Personal trainer certification--how easy is it to find continuing education?

crazykitten started this discussion · 7/20/2011

Hi all, I'm about to start working towards a personal trainer certification...but there are so many that I'm getting confused! My biggest decision-maker will be how easy it is to get continuing education credits. For those of you who are trainers, did you get most of your credits through online courses, or at live workships/training sessions in your area? If it's the latter, how did you go about finding places in your area that do continuing education courses? Thank you so much for your help!

10 replies

reenie aka Mysfit · 7/20/2011
There are a few threads in the forums about this.....I would try doing a search... You are in the US.....I would recommend ACE. Being in BC Canada----We still used the ACE Personal Training Manual for our Personal Training Portion of the course I took. It is wordy......but it is an EXCELLENT resource to have in your repetoire.....
crazykitten · 7/20/2011
Thanks! I have read through a bunch of the threads, but they were mainly geared toward pole certification or teaching pole. While that's one of my main goals, it isn't my only one, so I want to make sure I'm well rounded. Unfortunately the threads didn't give me an idea of how one goes about getting continuing education credits or finding appropriate workshops to gain them in their area, so I posted this topic. It has become apparent from the threads and your post that ACE is well-regarded here, it is definitely of most interest to me right now!
reenie aka Mysfit · 7/20/2011
Have you looked on the ACE website? I am not familar with the process for certification down there.... BUT---CEC's are done once you are certified to maintain your certification in the coming year(s) up here. In order to stay certified, I must have 16 CEC's, current First aid & CPR and pay my membership fees. Once that is complete, accepted and verified, my renewal gets done and they send me another active membership status card. Here is a link to the CEC's area on the ACE website. http://www.acefitness.org/continuingeducation/default.aspx
acefitness.orgContinuing Education Courses for Health and Fitness Professionals | ACEAdvance your career with continuing education programs from ACE. Explore specialist programs, courses and professional certifications.
Veena · 7/20/2011
I'm an ACE certified personal trainer and I like the variety of C.E. credits they have! Its fun (for me anyway) to work on expanding what you know and they have a lot to offer, I feel. Not sure about any of the other certs though. 🌸
crazykitten · 7/20/2011
I'm still curious if there's an easier way to find out about workshops/training sessions in the area. ACE and others don't let you search by state, as far as I can tell.
crazykitten · 7/20/2011
Veena, do you tend to do your CECs online, or have you ever attended training sessions or workshops in your area? I'm most interested in finding live sessions in my area...but it's so hard to track down!
reenie aka Mysfit · 7/20/2011
Oh and I should add---I spaced lol----Missed the whole point of your thread.......DOH!! Sorry about that.......Apparently I am not awake today..... Anyway, I do both online course/Distance ed.....and workshops to get continuing ed credits. It is relatively easy in my area to find all sorts of CEC offerings..... Gonna poke my head around on the ACE site and see what I can find for you relatively close to your area....
Veena · 7/20/2011
Most of my cec are online....we do get a good amount of workshops around here but this summer they have fallen on dates where I would be out of town. I get emails from ACE with info on workshops in my area. I can't remember why or how I started getting them! lol
crazykitten · 7/20/2011
Reenie, that's so sweet, but please don't put yourself out! It seems that ACE has the most options, so hopefully it's not too hard find some workshops in my area if I do some serious searching. Oklahoma, however, doesn't seem to be the easiest place to do so :-P
crazykitten · 7/20/2011
That's good to know that they email you about local workshops! Wading through the search results can get pretty tedious.