Is An Easy Online Personal Training Certification Worth It?

If you’re not fully sure you want to be a personal trainer, you might be asking, “Is an easy online personal training certification worth it?”. Most people who become a personal trainer love fitness and want to take it to another level. It’s for their own fitness goals rather than starting a career. Personal training can, in fact, be a great career. You can make six figures in fitness, choose your own schedule, and help others be healthy. But, if you just love fitness and want to see where it goes, then you’re looking for a certification that you can do at home, online, and fast. 

Personal training certifications are mostly the same. The difference is in how they teach exercise science. This makes the difference between an easy personal training certification and a hard one. It can be confusing, because some think that a hard trainer certification program means it’s the best personal trainer certification. This is not true. 

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The best personal trainer certification is the one that can teach you how to be a personal fitness trainer in a way that you understand and can apply. 

It’s just like helping a client hit their fitness goals. The best workout is the one a client can stick with and see results. Becoming a certified personal trainer is no different. Realistically, if the material is easy to understand, you should be able to take and pass a personal trainer exam in a month. More importantly, you should be able to apply the concepts of exercise and nutrition in a way that gets results. You’re learning to help others, not just pass a certification exam.

If you want to learn more about fitness and what the best personal training certification is for you, we’ll cover the following:

• What a personal trainer needs to know
• How long it should take to become a certified personal trainer 
• What’s the best way to learn concepts of fitness training
• If an easy personal training certification online is right for you

What You Need To Know As A Personal Trainer

It’s true, what you need to know as a personal trainer doesn’t vary much from one certifying agency to another. A personal training exam covers what an entry level personal trainer needs to know to do their job effectively. To determine this, some certifying agencies hold focus groups, called a job task analysis. Others know from fitness industry experience. Either way, the same concepts are part of the training exam, regardless of whether it’s EMAC Certifications, ACE, International Sports Sciences Association (ISSA), or the National Academy of Sports Medicine.

These are the topics you can expect to study and see on your exam:

• Human movement sciences, including anatomy and physiology, kinesiology, and biomechanics.

• Fitness assessments like body composition testing, movement assessments, strength assessments, and more.

• Exercise technique for common movements like a squat, lunge, chest press, row, and pull down. 

• Principles of program design for developing weight loss programs, hypertrophy plans, functional fitness workouts, and more.

• Concepts of nutrition including structure and function of macronutrients, nutrition coaching and how to navigate trending diets.

• Fitness motivation principles so you can help clients keep their healthy habits long-term.

• Fitness business so you can get clients, start a personal training business, or develop a business plan to grow and scale the business.

• Professional practice and codes of ethics, so the professional fitness industry maintains a good reputation among customers.

So, regardless of where you get your personal trainer certificate, these are the things you’ll need to learn. There are some differences in how much emphasis is on each of these personal training principles. For example, the National Academy of Sports Medicine has a strong emphasis on the principles of fitness program design. This is because you have to learn their specific model of fitness training. It expects the client to cater to the model, rather than allowing you to cater the workout to the client. An ACE certification, on the other hand, is extremely dense in the human movement sciences material. So, in your course, expect a big focus on learning terminology that you might never use as a personal trainer. 

The EMAC Certified Personal Trainer course has a strong focus on the art of fitness coaching and the importance of getting clients results. So you’ll learn more about motivation, accountability, and the best ways to handle difficult client scenarios. These are the types of experiences trainers have each day because they’re real world challenges in keeping a healthy lifestyle.

How Long Does It Take To Become A Personal Trainer?

It’s rare to find a personal trainer certification that isn’t online. Gone are the days when you attend a weekend workshop or evening classes in a classroom. Further, going through a certified personal trainer program is usually at your own pace. This means you can do all the assignments at times that work best for you. Some organizations will have a guided study program. This means, the certification company has put together a study plan for you to follow. Most of these study plans are 10 weeks long. But, that doesn’t mean it’s the right amount of time.

You should be able to complete your personal trainer certification program in 30 days.

