tests have two--you have to have knowledge and information about exercise, about anatomy, about physiology. You need to know how to perform a basic exercise. You need to know about body composition. Some certifications that are good that gyms recognize are ACSM, AFA, and ACE. Those are three really common certifications. ACE is American Council on Exercise. ACE is an accredited personal training certification. You can also get your aerobic certification from ACE. You need to know some things going into taking the test for ACE. You need to make sure that you have background on physiology, on anatomy. You need to know how to perform appropriate exercises for certain muscle groups. There's also some gyms that you can go and take seminars, you can go through a program that prepares you, and gets you ready to start being a trainer, and then you have a period of time that you have before you get certified. Then you can start teaching in the gym."