5 Fitness Coach Certifying Organization Practices That Need to Stop
Not all standard industry practices are good. In fact, based on my perspective, there are five in the fitness certification industry that are damaging. Here’s what we’re doing at AIHP to break the mold.
Just because companies within the same industry do certain things in the same ways doesn’t mean those are the best ways—or that they should be done in the first place.
There are specific practices in the fitness coach certification space that I don’t agree with and have bothered me over the years. Namely, bad customer service, a focus on aggressive upselling and money-grabbing continuing education policies, bias in course content, and an emphasis on a specific type of accreditation.
Each does a disservice to the people we serve: personal trainers and strength and performance coaches.
Even back when I launched United Endurance Sports Coaching Academy (UESCA), I knew I didn’t want to follow the status quo of what I saw in the fitness space. So, we built our company by incorporating practices and policies that we felt good about and knew would most benefit endurance coaches.
We’ve taken a similar approach with the Academy of Integrated Human Performance (AIHP). By understanding the industry practices we don’t like, we designed our company and its certifications differently.
Based on my perspective, here are the five fitness coach certifying organization practices that need to stop, and how we’re making that happen at AIHP.
1. Poor Customer Service
This is one of the biggest ones, and it isn’t specific to the fitness industry. People have become used to slow response times and unhelpful or even rude replies.
I think it really reduces the professionalism of the industry when higher standards aren’t met. Quite frankly, if trainers are disenfranchised when they don’t hear back from their certifying organizations, they may feel like they don’t care. And maybe they don’t care if it’s all about that upfront sale. But it’s a disservice to the whole industry.
We want to have the best customer service possible. We believe our certification is best-in-class because it’s backed by a highly supportive customer service team and provides the best pathway for people to become successful. And part of that is our commitment to communication.
We learned a lot from building UESCA—how important these personal relationships are and how much coaches appreciate human responses. We take communication a step further by not just answering when someone has a question, but also reaching out to them throughout the process and even post-certification to see where we can help.
In the age of AI, where everything’s answered by bots, having real people to talk to makes a difference. When you email us, Tessa will be responding to your emails. Sean will be the one answering your content-related questions. We’re a real team made up of real people who are here to help you.
I think being there for people and letting them know that they’re supported is so important. That’s what I would want if I were on the other end.
2. Hard Selling and Upselling
I find that it’s often all about, “What can I sell you next?” Not, “I’m here for you. How can I support you?” Again, this does a disservice to the industry because we’re not creating better trainers. We’re just selling them more stuff. And if there’s no support behind it, are we really helping in the first place? I would argue no.
But some certifying organizations are owned by private equity companies, where the goal is to increase revenue as high as possible so the company is attractive to an investor or can be acquired. Not every company is like that, but there’s too much of it in the industry.
So, when someone becomes a certified personal trainer through one of the many certifying organizations that value revenue over service, they get caught in a trap of having to invest in specialization courses that should already be part of the foundational certification, such as demographic-specific coursework.
While we will eventually launch more in-depth specialization courses, we include demographic-specific specialization information in our certification. It touches on each area enough that if someone walks in the door, a trainer would have enough confidence to have a conversation with them.
And that’s incredibly important because we don’t know who’s going to come through the door. Maybe a potential client is in their second trimester of pregnancy and wants to work with a specific trainer. Either the trainer has to say “no” or quickly take a specialization course on pregnancy/postpartum athletes.
We feel that this information shouldn’t be sold as an add-on. A personal trainer should be able to work with most populations from day one on the job. They might not be an absolute expert, but they’ll have a working knowledge.
Read more on what’s missing in most personal training certifications.
3. Bias in Course Content
Some certifications have a slant or biased perspectives in their content. In my opinion, it’s better to have an unbiased perspective that’s truly science- and evidence-based.
Incorporating bias or slant in a certification’s course content is a disservice to the industry because it results in personal trainers learning only that perspective or angle. The certification becomes more of what that particular organization thinks a trainer should be learning versus what the research says.
We don’t have an agenda at AIHP. We’re not saying, “We think this way of training is the best way.”
For example, there’s a method called super slow. When you do a bicep curl, you do it for 10 seconds up and 10 seconds down, and there’s a theory around that. There’s another functional training theory on why you should never isolate just one body part, and you should always do multi-joint exercises. They all have their place.
We don’t say one method is good and another method is bad. Instead, we teach coaches how to think critically and apply science- and evidence-based principles in real-world coaching scenarios.
I think that’s the most important way to create a certification’s curriculum—by really leaning on the most recent peer-reviewed journal articles that have true scientific validity to them.
4. Costly Continuing Education Policies
It seems to me that the continuing education policy of many certifying organizations is largely a money grab. To stay in good standing as a certified trainer, completion of a certain number of organization-approved continuing education credits (CECs) or continuing education units (CEUs) is required. And most of those CECs or CEUs are purchased directly through the organization.
This hurts the industry because it costs trainers quite a bit of money, and I think they’ve realized this kind of policy is a problem. A lot of trainers will stop renewing their certification because they don’t want to keep jumping through hoops each year. At the end of the day, the industry loses certified trainers because of it.
We decided to create several continuing education paths at AIHP, including a free recertification option. Beyond that, people who go through our certification receive lifetime access to the course content, including all course updates. We also provide them with access to summaries of recent peer-reviewed studies so they can remain up to date on the latest trends and research related to their work as trainers.
Once someone earns their Integrated Strength and Performance Coach certification, it shouldn’t be all about spending more money on continuing education to remain in the industry.
Read more on how we designed a best-in-class certification for strength and performance coaches.
5. Emphasis on NCCA Accreditation
Receiving accreditation from the National Commission for Certifying Agencies (NCCA), operated by the Institute for Credentialing Excellence, has become somewhat of an industry standard for personal trainer certifying organizations.
I find this problematic because the NCCA accreditation assesses only the certifying exam, rather than the certification’s course content. In my opinion, the status quo for gaining this accreditation is a disservice to the industry because there is effectively no standard for the certification’s course content.
Instead, AIHP is pursuing accreditation from the American Council on Education, which assesses both the course content and the exam. We believe this is the right direction for AIHP, and we hope to communicate to prospective personal trainers the importance of understanding these accreditations before choosing a certification.
Read more about AIHP’s stance on NCCA accreditation here.
We’re Breaking the Mold at AIHP
As a fitness coach certifying organization, we should want to facilitate and empower trainers to be their best. We do that by creating an environment where they feel comfortable reaching out to us, and where we’re reaching out to them, too.
How can we help you?
What can we do to help you in your career?
That’s how we create better trainers, which creates a stronger fitness industry. If we don’t do that, then we do a disservice to the industry because we’re certifying trainers who don’t have all the tools they need and might prematurely leave the industry due to a lack of support.
I don’t think that’s necessarily always the role of the fitness certification company. The employer obviously has a role to play, too. But I do think certifying organizations should help. We shouldn’t certify someone and throw them out to the wolves. We have a part in making sure that they’re on the right path toward becoming as valuable as possible.
At AIHP, we believe what we’re doing puts us in a great position because we can build the right way, prioritizing communication and policies that support trainers. In the long term, these things will separate us as a company.