If the program is longer, then something is wrong. It either includes too much information that a fitness trainer doesn’t need to know. For example, a personal trainer doesn’t need to know all the chambers of the heart, names of major blood vessels, and the complete circulatory pathway as you do with an ACE Certification. But you DO need to know how the body responds to cardiorespiratory exercise and how to develop the best cardio programs clients can stick to (as seen with EMAC Certifications). Therefore, if there’s too much irrelevant information in the course, it will take longer than 30 days to complete your personal trainer certification.

Another reason why it might take longer for aspiring personal trainers to complete their course is if the information is tough to understand. Most founders of a personal training certification were medical or chiropractic doctors or doctors in physical therapy. This means, they weren’t career personal trainers nor did they have a background in education. Having experience as a personal trainer or a background in education is a recipe for success when it comes to teaching others about exercise science. You shouldn’t have to read 1,000 pages of medical material to help someone lose weight or get stronger.

The bottom line is you should be able to go through a course, pass the exam, and earn your personal trainer certificate in 30 days. Look for a program that delivers the right amount of information and in a way that’s easy to understand, so you enjoy the process of earning your personal training certification.

What’s The Best Way To Learn Exercise Science And Fitness Training

The best way to learn exercise science is by applying it directly to what you’re doing in a gym setting. When you learn concepts of sports medicine in an isolated way, it makes it harder to understand, and it can deflate your excitement in becoming a personal trainer. In fact, many people enroll in a personal training program but never finish their coursework. This is because the material feels so separate from what they know and love about working out. 

The best way to learn the concepts of exercise science are like this:

• Human movement science: You should be learning anatomy and physiology in a way that breaks it down during exercises you already know. For example, instead of going through three chapters where you memorize all the muscles, bones, and joints, learn it in relevance. Instead, learn about a squat. As you learn about how to do a squat, you also learn the anatomy, technique, and variations. This is a much more engaging way to learn how the body moves in fitness.

• Fitness assessments: As a trainer, you’ll be taking clients through fitness assessments to get their starting statistics. However, not every fitness assessment is necessary for every client. Instead, you should learn the basics (body fat testing, posture assessment, etc.) but then learn what assessments are specific to what type of fitness goal.

• Principles of program design: It’s common for a certification course to cover these principles separately. For example, you’ll spend 50+ pages reading about the general adaptation syndrome, SAID principle, etc. at one time. Instead, you should learn about the principles as you learn how to develop a specific workout. For example, you’ll learn how the principles apply to building muscle when you’re in the chapter on hypertrophy. This type of learning makes it more exciting and engaging. Even better, it makes it easy to pass a certification exam because you actually know the information. You didn’t just memorize concepts to pass a test.

Is An Easy Online Personal Training Certification Right For You?

An easy personal training certification course doesn’t mean it’s a bad one. Instead, the word “easy” should mean “easy for you”. So that means everyone is different. For most, the following factors will make an online personal training course easy:

1. Self-paced- This means you can complete the reading assignments at times that work best for you, with no rushed deadlines.
2. Targeted and relevant information- Most people only want to learn about what’s most important to be a successful personal trainer, or how to know the secrets a trainer knows. They don’t want to learn unnecessary scientific information.
3. Engaging and enjoyable to learn- This means the course keeps in mind the type of person who wants to be a personal trainer. They’re passionate about fitness, nutrition, and results. And, they’re kinesthetic learners who don’t want to spend hours in front of a book when they can spend that time working out.
4. Low test anxiety- Most people aren’t good at taking difficult, high stakes exams. They get test anxiety. Instead of having a proctor look over your shoulder, they’ll want a testing environment where they can think through their answers and do their best.

EMAC Certification’s certified personal trainer course checks all these boxes. You’ll be able to go at your own pace. There are 30 units that are all the same in length. The information is easy to understand because we relate it to the fitness you’re probably already doing. And, you’ll get the latest information on how to coach people in a way where you can guarantee them results. 

Enroll today to get the latest personal training certification available! Or, you can reach us directly with your questions by using our chat feature or giving us a call at 1-800-311-6620.